This big book contains, depending on how one counts, hundreds or even thousands of stories. It traces the ties among Asian revolutionaries and their Euro-American friends and enemies from the beginning of the twentieth century, through the revolutionary hightide of the 1920s, to the illusive return to normality in the 1930s. It tells the stories of roughly two generations of men and women from, primarily, India, the Dutch East Indies, China, and Vietnam who lived largely in exile or in transit from one place to another to support—variously—nationalist, anarchist, socialist, and world revolution.

Any book with a global scope necessarily relies on secondary sources, and Harper appears to have read them all. He also makes considerable use of the police reports of the imperialist powers, which were often well informed if generally prone to exaggerate the extent of terrorist conspiracies. Country specialists (like myself) will find a few nits to...

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