Benedict Anderson's "Imagined Communities" speaks of how one of the things that enabled the formation of modern nations was the expansion of literacy coupled to

Benedict Anderson's "Imagined Communities" speaks of how one of the things that enabled the formation of modern nations was the expansion of literacy coupled to the writing of precisely such stories. While stories of kings and heroes had been everpresent, the "pesasant's tale" was relatively rare and almost never given the treatment of written work. But the lowering of the cost, the increase in literacy globally, and the proliferation of control over the art of writing from an elite caste to the public at large led to the writing of "man on the street" and "day in the life of" stories that were one of the ingredients that catalyzed people's ability to think of themselves not as vassals of a king or supplicants to a god, but fellow humans in a nation. When you could identify with the tribulations of a man in Mumbai from your flat in London because he happened to write his tale in the language you could read, a global British Empire began to knit together in a way that it wasn't consolidated under the simple idea "This is all the King's lands." Empathy glued your life to his life, even though you were on opposite ends of the globe and would never meet each other.