"Seymour's analysis has truly impressive breadth and depth. He ranges from Alexis de Tocqueville's support for colonialism and US treatment of the native population through to Gladstone's annexation of Egypt, the high point of nineteenth-century liberal imperialism in which liberals justified the exercise by 'construct[ing] the colonial subjects ... as passive victims needful of tutelage, capable of self-government only after a spell of European supremacy' ... Seymour performs a vital service by charting the impact of white supremacy on the left in this period as well as their more pragmatic considerations regarding the impact of decolonization on domestic industries and the exigencies of electoralism and coalition-building. In some cases, such as the French left and Algeria, there was also the threat of repression from the state if leftist parties took radical (i.e. negative) positions on colonial possessions. As a result, Seymour argues, the European left identified too closely with the priorities of their respective states, which meant that it ‘‘sleepwalked into the twin propellers of fascism and war’’. Here Seymour provides a new European perspective – and a warning – on the left’s pragmatic and ultimately shortsighted support for imperialist adventures..." (Maria Ryan, 'Intellectuals and the ‘‘War on Terror’’', Journal of American Studies, 44 (2010), 1, 203–209)