[3] He was born in present-day Nagari Pandam Gadang, Suliki, Lima Puluh Kota Regency, West Sumatra, which was then under the rule of the Dutch East Indies.

[c] His father was Haji Muhammad Rasad Caniago, an agricultural employee, and his mother was Rangkayo Sinah Simabua, a daughter of a respected figure in the village.

As a child, Tan Malaka lived with his parents in Suliki, and studied religious knowledge and trained in the pencak silat martial arts.

[13] In the Netherlands, he met Henk Sneevliet, one of the founders of the Indische Sociaal-Democratische Vereeniging (ISDV), the precursor to the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI).

He accepted a job offer by Dr. C. W. Janssen to teach the children of the tea plantation coolies, at Sanembah, Tanjung Morawa, Deli, East Sumatra.

[3] As a journalist, he wrote on the striking differences in wealth between capitalists and workers, in one of his earliest works, the "Land of Paupers"; which was included in a March 1920 issue of Het Vrije Woord.

[17] He subsequently left Batavia and arrived at Yogyakarta in early March 1921, and stayed as the house of Sutopo, a former leader of Budi Utomo.

[26] In June, he was one of the leaders of the Revolutionaire Vakcentrale ("Revolutionary Trade Union Federation"),[27] and in August he was elected to the editorial board of SPPH's journal, the Soeara Tambang ("Miner's Voice").

[21] Tan Malaka then replaced Semaun, who left the Dutch East Indies in October, as the chairman of PKI after a congress on 24 – 25 December 1921 in Semarang.

His stated goal in running was instead to gain a platform to speak about Dutch actions in Indonesia, and to work to persuade the CPN to support Indonesian independence.

[34] Tan Malaka then went to Canton (now Guangzhou), arriving in December 1923,[34] and edited the English journal, The Dawn, for an organization of transport workers of the Pacific.

[34] It explained the situation in the world, from the Netherlands which suffered an economic crisis, the Dutch East Indies which had opportunities to carry out a revolution by nationalist movements and PKI, to his prediction that the United States and Japan would "settle with the sword which of them is the more powerful in the Pacific.

Publication of his works, such as a second edition of Naar de Republiek Indonesia (December 1925) and Semangat Moeda (Young Spirit; 1926) might have been supported by Varona.

[38][36] He described in his autobiography his frustration with his inability to secure information about events in Indonesia from his place in the Philippines, and his lack of influence with the PKI's leadership.

Some party cadres included future-Vice President Adam Malik, future People's Consultative Assembly Speaker Chaerul Saleh, and poet and politician Mohammad Yamin.

[44] Malaka moved to Shanghai in September 1932 after the attack made by the Japanese forces, and decided to go to India, disguised as a Chinese-Filipino and using an alias.

He hoped to have a chance to argue his case under British law and possibly seek asylum in the United Kingdom, but after several months of interrogation and being moved between the "European" and the "Chinese" sections of the jail, it was decided that he would simply be exiled from Hong Kong without charges.

[48] The oppression of the Chinese he saw under both of these powers, Kusno argues, contributed to his uncompromising position against collaboration with the Japanese or negotiation with the Dutch in the 1940s, when many prominent Indonesian nationalists were adopting a more conciliatory stance.

After he felt he had to have a job, he applied to Social Welfare Agency and was soon sent to a coal mine in Bayah, on southern coast of West Java.

[47] His solution to this perceived disconnect was to found the Persatuan Perjuangan ("Struggle Front, or United Action"), a coalition of about 140 smaller groups, notably not including the PKI.

[49] The coalition adopted a "Minimum Program", which declared that only complete independence was acceptable, that government must obey the wishes of the people, and that foreign-owned plantations and industry should be nationalized.

In February 1946, the organization forced the temporary resignation of Prime Minister Sutan Sjahrir, a proponent of negotiation with the Dutch, and Sukarno consulted with Tan Malaka to seek his support.

When the Dutch captured the national government in December 1948, he fled from Yogyakarta, and headed to rural East Java, where he hoped he would be protected by anti-republican guerrilla forces.

On 20 February, the Dutch Korps Speciale Troepen (KST) happened to start an offensive named "Operation Tiger" from the East Javanese town of Nganjuk.

Malaka was fatally shot at the foothills of Mount Wilis, Selopanggung, Kediri Regency after an arrest and detention in Patje village.

On an international scale, Tan Malaka also saw Islam as holding the potential for unifying the working classes in vast parts of North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia against imperialism and capitalism.

This position put him in opposition to many European Communists and the leadership of Comintern, who saw religious belief as a hindrance to a proletarian revolution and a tool of the ruling class.

[56] Syaifudin writes that Malaka had four different methods of teaching: dialog, jembatan keledai (mnemonics), critical discussion, and sociodrama.

[59] Jembatan keledai was inspired by al-Ghazali; in addition to memorizing knowledge, the students were instructed to understand and apply it to their daily lives.

Volume three has an especially loose narrative structure, containing commentary on Marxist historiography, his positions on the ongoing fight with the Netherlands over Indonesia's independence, and reprints of sections of key documents related to the struggle.