The period under investigation here, the period of High Imperialism 1870-1914, was, to a large extent, shaped by growing rivalries and increasing diplomatic tension between the European nations. However, these years were also interpreted as witnessing a large spurt in globalization, resulting in a world which was interconnected in many ways. Technical and economic globalization also reached the colonial European Empires in Asia and Africa. There international connections often developed as the European powers co-operated on matters such as, for example, laying telegraph lines and establishing steamer connections. However, European empires co-operated on many other issues, as has been shown in recent research, actors engaged in inter-imperial exchange and ideas on the administration of colonies, on how to fight small wars against the colonized etc. etc. circulated between imperial powers. The session will investigate these forms of circulation and pay special attention to an institution founded for the exchange of colonial knowledge between imperial European powers. Traditional diplomatic history has usually interpreted the differences between the discourses of colonial policy and antagonistic foreign policy by suggesting that before 1914 the colonial periphery was insignificant as it was unable to have any impact on the growing European rivalry. We will try to argue from a less Eurocentric perspective. Global interconnectedness, exchange of ideas and imperial co-operation could be found at the same time as rivalry between the European imperial nations.