Heinrich Renner's travelogue was published 14 years after Austria-Hungary had occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina based on the mandate of the Berlin Treaty of 1878. When Renner, in 1892, describes the effects of this annexation, he himself speaks of an "achievement unprecedented in colonial history" - a wording which classifies the annexation as one particular phenomenon of the political main-stream, as it shaped the entire epoch of European politics: the global competition of the European powers for colonial territories.