In this innovative reading, the development of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) is explored in the context of an emerging nationalism in Southeast Asia, the interplay of overseas Chinese networks and the Comintern. Based on extensive new archival material, Anna Belogurova shows how the MCP was shaped by the historical contingencies of anti-imperialism in Southeast Asia, long-term Chinese migration trends, networks, identity, and the organizational practices of the Comintern. This is the story of how a group of left-leaning Chinese migrant intellectuals engaged with global forces to create a relevant and lasting Malayan national identity, providing fresh international perspectives on the history of Malaysia, Chinese communism, the Cold War, and decolonization.

‘Bringing to light previously untapped sources, The Nanyang Revolution breaks new ground in analyzing the history of the Malayan Communist Party and its vision of a Malayan nation. Belogurova's exploration of the internationalism-nationalism relationship and of Comintern attitudes towards overseas Chinese represents a major contribution to our understanding of communism as a global movement.'

Barbara Watson Andaya - University of Hawai‘i

‘This innovative and deeply researched study of the Malayan Communist Party offers a fresh and imaginative exploration of the interplay of nationalism and internationalism, indigenization and internationalization across a space that stretches from Southeast Asia to Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.'

S. A. Smith - All Souls College, Oxford

‘This book tells a compelling story of diaspora politics of displacement, bringing into focus the significance of the maritime networks in the making of China's modern revolutions, nationalist as well as communist. It's an achievement that remaps the spatial dynamics of the transformation of modern China.'

Wen-hsin Yeh - University of California, at Berkeley

''Nanyang' was the savage front of the international revolutionary movement. Anna Eduardovna Belogurova provides a clear, overarching view of the relationship between ideas of the Chinese-oriented ‘Minzu' and the reality of internationalism proposed by the Comintern.'

Ishikawa Yoshihiro - Kyoto University

‘… this volume makes a valuable contribution to the fields of the modern histories of China and Southeast Asia, the history of world communism, of state building and modernization, and studies of anti-colonialism and nationalism. It will be a useful source for scholars and students of Chinese history, social and political history, the Chinese diaspora, and of studies of the Comintern, internationalism, migration, and the communist revolution in Southeast Asia.’

Qian Zhu Source: China and Asia