Asia

(′āzh·ə)

(geography) The largest continent, comprising the major portion of the broad east-west extent of the Northern Hemisphere land masses.

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The world's largest continent. It occupies the eastern part of the Eurasian landmass and its adjacent islands and is separated from Europe by the Ural Mountains.

 

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The largest of the world's continents. With its peninsular extension, commonly called the continent of Europe, it is the major portion of the broad east-west extent of the Northern Hemisphere land masses. In many ways Asia is more a cultural concept than a physical entity. There is no logical physical separation between Asia and Europe, and even Africa is separated from Asia merely by the width of the Suez Canal. For convenience, however, the Eurasian land mass is considered to be divided by the Ural Mountains into Europe in the west and Asia in the east. Thus restricted, Asia has an area of about 17,700,000 mi² (45,800,000 km²), about one-third of the land area of the Earth. In the north, Siberia reaches past the 80th latitude. Southward, India and Sri Lanka (Ceylon) reach nearer than 10°N of the Equator, while the Indonesian islands extend more than 10°S of the Equator. The continental heart of Asia is more than 2000 mi (3200 km) from the nearest ocean. See also Continent; Europe.

Topography

In the topographic framework of Asia, the great mountain systems are the most impressive features. From the central knot of the mighty Pamirs and Kopet Dagh in the heart of the continent originate chains radiating in several directions. In the Peter the First Range there are such heights as Qullai Ismoili Somoni, 24,584 ft (7493 m), and Lenin Peak, 23,377 ft (7125 m), above sea level. Running westward through Afghanistan is the Hindu Kush, reaching elevations over 20,000 ft (6100 m). The mountain trendline continues, after a jog northwestward, in the Elburz of northern Iran and thence in the Armenian highlands and the Caucasus, each with elevations reaching 18,000 ft (5500 m), decreasing thereafter to the Pontus and Taurus ranges of northern and southern Turkey. In western and southern Iran are the massive Zagros and Makran ranges.

Southeastward from the Pamir knot run the three most imposing mountain chains on Earth: the Karakorum, which continues the line of the Hindu Kush eastward in an arc convex to the north; the Himalaya in an arc convex to the south; and the shorter Trans-Himalaya, or Nyen-chen Tangla, north of the Himalaya, with higher average elevations but peaks of lesser height. In all of these, the average elevations exceed 4 mi (6400 m), with several scores of peaks reaching a height in excess of 25,000 ft (7600 m) above sea level. Everest, 29,141 ft (8882 m), and Kinchinjunga, 28,146 ft (8579 m), lie in the Himalaya, while the peak designated as K2, 28,250 ft (8611 m), rises in the Karakorum.

In eastern Tibet the Himalaya and Nyen-chen Tangla bend sharply toward the south, and the former is cut through by the gorge of the Brahmaputra River. From the bend zone, great ridges divided by deep gorges run south to form the Burma-China frontiers and the mountain backbones of the Malay peninsula and Vietnam. The Nan-ling system of south China diverges eastward to divide the Yang-tzu (Yangtze) from the Hsi (Si) drainage.

From the western Himalaya, the 11,000-ft (3400-m) Sulaiman Range runs south and, together with the Kirthar Range, divides West Pakistan from Afghanistan.

Beginning at heights over 20,000 ft (6100 m) and branching off from the Karakorum south of Kashgar, the Kuen-lun Mountains run eastward across western China. Genetically they form the longest mountain system of China. With their eastward extensions in the 12,000 ft (3700 m) Ch'in-ling and the lesser Ta-pieh mountains and Huai-yang hills, they reach almost to the Pacific. Together with the northeastward arc of the Altyn Tagh and the Nan Shan branching from it, the Kuen-lun forms the northern wall of the Tibetan plateau. Near the eastern end of the Kuen-lun proper lie the Amne Machin Mountains, with peaks up to 25,000 ft (7600 m) in elevation.

