Bio: (1936-2015) British historian and political scientist. Benedict Anderson received his Ph.D. from Cornell University on the topic of the history of Indonesia during the struggle for independence. Together with his brother Perry, he is one of the most important social historians in the world, and both were influenced by Marxist thought in the social sciences. Benedict Anderson is best known for his book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983), in which he uses Marxist analysis of history to investigate the origins of nations and nationalism. He defines nations as imaginary political communities, inherently limited, but also with their sovereignty. He connects the very emergence of nations and nationalism with the development of the press, the spread of literacy, and the reduction of the importance of the Latin language, as well as the rejection of the idea that the power of the monarch was vested to them by God. Anderson believes that the first true nationalism arose in the United States during the struggle for independence.

Main works

Java in a Time of a Revolution (1972);

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983);

In the Mirror: Literature and Politics in Siam in the American Era (1985);

Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia (1990);

The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World (1998);

Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-colonial Imagination (2005);

The Age of Globalization: Anarchists and the Anticolonial Imagination (2013).