Basic Information
- Book Title: Imagined Communities
- Chapter Title: “Census, Map, Museum”
- Author: Benedict Anderson
- Publisher: Verso Books
- Edition/Publication Year: 2006 (Original: 1983)
Quantitative Metadata
- Dates:
- This chapter is mainly focusing on time duration from 19th century to early 20th century, indicating colonial expansion till early post-colonial periods
- Key Years:
- Between 1850 and 1910, the colonial expansion in Southeast Asia: “Siam was not colonized, though what, in the end, came to be its borders were colonially determined.”
- Around 1870s, introduction of modern census and mapping: “The real innovation of the census-takers of the 1870s was, therefore, not in the construction of ethnic-racial classifications, but rather in their systematic quantification.”
- From 1950s to 1960s, decolonization and emergence of post-colonial nation-states: “When the Dutch left the region in 1963 they estimated that within the 700,000 population there existed well over 200 mostly mutually unintelligible languages. Many of the remoter ‘tribal’ groups were not even aware of one another’s existence.”
- Places:
- Main Region: Southeast Asia
- Specific Countries: Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand (Siam), British Malaya, Burma, Cambodia, Vietnam.
Interpretive Metadata
Key Topics Discussed:
- Census: Population control, racial and ethnic categorization, identity categorization
- Map: Territorial delimitation, colonial mapping, sovereignty
- Museum: Cultural preservation, archaeology, historical narrative
Key Arguments:
- Argument on Census: Racial and ethnic divisions were strengthened by colonial censuses, which had an impact on social hierarchies that remained after colonization:
- “as the colonial period wore on, the census categories became more visibly and exclusively racial.”
- “on the whole, the large racial categories were retained and even concentrated after independence”
- Argument on Map: Both colonizers and post-colonial states’ territorial imaginations were impacted by the artificial national boundaries drawn by colonial maps:
- “The Mercatorian map, brought in by the European colonizers, was beginning, via print, to shape the imagination of Southeast Asians.”
- “Like censuses, European-style maps worked on the basis of a totalizing classification, and led their bureaucratic producers and consumers towards policies with revolutionary consequences.”
- Argument on Museum: Colonial museum methods distanced local communities from their own cultural history by framing historical artifacts as remnants of a stagnant past:
- “Colonial Archaeological Services became powerful and prestigious institutions, calling on the services of some exceptionally capable scholar-officials.
- “It is probably not too surprising that post-independence states, which exhibited marked continuities with their colonial predecessors, inherited this form of political museumizing.”
Bibliography
Anderson, B. (2006) Imagined Communities. London: Verso. Extract pp. 163-185.