Early 20th century Southeast Asia was arguably home to the once of the most vibrant and diverse caldrons of revolutionary ferment in world history. Revolts against Western imperialism and traditional socio-economic structures developed into a range of utopian experiments. In Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitan Origins of Revolution in Southeast Asia (Cornell UP, 2021), John T. Sidel argues that in order to understand these revolutions we must denationalize, internationalize, and transnationalism our analysis. Multiple forms of cosmopolitanism produced the Filipino revolt against Spanish rule, the Indonesian struggle from independence from the Dutch, and the Vietnamese fight against the French empire and for a Marxist utopia. Sidel highlights Southeast Asia’s often surprising global connections.
Professor Sidel received his BA and MA from Yale University and his PhD from Cornell University and was fortunate enough to have been mentored by both James C. Scott and Benedict Anderson. He is the author of Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines (Stanford University Press, 1999), Riots, Pogroms, Jihad: Religious Violence in Indonesia (Cornell University Press, 2006), and The Islamist Threat in Southeast Asia: A Reassessment (East-West Center, 2007). He has also co-authored Philippine Politics and Society in the Twentieth Century: Colonial Legacies, Postcolonial Trajectories and Thinking and Working Politically in Development: Coalitions for Change in the Philippines. Dr. Sidel was previously at the School of Oriental and African Studies but since 2004 has held the Sir Patrick Gillam Chair in International and Comparative Politics in the Departments of Government and International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California. Follow Mike on Twitter: @MichaelGVann.
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