2000 (the collapse of the Soviet Union, the reunification of
Germany, the surge of globalization from the mid-1990s) and afterward (9/11,
or the global recession of 2008) when one could quite plausibly argue that a
new era had begun. A compelling case can be made for viewing the decades of
the global scramble for colonies after 1870 as a predictable culmination of the
long nineteenth century, which was ushered in by the industrial and political
revolutions of the late 1700s. But at the same time