Nationalism and Print
Of particular importance to Anderson’s theory is his stress on the role of printed literature and its dissemination. The rise of nationalism is in Anderson's mind closely connected with the growth of printed books and with the technical development of print as a whole.
According to Anderson, a new emerging nation imagines itself to be antique. In this he somewhat takes the point of Anthony D. Smith, who considers the nation-building mythology and national myths of the ‘origin‘ in rather functionalist terms—they are more invented narratives than real stories. Anderson supposes that ’antiquity’ was, at a certain historical juncture, the necessary consequence of ‘novelty.’ "Though after the 1820s, atavistic fantasizing characteristics of most nationalists appear an epiphenomenon: what is really important is the structural alignment of post 1820s nationalist ‘memory’ with the inner premises and conventions of modern biography and autobiography" (xiv).
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