First and foremost: There is not nearly enough written about anarchist movements outside of the US, Spain, and Kropotkin. That's absurd, and it's also tiresome. It leaves out a lot of characters and a lot of movements, and it enables people (particularly those in Western Europe and the Anglophone world) to pretend that some things haven't been said or done. There's a lot of history missing, and it's ridiculous.

Which is really why this book is interesting. It's history that is rarely covered, but it's written in the most boring way possible. It's like a timeline filled with names and dates; it's a narrated chronology, with minimal description of events or people (except a handful). And the analysis is sorely lacking.

There are moments where the author fails to recognise what colonialism is, how it has impacted loads of people, and that people in empires built on colonialism and imperialism often seek to work together. In trying to be clever (pointing out irony where none truly exists), he undermines his own understanding of the events he's writing about and makes it clear that it's barely surface level (despite his position as a professor of Latin American studies).