is clearly the great task of the future for Russia to cultivate the Asian continent, and defend Europe from the inroads of the Great Yellow Race". In The Bloody White Baron (2009), the historian James Palmer explains the 19th-century socio-cultural background from which Yellow Peril ideology originated and flourished: As his cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm knew that Tsar Nicholas shared his anti-Asian racism and believed he could persuade the Tsar to abrogate the Franco-Russian Alliance (1894) and then to form a German–Russian alliance against Britain. In manipulative pursuit of Imperial German Weltpolitik "Wilhelm II's deliberate use of the 'yellow peril' slogan was more than a personal idiosyncrasy, and fitted into the general pattern of German foreign policy under his reign, i.e. to encourage Russia's Far Eastern adventures, and later to sow discord, between the United States and Japan. Not the substance, but only the form, of Wilhelm II's 'yellow peril' propaganda disturbed the official policy of the Wilhelmstrasse." Mongols in Europe In the 19th century, the racial and cultural stereotypes of Yellow Peril ideology colored German perceptions of Russia as a nation more Asiatic that European. The European folk memory of the 13th-century Mongol invasion of Europe made the word Mongol a cultural synonym for the "Asian culture of cruelty and insatiable appetite for conquest", which was especially personified by Genghis Khan, leader of the Orda, the Mongol Horde. Despite that justifying historical background, Yellow Peril racism was not universally accepted in the societies of Europe. French intellectual Anatole France said that Yellow Peril ideology was to be expected from a racist man such as the Kaiser. Inverting the racist premise of Asian invasion, France showed that European imperialism in Asia and Africa indicated that the European White Peril was the true threat to the world. In his essay "The Bogey of the Yellow Peril" (1904), the British journalist Demetrius Charles Boulger said the Yellow Peril was racist hysteria for popular consumption. Asian geopolitical dominance of the world is "the prospect, placed before the uninstructed reading public, is a revival of the Hun and Mongol terrors, and the names of Attila and Genghis are set out in the largest type to create feelings of apprehension. The reader is assured, in the most positive manner, that this is the doing of the enterprising nation of Japan". Throughout the successful imperial intrigues facilitated by Germany's Yellow Peril ideology, the Kaiser's true geopolitical target