Summary

Benedict Anderson continues the historical and theoretical project begun in Imagined Communities, his classic work on nationalism, by exploring the radical politics and culture of the world in the late nineteenth century. Here, he contrasts two young anti-imperialist nationalists from the then remote periphery of the Philippines. The great political novelist Jose Rizal, executed by the Spanish colonial regime when he was only 35, was the first person fully to imagine the Philippine nation, and to pave the way for anti-colonial revolution in his country. The pioneering folklorist Isabelo de los Reyes, imprisoned in Manila after the violent uprisings of 1896, was later incarcerated together with Catalan anarchists in the torture-ridden prison fortress of Montjuich in Barcelona. On his return to the Philippines, now occupied by the Americans, he formed the first militant trade unions under the influence of Malatesta and Kropotkin.