This book explores how the first decade of the 21st century was nothing short of "les années folles". The impressive growth rate of emerging economies changed the crisis-ridden world in a very short time, and in the early 2000s the emerging world's weight in the global economy was 38%, now 50%. This statistic confirms the political reality of the century of the emerging world. The monograph shows that the long-term tendencies inaugurated during this decade represent a silent revolution, as significant as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and this will lead to a geopolitical reconfiguration hard to envision right now.