ABSTRACT
The New Imperialism began with the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, which formalized and legitimized the rapid European conquest and occupation of Africa. A major distinguishing element of the New Imperialism was its violence. New Imperialism was made feasible for European powers by technological and organizational innovations, attractive by political change, and justifiable by cultural developments. New Imperialism, in addition to serving the European leaders' desires for prestige and investors' demands for profits, had a populist element. The period of New Imperialism in Asia saw Burma and French Indochina brought under European control. China was the most prominent exception to the general pattern of European imperialism in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The blend of universalism and particularism, of the national and the transnational, and of the concrete and the abstract in understandings of race and demands for redress against racism was the most distinct characteristic of both the New Imperialism and the responses to it at the Fin-De-Siècle.
