How Innovation Works by Matt Ridley

How Innovation Works by Matt Ridley

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 vantage point in relation to the long-term framing of twentieth-century revolutions in much of modern Southeast Asian history, as, on the one hand, a nationalist template and, on the other, distinctive local cultures and forms of consciousness.

Sidel's comparative analysis of the Philippine, Indonesian, and Vietnamese revolutions shows how each-in very different, decisive, and often surprising ways-were informed, enabled, and impelled by diverse cosmopolitan connections and international conjunctures. From the role of Freemasonry in the making of the Philippine revolution and the importance of Communism and Islam in the making of Indonesia to the influence that anticolonial movements in Africa and Jesuit teaching had on Vietnamese revolutionaries, Sidel tracks how these forces, rather than nationalist claims, shaped the forms of each revolution, the ways in which they unfolded, and the legacies which they left in their wakes.

Matt Ridley is the author of books that have sold well over a million copies in 32 languages: THE RED QUEEN, THE ORIGINS OF VIRTUE, GENOME, NATURE VIA NURTURE, FRANCIS CRICK, THE RATIONAL OPTIMIST, THE EVOLUTION OF EVERYTHING, and HOW INNOVATION WORKS. In his bestseller GENOME and in his biography of Francis Crick, he showed an ability to translate the details of genomic discoveries into understandable and exciting stories. During the current pandemic, he has written essays for the Wall Street Journal and The Spectator about the origin and genomics of the virus. His most recent WSJ piece appeared on January 16, 2021. He is a member of the House of Lords in the UK.