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Emanating From the State, and Serving the Interests of the State

Contemporary nationalism is the heir to two centuries of historic change. … [T]he legacies are truly Janus-headed. For the legators include not only San Martín and Garibaldi, but Uvarov and Macaulay…  ‘[O]fficial nationalism’ was from the start a conscious, self-protective policy, intimately linked to the preservation of imperial-dynastic interests. But once ‘out there for all to see,’ it was as copyable as Prussia’s early-nineteenth-century military reforms, and by the same variety of political and social systems. The one persistent feature of this style of nationalism was, and is, that it is official – i.e. something emanating from the state, and serving the interests of the state first and foremost.

—Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities – Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2016 ed. , p. 159
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