In Republicanism, Communism, Islam, John T. Sidel provides an alternate vantage point for understanding the variegated forms and trajectories of revolution across the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam, a perspective that is de-nationalized, internationalized, and transnationalized. Sidel positions this vantage point in relation to the long-term framing of twentieth-century revolutions in much of modern Southeast Asian history, as, on the one hand, a nationalist template and, on the other, distinctive local cultures and forms of consciousness.
Sidel's comparative analysis of the Philippine, Indonesian, and Vietnamese revolutions shows how each--in very different, decisive, and often surprising ways--were informed, enabled, and impelled by diverse cosmopolitan connections and international conjunctures. From the role of Freemasonry in the making of the Philippine revolution and the importance of Communism and Islam in the making of Indonesia to the influence that anticolonial movements in Africa and Jesuit teaching had on Vietnamese revolutionaries, Sidel tracks how these forces, rather than nationalist claims, shaped the forms of each revolution, the ways in which they unfolded, and the legacies which they left in their wakes.