ABSTRACT
The year 1492 marked a dramatic moment in the history of global encounters. Five years later, another less dramatic but just as fateful event occurred: a Portuguese sea-captain, Vasco da Gama, seeking another route to the East rounded the Cape of Good Hope, marking the entrance of early modern Europeans into the maritime world of Asia. That sailor and his successors came with the same desire for domination-cultural and political-that accompanied the conquistadors of Spain in their voyages to the western hemisphere, but these ambitions were soon checked by the realities of Asian power. Whereas Europeans arrived in Latin America at a time when local regimes were in disarray and strangers to modern weaponry, the Asia of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries witnessed the dawn of new empires-the Mughal in India and the Ming in China-which dwarfed European states not only in cultural achievement but also in military power. Europeans managed to wrest control over a few useful port cities and some valuable islands, but only those on the remote margins of or beyond the limits of these great empires. For the most part, Europeans were compelled to participate as equals or less than equals in the trade networks long utilized by Indians, and as less than equals with Chinese traders from the Indian Ocean to the East Sea. Indians and Chinese often heaped indignities upon them for their rude and unclean manners.