Northeastward of the Pamir knot runs the east-west oriented Tien Shan, over 1000 mi (1600 km) long and maintaining heights of 18,000–20,000 ft (5500–6100 m) over much of its length. Roughly parallel and trending east and west is a series of great ranges to its north, with mutual connections in the west. These include the Altai-Sayan, the Tannu Ola, and the Kentei, which form natural boundaries for Outer Mongolia. They continue the systems of young mountains crossing central Asia; farther northeast, they extend further in the Stanovoi Mountains of Eastern Siberia.

The Asian plateaus are in various stages of erosion and thus present a great variety of landscapes. The Tibetan plateau is a prime example. The western half, because of little rainfall, exhibits a rolling topography with relatively slight local relief except where mountain chains cross it; it is a land of internal drainage basins. Average elevations are over 16,000 ft (4900 m). The eastern half is humid or subhumid and is cut by numerous rivers, producing deep canyons and great ridges. In contrast to this is the Mongolian plateau. This plateau consists mostly of vast, rather level plains 3000–5000 ft (900–1500 m) high, surmounted in places by mountains, and containing broad, shallow basins divided by land swells of low elevation.

Other major topographic units of Asia are blocs of hill lands. Most of southern China and much of southeastern Asia comprise hills which may be roughly defined as slope lands with local relief under 1000–1500 ft (300–450 m) although in absolute elevation they may rise many thousands of feet above sea level. Hilly lands are found to predominate in the northern part of the Indian peninsula and along both flanks of the Indian plateau, where they are called ghats. In southern India are the Nilgiri and Cardomom hills, rising to mountainous elevations of 8000 ft (2400 m). Many parts of different plateaus have hilly regions where erosion has produced uneven local relief, as in the Shan or North Vietnam plateau. Hills are prominent features of southwestern Asia, including eastern Mediterranean regions, such as Israel, Syria, and Lebanon.

The most significant topographic units of Asia are the great alluvial plains and river deltas. The gross drainage pattern of Asia is radial; the rivers flow from the highlands in the heart of the continent and run outward in all directions. Only in the south, east, and north sectors of the continent do the rivers reach the sea. Flowing into the peripheral seas of the Pacific are such mighty rivers as the Mekong, the Hsi, the Yang-tzu, the Huai, the Yellow, and the Amur, each building large, heavily populated plains and, with the exception of the Amur, densely settled deltas. The Yellow Plain (North China Plain), with some 125,000 mi² (324,000 km²) of area, and the Yangtzu Plain, with about 75,000 mi² (194,000 km²), are among the most extensive alluvial plains of the Earth. In the shallow South China, East China, and Yellow seas, the deltas of the first five rivers mentioned above are pushing steadily seaward.

Important sectors of Asia, containing some 200,000,000 people, are completely insular. The most important are the Japanese, Philippine, and Indonesian islands and Taiwan. Almost all of Asia's islands lie in great volcanic arcs bounding large seas off the continent's Pacific coast. At least 160 active volcanoes are found here and in Kamchatka. Few islands lie along the Asiatic coasts of the Indian Ocean, although the Sunda chain of Indonesia has perhaps more of a claim to Indian Ocean frontage than to Pacific frontage. Sri Lanka is the only significant island in the northern part of the Indian Ocean west of Sumatra. In the Persian Gulf off the north coast of Arabia lies the small island Bahrein.

Few islands lie off the alluviated coastlands of northern Siberia. Some moderately large ones are included in the barren and rocky Severnaya Zemlya group, the New Siberian Islands, and Wrangel Island. The Commander Islands and Karaginski Island lie in the Bering Sea only a short distance from the Aleutians.

Climates

Five major climatic types may be distinguished in the Asian region: (1) the monsoonal system of eastern Asia, (2) the monsoonal system of southern Asia, (3) the equatorial regions of southeastern Asia and their extension into the Southern Hemisphere as they are influenced by the Australian monsoon, (4) the winter rainfall areas of southwestern Asia, and (5) the cyclonic and convectional storm systems of central and northern Asia.

