‘Benedict Anderson offers some insights on the territorial aspect that help to create the ‚imagination’ of nation-states and considers the census, the map and the museum as three institutions that shaped colonial states’ imagination of their territory. For Anderson, the census showed the nature of the human beings the state ruled, the map illustrated the geography of their domain and museums represented the legitimacy of their ancestry.‘

Zeynep N. Kaya ‘Maps into Nations: Kurdistan, Kurdish Nationalism and International Society’
Benedict Anderson ‘Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism ‘