Bilingualism gave colonial intelligentsias access to modular models of nationalism

Evidence

It is no less generally recognized that the intelligentsias’ vanguard role derived from their bilingual literacy, or rather literacy and bilingualism. Print-literacy already made possible the imagined community floating in homogeneous, empty time of which we have spoken earlier. Bilingualism meant access, through the European language-of-state, to modern Western culture in the broadest sense, and, in particular, to the models of nationalism, nation-ness, and nation-state produced elsewhere in the course of the nineteenth century. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 452

Categorization

• XREF: Directly ties the book’s own earlier ‘imagined community in homogeneous empty time’ concept to the colonial intelligentsia mechanism — core scaffolding for the reader’s toolkit. — connects to: Ex-colonial intellectuals shaped the New Left and Cultural Studies from its origins; Open access to the imperial center preempted colonial nationalist movements — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 359; Colonial administrative language can become the lingua franca of anticolonial nationalism — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 667 (+6 more)

Related

• Colonial nationalists copied and adapted European national models (similarity 0.89)
• Open access to the imperial center preempted colonial nationalist movements (similarity 0.88)
• Colonial intelligentsias are structurally compelled toward the colonizer’s language in public life (similarity 0.84)
• Empire size forced recruitment of bilingual native clerks who later became nationalists (similarity 0.83)
• Later European nationalisms differed from American ones in print-language centrality and visible models. (similarity 0.82)
• Assimilationist colonial policies generate nationalist independence movements (similarity 0.81)
• A colonial script meant to sever ties became the medium of national solidarity (similarity 0.80)
• Colonial administrative language can become the lingua franca of anticolonial nationalism (similarity 0.80)
• Nationalism originated in the New World colonies, not in Europe’s ethnolinguistic movements (similarity 0.80)
• Empire-created bilingual elites became the vanguard of colonial nationalism (similarity 0.79)
• Languages came to be seen as the property of specific national communities (similarity 0.79)
• Material interests and Enlightenment ideas alone could not shape nationalist imagined communities. (similarity 0.79)
• Nationalism emerged from printed shared narratives, not shared acquaintance (similarity 0.78)
• Nationalism was invented in colonial Creole societies, not Europe. (similarity 0.78)
• National consciousness forms through language and literature, not only through shared ancestry (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Empire-created bilingual elites became the vanguard of colonial nationalism #corroborates (0.90)
• Colonial administrative language can become the lingua franca of anticolonial nationalism #expands (0.85) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 667
• Colonial nationalists copied and adapted European national models #expands (0.85) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 488