Benedict Anderson, a Cornell University scholar who became one of the most influential voices in the fields of nationalism and Southeast Asian studies, died on Sunday in Indonesia. He was 79.
Mr. Anderson died in his sleep during a visit to the city of Malang.
About Anderson
Born to Anglo-Irish parents in 1936 in Kunming, China, Benedict Richard O’Gorman Anderson grew up in California and was educated at Cambridge and Cornell, where he studied Southeast Asian politics.
But while retaining an active interest in Indonesia, Mr. Anderson’s enforced absence from that country encouraged him to turn his energies elsewhere, with Thailand becoming another specialization by the mid-1970s. He learned enough Thai to co-author a 1985 collection and study of translated modern Thai short stories.
Mr. Anderson’s most influential work on Thailand was his 1977 essay “Withdrawal Symptoms,” which analyzed the social forces behind a 1976 counterrevolution in Thailand just three years after a student-led revolt toppled a military dictatorship.
Mr. Anderson later turned his attention to the Philippines learning Spanish so he could study colonial-era documents which led to his last major book, 2005’s “Under Three Flags- Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination.
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