Fundamental to understanding the climates of Asia are the vastness of the unbroken landmass and the long latitudinal stretch from the polar realm to south of the Equator. These are responsible for the great temperature and humidity extremes that occur. The greatest ranges of temperatures in the world have been recorded in interior Asia. Continentality, therefore, is the outstanding feature of climates of interior Asia. In coastal and insular areas of east Asia, however, winds moving over the warm, northward-flowing Japan Current and the western Pacific waters moderate the coastland and island climates. See also Monsoon meteorology.

The driest portions of Asia include the vast areas of southern Mongolia, Hsin-chiang, former Soviet Central Asia, and southwestern Asia. Except for small, favored mountain areas, most of this region from the Gobi to the Red Sea gets less than 10 in. (25 cm) of precipitation per year. With the exception of southern Arabia, which is subtropical desert, these are mid-latitude desert and dry steppe regions. Favored with higher rainfall are the Yemen Mountains and the coastal mountains of Turkey, together with Lebanon, Syria, and northern Israel. The highlands of Armenia and the Elburz of Iran are favored also with more abundant rainfall, which may range from 25 to 50 in. (64 to 127 cm) or more per year.

The northeastern Siberian mountains and the Arctic coastal lands also receive meager rainfall, less than 8 in. (20 cm), but are not dry because evaporation is low and the water table is high. Most of Siberia has permafrost below a few feet of surface soil, so that rainwater does not filter far down into the earth. Between the arid belt of central Asia and the northeast Siberian low-precipitation zone, the annual rainfall ranges between 10 and 18 in. (25 and 45 cm).

In eastern Asia the precipitation increases in a southeasterly direction from interior Asia to the coast. The annual maximum seldom exceeds 80 in. (203 cm) in the wetter southeast coastal regions, whereas this drops to less than 30 in. (76 cm) in the North China Plain and less than 15 in. (38 cm) at the Great Wall. In some mountainous parts of Japan and Taiwan, the yearly average may be more than 100 in. (254 cm).

In the Indian subcontinent rainfall is heaviest along the western plateau fringe and in East Bengal, where it may average over 100 in. (254 cm) per year. The interior of the peninsula is relatively dry. Northwestern India and Pakistan share the drought of southwestern Asia. With the exception of the extreme north, Ceylon generally has abundant rainfall.

Southeastern Asia has the heaviest rainfall of the entire Asiatic region. The mainland mountains facing the southwest summer monsoon crossing the Bay of Bengal, and parts of the Vietnamese and Laotian cordilleras facing the humidified northeast winter monsoons of eastern Asia, regularly get average rainfalls of 120–150 in. (305–381 cm) or even more. Equally heavy rainfalls occur in the southwestern half of Sumatra, southwestern Java, the northwestern half of Borneo, and the Pacific fringe of the Philippine Islands. With a few small exceptions, southeastern Asia has no areas that are subject to severe drought.

Vegetation

Asia's vegetation belts and zones follow, in general, the climatic patterns from desert lands through tropical to Arctic margins.

A wide belt of tundra made irregular by topography occupies the entire Arctic lowland of Siberia with widths varying from 250 to 500 mi (400 to 800 km) north and south. It is widest in the extreme northeast and it extends southward and inland with higher elevations. The frozen subsoil permits the growth of little more than mosses, lichens, dwarfed trees, and scrub. See also Permafrost; Tundra.

The largest unbroken expanse of forest in the world is the Siberian taiga, a dominantly coniferous forest of larches, spruce, fir, and pines, with such deciduous trees as birch and aspen occurring intermixed with the conifers or taking over as a secondary growth in burnt-over areas. The width of this belt in Siberia is more than 1000 mi (1600 km) and it stretches about 4000 mi (6400 km) from the Sea of Okhotsk to the Urals.

