In this second volume of the monumental study, the author examines the period of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I, a strange and brutal era portrayed through the characteristic portraits of Disraeli, Cecil Rhodes, Gambetta, Proust, and T.E. Lawrence. Although this era is still marked by a certain moderation and controlled complacency, the author points out that its end brought about the decline of the nation-state and the disintegration of Europe's class society, the two main events that gave birth to totalitarianism, which in turn produced the concentration camps and death factories of recent history.