Book Alert / Under Three Flags -- Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination

Under Three Flags -- Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination by Benedict Anderson, Verso, $25, 255 pages, ISBN #1-84467-037-6, index, bibliography, footnotes, b&w illustrations and maps sprinkled throughout the text.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, a wave of radicalism and anti-colonialism spread across the world like a tsunami, affecting areas as far flung as colonial Europe, the Philippines and the Caribbean. For those who haven't given much thought to how such similar efforts came to take place simultaneously, Anderson's book is an eye-opener.

He describes this political movement elegantly at the opening of the book, labeling it political astronomy: "If one looks up at a moonless, dry-season, tropical night sky, one sees a  glittery canopy of stationary stars, connected by nothing but darkness visible and the imagination. The serene beauty is so immense that it takes an effort of will to remind oneself that these stars are actually in perpetual, frantic motion, impelled hither and yon by the invisible powere of the gravitational fields of which they are ineluctable, active parts."

Anderson couldn't have used that description in the context of early 19th century colonialism because that environment was one of relative political equipoise, in which most everyone knew their place. But as that century drew to its end, think what inventions had emerged: the telegraph, telephone, transoceanic submarine cables, the Universal Postal Union, not to mention steamships and railways. In short, worldwide communication was suddenly cheap and efficient. In 1903, Teddy Roosevelt sent a round-the-globe telegram that came back to him in nine minutes.

Consequently, those who had been inspired by 18th century insurrections against imperialist powers, particularly in Europe, could network at will, sending raw information, manifestoes, organizational plans and intelligence from one country to its global neighbor half the way around the earth in a matter of minutes.

Anderson's book is illuminating for this insight alone. But it delves much more deeply into the anti-colonialist movement, particularly in the Philippines, a nation for which the author has a singular expertise. The level of detail and analysis is, frankly, one that would attract primarily those who have a more-than-passing interest in the subject.