(and filled a role) at a time when hierarchically organized, multi-ethnic empires were on the wane. As “sacred languages” (Latin, Classic Arabic) gave way to local vernaculars, new patterns of communication and organization became possible. Likewise, as philosophical thinkers moved away from sacred or “messianic time,” where current events are prefigured in the past and realized in the present, new modes of empty linear time were imagined that allowed for a more rational (and profane) understanding of causality and social relationships. Anderson identifies this last transition as being particularly important as it allowed for the imagination of larger and more complex communities, all acting simultaneously, progressing through linear time.

One place where Anderson departs from his predecessors is in locating the earliest realized national impulses in South America. Heargues and demonstrates in some detail that it was the bureaucratic pilgrimages of local officials, who by fault of their birth were barred high office in Europe but were free to move from office to office in the administrative area in which they lived, that first lay the foundations for the growth of national awareness within a bounded geographic area.

This process was made possible by the prior invention of “print capitalism.” This combination of limiting geographic institutions and the spread of print capitalism led to the initial development of nationalism, first in the Americas and then in Europe.

In a longer essay it might be interesting to consider how these processes played themselves out in China. In Europe Latin, the sacred language, was displaced, in favor of local print