Imagining the Homeland: A Late Ottoman Construction of National Identity

Abstract

Benedict Anderson calls a nation an “imagined community” — “because members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”¹ Imagined national communities were born together with the structure of the modern state, where the nation exerts its legitimate authority over a clearly defined territory² Nations rely on a territory for the expression of their culture and for creating a sense of belonging.³ As Anthony Smith argues, with all their mountains, seas, rivers and sky,⁴ nations are not simply space occupiers. Rather a nation’s territory must be imagined as well. Nations have not existed since the beginning of the time, and nor have their territories. Links must be established between nations and territorially defined political units.⁵ References to a common past, shared memories and definitions of “us” and “the Other” construct emotional attachments between the land and the people.