"If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." So E. M. Forster famously observed in his . Forster's epigrammatic manifesto, where the idea of the "friend" stands as a metaphor for dissident cross-cultural collaboration, holds the key, Leela Gandhi argues in , to the hitherto neglected history of western anti-imperialism. Focusing on individuals and groups who renounced the privileges of imperialism to elect affinity with victims of their own expansionist cultures, she uncovers the utopian-socialist critiques of empire that emerged in Europe, specifically in Britain, at the end of the nineteenth century. Gandhi reveals for the first time how those associated with marginalized lifestyles, subcultures, and traditions-including homosexuality, vegetarianism, animal rights, spiritualism, and aestheticism-united against imperialism and forged strong bonds with colonized subjects and cultures.