This book, focuses on the interaction between Asia and Europe in the wake of Portuguese, Dutch, French and British imperialism. It emphasises the vanguard role of the Euro-Asian communities in South Asia, the Burghers, Anglo-Indians and Eurasians, in struggles for democratic rights, long before colonial conditions were ripe for radical social and political change. With their utopian vision of a future democratic society, they agitated for widespread reforms such as worker and peasant rights, early radicalism, proto-nationalism, secularism and gender equality. Jayawardena brings the path-breaking efforts of these Euro-Asian pioneers from the footnotes of history into the main text, asks why their contributions have been 'hidden from history' and suggests that the obsession with 'purity' of race, both in South Asia and Europe, led to erasing the importance of this radical intelligentsia of mixed origin.