This book is, to my mind, exactly the kind of work that needs to be done in order to understand civil wars, insurgencies, nationalism, and rebellions, and to get away from what the author rightfully critiques as 'pidgin social science.'

Engaging, theoretically sophisticated, and ethnographically detailed. . . . Makes a very complicated period of Balkan history admirably clear.

Drawing on over two decades of engagement in anthropology, archival and social history, and fieldwork in the Balkan region, Keith Brown has crafted a subtle and compelling account of revolutionary insurgency in turn-of-the-century Macedonia. His analytical focus on loyalties, rather than identities, goes beyond critiques of nationalism in enabling powerful new understandings of the region's histories and its continuing social dynamics. Elucidating 'the circuits travelled by things, people and ideas,' Loyal Unto Death reveals how, against a backdrop of Ottoman governance, competing nationalisms, rural poverty, and labour migration to North America, a modern revolutionary organisation transformed existing solidarities into a new sense of Macedonian selfhood and built commitment to an agenda of political autonomy.

Keith Brown does a fantastic job of reconstructing the feeling inside Macedonia itself at a time when Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria were vying with Turkey to possess it. He makes clear how important it is not to impose the present on the past. By thinking outside the box of nationalism, Brown improves our understanding of the past and also contributes to understanding the present.