| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.5

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 254 words from this article are provided below; about 544 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Benedict Anderson. The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World. New York: Verso. 1998. Pp. x, 374. $19.00.

Since the publication of his Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983), Benedict Anderson has become one of the treasured icons of postmodernist social science, almost if not quite as frequently cited as Edward Said. The apt phrase, that nations are "imagined," caught the attention of all scholars interested in the phenomenon of nationalism because it is at once true and also sarcastically debunking. After all, what nationalist would really want to admit that his nation is less than real? If nationalist passion has any basis, its proponents have to believe that the generations of mythmakers who created its heroic imagery must have been revealing the truth, not just imagining it. It was surely an accident, but a revealing one when the New York Times some years ago referred to the Cornell scholar, "Benedict Arnold," who wrote that nations are imagined; after all, in ordinary language, to say that implies that the nation is in some sense a fraud. 1

In these collected essays, which cover many different topics, Anderson somewhat corrects that impression. He does really admire some forms of nationalism, as long as they are revolutionary and anti-imperialist. The essays were written from the late 1970s to the late 1990s and range from brilliant Marxist interpretations of class-based politics in Southeast Asia (Anderson's own scholarly preserve) to intriguing essays of literary analysis. . . .

There are about 544 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.