Under Three Flags

In this sparkling new work, Benedict Anderson provides a compelling exploration of late-nineteenth-century politics and culture against a background of militant anarchism in Europe and the Americas. Jose Marti’s armed uprising in Cuba and anti-imperialist protests in China and Japan. Anderson charts the complex intellectual interactions of two great Filipino writers – the political novelist Jose Rizal and the pioneering folklorist Isabelo de los Reyes – with avant-garde European literature and politics, connecting nationalist movements of the era.

Under Three Flags is a brilliantly original work on the explosive history of national independence and global politics.“Fiercely, movingly local, concentrated on a handful of remarkable men and fateful years, but also expansively global.”—T. J. Clark, London Review of Books

“Anderson presents his case with the zeal of a researcher uncovering hidden history, referencing an impressive range of sources in multiple languages ... The volume provides fascinating insights into the global flow of anarchic and anti-colonial ideas.”—Publishers Weekly

“A formidably erudite and beautifully illustrated study.”—IndependentBenedict Anderson is Aaron L. Binenkorp Professor of International Studies Emeritus at Cornell University. He is editor of the journal Indonesia and author of Java in a Time of Revolution, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World and Imagined Communities.