The Philippine, Indonesian, and Vietnamese 'revolutions' have long been understood in terms of a nationalist template, on the one hand, and distinctive 'local' cultures and forms of consciousness, on the other. But over the past few decades, historians have suggested an alternative vantage point for understanding the variegated forms and trajectories of 'revolution' across Southeast Asia. In his forthcoming book, Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitanism and Revolution in Southeast Asia, John Sidel draws together these disparate threads of historical research into a comparative analysis and shows how these revolutions were in very different ways informed, enabled, and impelled by cosmopolitan connections which shaped the forms in which they emerged and the ways in which they unfolded. 

John T. Sidel is the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He is the author of Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines (Stanford University Press, 1999), (with Eva-Lotta Hedman) Philippine Politics and Society in the Twentieth Century: Colonial Legacies, Postcolonial Trajectories (Routledge, 2000), Riots, Pogroms, Jihad: Religious Violence in Indonesia (Cornell University Press, 2006), The Islamist Threat in Southeast Asia: A Reassessment (East-West Center, 2007), and (with Jaime Faustino) Coalitions for Change in the Philippines: Legacies, Linkages, Lessons (The Asia Foundation, in press)