Abstract
Daniel Laqua notes in Activism across Borders that “[t]here cannot be a comprehensive study of transnational activism, and the present book constitutes just one possible history of transnational activism: it is well possible to imagine a study on the same subject with very different examples and emphases”. While the scope and conceptual possibilities of the notion of transnational activism justify this claim, Activism across Borders is undoubtedly a landmark contribution and an essential synthesis, which impresses through the quality of its primary and secondary research, its sophisticated theoretical framework, and its deft writing. The consideration and confrontation of a wide range of transnational movements, ideologies, and activists
is particularly fruitful from a theoretical and methodological perspective; Chapter Four, on “Class, Revolution and Social Justice”, similarly deploys a cross-partisan approach, which opens stimulating avenues for reflection, over an ambitious chronological span – from the post-1848 wave of revolutionary exile to the contemporary global justice movement. Three prominent aspects of this chapter are considered in this brief review essay, largely informed by my perspective as a historian of pre-1914 transnational anarchism: historiographic perspectives on socialist activisms; the modalities of transnational activism; as well as borders and boundaries.