Nationalist intellectuals depended on small, powerful literate reading publics as consumers

Evidence

At the same time, it is self-evident that all these lexicographers, philologists, grammarians, folklorists, publicists, and composers did not carry on their revolutionary activities in a vacuum. They were, after all, producers for the print-market, and they were linked, via that silent bazaar, to consuming publics. Who were these consumers? In the most general sense: the families of the reading classes – not merely the ‘working father,’ but the servant-girded wife and the school-age children. If we note that as late as 1840, even in Britain and France, the most advanced states in Europe, almost half the population was still illiterate (and in backward Russia almost 98 per cent), ‘reading classes’ meant people of some power. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 301

Categorization

• XREF: Illiteracy rates as a material constraint on imagined community — connects to how print-capitalism’s reach was limited and therefore exclusionary. — connects to: Translations of theory books become political interventions in local nationalist struggles. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 827; Nationalist movements typically fused aristocrats, intellectuals, and businessmen in distinct roles — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 308; Wealth and schooling determined where nationalist revolution began earlier — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 309

Related

• Nationalist movements typically fused aristocrats, intellectuals, and businessmen in distinct roles (similarity 0.88)
• Wealth and schooling determined where nationalist revolution began earlier (similarity 0.81)
• Nationalism emerged from printed shared narratives, not shared acquaintance (similarity 0.80)
• Novels and newspapers supplied the technical means to imagine the nation (similarity 0.79)
• Material interests and Enlightenment ideas alone could not shape nationalist imagined communities. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Nationalist movements typically fused aristocrats, intellectuals, and businessmen in distinct roles #expands (0.75) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 308
• Wealth and schooling determined where nationalist revolution began earlier #qualifies (0.72) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 309