This introductory chapter reflects on the conceptual building blocks of the book: transnationalism, virile imperialism, the hybrid media–political system, celebrity politics, and participation in the political. It then describes the imperialist political figures – Wilhelm II, Bernhard von Bülow, Joseph Chamberlain, Cecil Rhodes, Leopold II, and Theodore Roosevelt – media events, and digital and analogue media and political sources that form the backbone of the book. The chapter introduces the argument that the hybrid media ensemble around 1900 created a new type of ‘publicity politician’ operating in a system of ‘transnational media politics’. In this system of media politics, the publicity politician placed media management at the centre of politics and gained hitherto-unimaginable visibility on the world stage. This mass mediation broadened political participation – and thereby politics itself. Yet this democratic participation through media simultaneously jeopardized democratic participation through institutions, as representative parliaments had to vie for media attention with these media-savvy and mediagenic publicity politicians. The concepts of the publicity politician and transnational media politics transform our understanding of politics around 1900. These fin-de-siècle publicity politicians, in turn, are essential for comprehending the relationship between media and personalized politics in subsequent times – including today.