Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitan Origins of Revolution in Southeast Asia

324 Pages·2021·6.944 MB·English

by  John T. Sidel

REPUBLICANISM,
COMMUNISM, ISLAM

REPUBLICANISM,
COMMUNISM,
ISLAM
Cosmopolitan Origins of Revolution
in Southeast Asia
John T. Sidel
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON
Copyright © 2021 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from
the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512
East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress. c ornell. edu.
First published 2021 by Cornell University Press
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Sidel, John Thayer, 1966– author.
Title: Republicanism, communism, Islam : cosmopolitan origins of revolution in
Southeast Asia / John T. Sidel.
Description: Ithaca, [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020043164 (print) | LCCN 2020043165 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781501755613 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501755620 (epub) |
ISBN 9781501755637 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Revolutions— Vietnam. | Cosmopolitanism— Southeast Asia. |
Philippines— History— Revolution, 1896–1898. | Indonesia— History—
Revolution, 1945–1949.
Classification: LCC DS682 .A274 2021 (print) | LCC DS682 (ebook) |
DDC 303.6/4095909041— dc23
LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020043164
LC ebook rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020043165
Cover illustration, clockwise from top right: Javanese revolutionaries fighting for
independence (1946), Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, photographer unknown;
Battle of Imus monument, Philippines, photo by Mark Kevin (Wikimedia); herd of
gnus grazing in a savanna, photo by Antony Trivet (Pexels); propaganda poster, Da
Nang, Vietnam, photo by Dragfyre (Wikimedia); Masonic pendant, photo by
luxxtek (Getty).
For Ben

Contents
Acknowl edgments ix
Introduction: Beyond Nationalism and Revolution
in Southeast Asia 1
1. From Bohemia to Balintawak: Cosmopolitan Origins
of the Philippine Revolution 19
2. Masonería, Cofradía, Katipunan: Revolutionary Brotherhoods
in the Philippines, 1896–1901 45
3. From Baku to Bandung: Cosmopolitan Origins
of the Indonesian Revolution 72
4. From Cultuurstelsel to Komedie Stamboel:
The Long Nineteenth Century in the Indies 96
5. Newspapers, Rallies, Strikes: The Rise and Fall
of Sarekat Islam (SI), 1912–1926 120
6. Soekarno and the Promise of NASAKOM:
From Rust en Orde through the Pacific War, 1926–1945 146
7. Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Revolusi, 1945–1949 169
8. From Guangzhou, Porto Novo, and Antananarivo
toward Điện Biên Phủ 203
9. From Cần Vương to Viêt- Nam Duy- Tân Hội
to Thanh Niên 232
10. From Thanh Niên to the Indochinese Communist Party
(ICP) and the Việt Minh 256
Conclusion: Commonalities, Comparisons, Conclusions 288
Index 299

Acknowle dgments
This book has been extremely long in the making, and the accumulated debts of
gratitude are commensurately large and deeply felt. First, there are institutions
that deserve my thanks for their encouragement and assistance in the many years
of research and writing that have gone into the production of this book. The
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where I worked between 1994
and 2004, provided the nurturing intellectual environment in which I first began
to conceive of this book proj ect, and its musty but trusty library has continued
to enable my research on Southeast Asia to this day. The British Acade my funded
a generous Research Readership from 2003 to 2005 that gave me two full years to
embark on this proj ect and granted me the freedom to focus on other proj ects,
including other books, at the same time. The London School of Economics and
Pol itic al Science (LSE), where I have worked since 2004, has greatly facilitated the
subsequent prog ress over the years that eventually brought this book to comple-
tion, through sabbatical leave, research funding, and library resources, with un-
restricted interlibrary loans enabling access to diverse and otherw ise unavailable
(and at times esoteric) sources.
More impor tant, I also owe heartfelt thanks to a wide range of individuals
whose influence, encouragement, and assistance have made the research and writ-
ing of this book not only poss i ble but also highly enjoyable over the many years
since the inception of the proj ect. My significant other, Lotta, provided much
inspiration for this book through her own earlier thinking and writing about
transnational social movements and blocs of social forces; she has s haped the de-
velopment of my own investigations and understandings on this front in many
ways, even as her own work has moved far more adventurously beyond t hese con-
cerns. At the outset of the research, she also very helpfully facilitated my access to
the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, where I fully enjoyed the medi-
eval scholastic ambiance and indulged myself in months of dilettantish dabbling
on multiple fronts, however tangentially related to the book. In those early days,
our daughter Matilda was spending many of her days immersed in fin ger paint-
ing and the like at the L ittle Scholars Nursery (seriously!) in Oxford. As of this
writing, she is now a wise and worldly young woman with many interests and
abilities, and a budding young scholar in her own right, now reading History at
Cambridge. The accumulating breadth, depth, and pace of her personal and in-
tellectual development has been a happily humbling source of admiration, vicarious
ix