Biography
Anderson was born in 1936 in Kunming, China, to an Anglo-Irish father and English mother. He was brought up mainly in California, and after moving to Ireland, studied at Eton College and at the University of Cambridge. His graduate work in politics at Cornell resulted in a paper (the "Cornell Paper") detailing the political situation in Indonesia for which he was barred from the country.
He is best known for his book Imagined Communities, in which he systematically describes, using an historical materialist or Marxist approach, the major factors contributing to the emergence of nationalism in the world during the past three centuries. Anderson defined a nation as "an imagined political community imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign."
Anderson is currently professor emeritus of International Studies at Cornell University, and head of its Indonesian program. He is also widely regarded as an authority on twentieth-century Indonesian history and politics. He has published widely on Thailand and the Philippines. As in the case of his work on Indonesia, his work on those countries is grounded in his formidable linguistic competence. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994.
His father, James O'Gorman Anderson came from Waterford in Ireland. James' father, Brigadier-General Sir Francis James Anderson, was descended from a Scottish family in Ireland, while his mother Lady Frances O'Gorman came from the Gaelic clan of Mac Gorman of County Clare. (Mac Gorman became corrupted to O'Gorman over time). She was directly descended from Melaghlin Mac Gorman, who was granted the Barony of Ibrickane in Co. Clare by Henry VIII in 1544. Benedict's great-grandfather was the Irish Home Rule Movement MP, Major Purcell O'Gorman, while his great-great grandfather was Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman, secretary of the Catholic Association.
Read more about this topic: Benedict Anderson
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