Filipino national hero Jose Rizal wrote The Social Cancer in Berlin in 1887. Upon his return to his country, he was summoned to the palace by the Governor General because of the subversive ideas his book had inspired in the nation. Rizal wrote of his consequent persecution by the church: "My book made a lot of noise; everywhere, I am asked about it. They wanted to anathematize me ['to excommunicate me'] because of it ... I am considered a German spy, an agent of Bismarck, they say I am a Protestant, a freemason, a sorcerer, a damned soul and evil. It is whispered that I want to draw plans, that I have a foreign passport and that I wander through the streets by night ..."

Revealing glimpses of the Philippine Revolution and the Filipino writer Jose Rizal emerge despite the worst efforts of feuding academics in Apostol’s hilariously erudite novel, which won the Philippine National Book Award. Gina Apostol’s riotous second novel takes the form of a memoir by one Raymundo Mata, a half-blind bookworm and revolutionary, tracing his childhood, his education in Manila, his love affairs, and his discovery of writer and fellow revolutionary, Jose Rizal. Mata’s 19th-century story is complicated by present-day foreword(s), afterword(s), and footnotes from three fiercely quarrelsome and comic voices: a nationalist editor, a neo-Freudian psychoanalyst critic, and a translator, Mimi C. Magsalin. In telling the contested and fragmentary story of Mata, Apostol finds new ways to depict the violence of the Spanish colonial era, and to reimagine the nation’s great writer, Jose Rizal, who was executed by the Spanish for his revolutionary activities, and is considered by many to be the father of Philippine independence. The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata offers an intoxicating blend of fact and fiction, uncovering lost histories while building dazzling, anarchic modes of narrative.

Using social movements as a prism to illuminate the oft-hidden history of 20th-century Korea, this book provides detailed analysis of major uprisings that have patterned that country’s politics and society. From the 1894 Tonghak Uprising through the March 1, 1919, independence movement and anti-Japanese resistance, a direct line is traced to the popular opposition to U.S. division of Korea after World War Two. The overthrow of Syngman Rhee in 1960, resistance to Park Chung-hee, the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, as well as student, labor, and feminist movements are all recounted with attention to their economic and political contexts. South Korean opposition to neoliberalism is portrayed in detail, as is an analysis of neoliberalism’s rise and effects. With a central focus on the Gwangju Uprising (that ultimately proved decisive in South Korea’s democratization), the author uses Korean experiences as a baseboard to extrapolate into the possibilities of global social movements in the 21st century. Previous English-language sources have emphasized leaders—whether Korean, Japanese, or American. This book emphasizes grassroots crystallization of counter-elite dynamics and notes how the intelligence of ordinary people surpasses that of political and economic leaders holding the reins of power. It is the first volume in a two-part study that concludes by analyzing in rich detail uprisings in nine other places: the Philippines, Burma, Tibet, China, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand, and Indonesia. Richly illustrated, with tables, charts, graphs, index, and endnotes.

Unlike other conventional histories, the unifying thread of A History of the Philippines is the struggle of the peoples themselves against various forms of oppression, from Spanish conquest and colonization to U.S. imperialism. Constantino provides a penetrating analysis of the productive relations and class structure in the Philippines, and how these have shaped―and been shaped by―the role of the Filipino people in the making of their own history. Additionally, he challenges the dominant views of Spanish and U.S. historians by exposing the myths and prejudices propagated in their work, and, in doing so, makes a major breakthrough toward intellectual decolonization. This book is an indispensible key to the history of conquest and resistance in the Philippine.

Mila Guerrero’s Luzon at War, first written in 1977, grew out of a world in motion seeking to understand another earlier era of radical turmoil. Its findings helped lay the groundwork for the emergence since the 1980s of new ways for understanding the historical roots and unresolvable contradictions of the Philippine Revolution. The book puts forth a series of questions about the colonial origins of the nation, the tensions between State and society, the role of the intelligentsia, and the resistance of ordinary people that successive generations of scholars are still seeking to come to terms with. It remains arguably the most astute critique of the first Philippine Republic, laying bare many of the sources of today’s political and social problems.

In Republicanism, Communism, Islam, John T. Sidel provides an alternate vantage point for understanding the variegated forms and trajectories of revolution across the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam, a perspective that is de-nationalized, internationalized, and transnationalized. Sidel positions this new vantage point against the conventional framing of revolutions in modern Southeast Asian history in terms of a nationalist template, on the one hand, and distinctive local cultures and forms of consciousness, on the other. Sidel's comparative analysis shows how—in very different, decisive, and often surprising ways—the Philippine, Indonesian, and Vietnamese revolutions were informed, enabled, and impelled by diverse cosmopolitan connections and international conjunctures. Sidel addresses the role of Freemasonry in the making of the Philippine revolution, the importance of Communism and Islam in Indonesia's Revolusi, and the influence that shifting political currents in China and anticolonial movements in Africa had on Vietnamese revolutionaries. Through this assessment, Republicanism, Communism, and Islam tracks how these forces, rather than nationalism per se, shaped the forms of these revolutions, the ways in which they unfolded, and the legacies which they left in their wakes.