When the United States celebrated the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence in 1976, and Australia commemorated the bicentenary of its European settlement in 1988, ritual and symbol were mobilized once again to characterize the imagined community of the “nation.” Many of the challenges to national integration which had once worried centennial organizers had been overcome. Regional political differences and geographic dispersion were no longer critical problems for claims about shared national identity. National political institutions, national markets, and international position were all better established than they had been in the centennials, in both countries. There had been significant growth in the capacity of the American state in the intervening century, as well as expansion and consolidation of the national economy, and the acquisition of a central geopolitical role. In Australia, formal federation had created the Australian state, an industrialized national economy had grown, and links with Britain had been attenuated by other geopolitical alliances and somewhat more diverse immigration. Further, patriots in both countries could draw on defining moments and formative experiences unknown in the centennials, like Gallipoli in Australia or the Cold War in the United States. But to organizers of the bicentennials, their tasks did not seem any simpler. In 1876, many Americans had hoped that the centennial would bring “the revival of a just and noble national pride.” By 1976, that revival seemed necessary again. “Amid the dissension that sometimes amounts to hate in our country today,” Americans were warned as their “Bicentennial Era” was launched on television in 1971, “it behooves us to remind ourselves that we are a united nation.” Centennial organizers might have said much the same thing.