Military academies produced nationalist officers who could just as easily split nations

Evidence

Our focus here will be on civilian schools. But their military counterparts were often important too. The professionally officered standing army pioneered by Prussia early in the nineteenth century has required an educational pyramid in some ways more elaborate, if not more specialized, than its civilian analogue. Young officers (‘Turks’) produced by new military academies have often played significant roles in the development of nationalism. … It is striking evidence of the power of the Prussian model that he was able to lead Muslim Hausa troops in assassinating the Sardauna of Sokoto and other Muslim Hausa aristocrats, and, consequently, destroy the Muslim-Hausa-dominated government of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. It is no less striking a sign of colonial-school-generated nationalism that over Radio Kaduna he assured his countrymen that ‘you will no more be ashamed to say that you are Nigerian.’ … Yet nationalism was thinly enough then spread in Nigeria for Nzeogwu’s nationalist coup to be quickly interpreted as an Ibo plot; hence the military mutinies of July, the anti-Ibo pogroms of September and October, and Biafra’s secession in May 1967. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 497

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘thinness’ of nationalism and its rapid collapse into ethnic/civil war prefigures how Islamophobia readings treat the fragility of national belonging and its violent racial re-assertion. — connects to: Imperial European armies recruited heavily from ethnic minorities and colonized peoples — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1520; Unity among rival nationalist factions proved fragile and brief — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 122; Empire size forced recruitment of bilingual native clerks who later became nationalists — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 450
• SEED: The irony of a professional Prussian-modeled officer corps producing coups that both forge and shatter nations is a strong essay angle on how institutional pilgrimages cut both ways.

Broader Connections

• Unity among rival nationalist factions proved fragile and brief #exemplifies (0.80) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 122
• Empire size forced recruitment of bilingual native clerks who later became nationalists #corroborates (0.78) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 450
• Imperial European armies recruited heavily from ethnic minorities and colonized peoples #responds-to (0.72) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1520