ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book deals with the ideas, which, in their complexity and dynamism, were being moulded in the game between the cultural context of representations and the universality of concepts. Empires are political organizations that are expansive, militarized, and multinational, and that place limits on the sovereignty of the polities in their periphery. The colonial press also served as a space for other cultural and political imaginaries, creating public and allowing the creation of a public sphere in which the colonial question was discussed. The colonial press, official or private, was primarily a support for the differing models of colonization in vogue between the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century.
