Comparative Review: Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities and John Darwin’s After Tamerlane
Nations and empires have, particularly since the late-eighteenth century, dominated the way we imagine the organization of the polity. Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1983) and John Darwin’s After Tamerlane (2008) provide nuanced accounts of these highly politicized concepts. Influenced by the historiographical context of their writing, they both attempt to expand and reimagine commonplace conceptions of nationalism and empire, each at a time when their respective unit of analysis was seen in reductionist terms . While Anderson focuses on nations as a source of identity, Darwin looks at empires as a source of power. Both complement each other in their efforts to help us understand globalization and the making of the modern global world order, in what international relations scholars would call constructivist (Anderson) and realist (Darwin) terms. Ultimately, in a ‘Chakrabartian’ spirit, they both contribute to ‘provincializing Europe’, widening our lens from an Euroc