[en] The aim of this review is to summarize the recent progress in the field of elastic scattering and total cross section in this new energy domain. In Section 2 a survey of the experimental situation is outlined. The most significant data are presented, with emphasis on the interpretation, not the specific details or technicalities. This section is therefore intended to give a self-contained look at the field, especially for the nonspecialist. In Section 3, hadron scattering at high energy is described in an impact parameter picture, which provides a model-independent intuitive geometrical representation. The diffractive character of elastic scattering, seen as the shadow of inelastic absorption, is presented as a consequence of unitarity in the s-channel. Spins are neglected throughout this review, inasmuch as the asymptotic behavior in the very high-energy limit is the main concern here. In Section 4 some relevant theorems are recalled on the limiting behavior of hadron-scattering amplitudes at infinite energy. There is also a brief discussion on how asymptotically rising total cross sections imply scaling properties in the elastic differential cross sections. A quick survey of eikonal models is presented and their predictions are compared with ISR and SPS Collider data