In the first two chapters of Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson states that nation-ness and nationalism are cultural

artefacts of a particular kind, that is that they are tools for controlling societies. In order to understand why these notions are so important nowadays, we have to research back on time. These artefacts surged at the end of eighteenth century, they were a product of changes that happened in society that we will talk about later on. Once created, they were able of penetrate into the collective subconsciousness, and blended together with several manifestations of ideologies. Before understanding what is nationalism, the origins of it and the cultural systems that precedes it, we need to have in mind a definition of nation. Anderson proposes that it is an imagined political community and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is imagined because the members never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, however they shared a mental image of the nation they believe. It is limited because even the largest of them has a finite, there is a boundary that differences it from other nations. Also, it is imagined as sovereign because nations dream of being free, this freedom is a synonymy of a sovereign state. Finally, it is imagined as community, because the nation is always conceived as comradeship. This feeling of fraternity is what makes it possible for people to protect and die willingly for limited imaginings. For Anderson there is a problem posed by nationalism: what are the reasons for these sacrifices? He believe that the answer lie the cultural roots of nationalism. During the eighteen century in Western Europe, the nationalism started to rise, at the same time that the religious modes of thought started to wave. Although this century of Enlightenment brought new perception of life, it did not vanish completely the religious beliefs. They took the concept of fatality into continuity, for example the karma, original sin, etc as a link between the dead and life. The best way of understanding the nationalism is aligning it with the cultural systems that preceded it, these systems are the religious community and the dynastic realm. The great classical communities used a language as sacred medium that linked to a superterrestrial power. Nevertheless, these communities cannot be only explained by their use and perception of language. Their societies were a cosmological hierarchy of which the apex was divine. Yet the power of the religiously imagined communities, their structures decreased after the late Middle Ages. One of the reasons were the rupture in the Eurocentric thought as an effect of the exploration of other non-European places. Also the decline of latin as a sacred language, and finally the merging of political system others than the monarchy. After the fading of sacred communities, a fundamental change took place in the mode of perceiving the world, which it made possible to think about the nation. Simultaneity is a imagined linkage between a person and a group of person that shared a common trait, and at the same time this person separates himself from other citizen of a different nation. The author concludes that all these ideas settled in the human mind gives meaning to the fatalities of existence, and it makes society to seek redemption from them.