Various admixtures of coniferous and deciduous trees compose the vegetation of mid-latitude mixed forests. In the west Siberian plain there is a narrow zone of mixed taiga and deciduous forests including oaks, maples, ash, and lindens. This zone, with a width of 50–100 mi (80–160 km), lies somewhat south of the parallel of 60°N and fades into the steppelands that form the great spring-wheat region of Siberia. Mixed midlatitude deciduous and coniferous forest areas of a similar type occupy most of Korea, the northern half of Honshu in Japan, and the hill lands surrounding the Yellow Plain, as well as the Ch'in-ling Mountains. In southern Asia these forests are found chiefly in a narrow belt of mountain land in the outer ranges of the Himalaya. The remaining areas of these mixed forests run from the Elburz Mountains through the Armenian highlands and the Black Sea fringe of Turkey to the Aegean coast, and in southwestern Asia in the Elburz of northern Iran.

From the mixed and deciduous forests of the west Siberian plain southward, an increasingly dry steppeland is encountered. It extends for 400–500 mi (640–800 km) in a belt about 1000 mi (1600 km) long between the Urals and the Altai-Sayan and associated uplands. The northern half of this belt with its higher annual precipitation of 12–16 in. (30–40 cm) is the agricultural heart of the plain. The southern part gradually changes to desert steppe and then to desert along about the 50th parallel. Eastward of Lake Baikal a broadened steppe zone occupies the Trans-Baikal region extending southward to the Gobi Desert of southern Mongolia and eastward to the Great Hsing-an Mountains, where the zone, about 200 mi (320 km) wide, runs southward in Inner Mongolia. The steppe zone in Inner Mongolia widens with the increasing moisture south of the Great Wall to include most of China's loess plateau. Grasses also form the natural vegetation of the Manchurian plain, with tall grass in the eastern portion thinning out to short-grass steppe in the Hsing-an Mountain flanks. The Gobi Desert is flanked by steppelands to its north, east, and south, as well as by mountain steppe zones in the eastern Altai and eastern T'ien Shan.

Mixed evergreen forests appear to be limited mostly to interior southern China and to Japan from the Kwanto Plain southward, South of the Yang-tzu Valley, this forest type extends from the coast at Shanghai to the gorge lands of eastern Tibet. In Asia the characteristic trees of the mixed forest include broad-leafed evergreen trees such as banyans and camphor, and coniferous trees such as pines, cedars, and cypresses, as well as varieties of bamboo.

Tropical and subtropical rainforest is restricted to warm or hot regions of southern and southeastern Asia which get ample rainfall the year round or get so much rain during a large part of the year that a high groundwater table is maintained during the short dry season. The subtropical sectors are found along the southeastern China coast, in Taiwan, and in northern Burma; they merge with the tropical rainforest farther south, where rainfall and temperature increase. See also Rainforest.

Monsoon tropical deciduous forests comprise the tropical parts of Asia which have a moderately high rainfall but a long dry season (usually in the low-sun period or winter). These forests consist mostly of mixed species, but sometimes a single species becomes dominant as a result of selection from frequent burnings.

A large region of savanna grassland surrounds the Thar Desert of northwestern India and occupies most of the Indus Valley, the Punjab, and the Kathiawar peninsula. Much of the drier interior peninsular Deccan of India also has this as a natural vegetation. Other Asian regions with similar cover are found in Yemen and the region in southeastern Arabia from Oman as far westward as the Qatar peninsula; and similar vegetation extends over the Korat plateau of Thailand, lower Thailand west of Bangkok, southern Cambodia, and small areas in interior Borneo and the Philippines. See also Savanna.

Immense areas of central and southwestern Asia have little or no vegetative cover, and bare rock alternates with sand veneering. In places shifting sand dunes are formed. Although the deserts are not necessarily lifeless, the vegetation is so widely spaced that much bare ground is exposed. The tropical desert areas generally receive their meager rainfall in torrential downpours on rare occasions. After such rains numerous herbs may spring to life and flower, while the bunch grass here and there may become green for a short season.

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In the NT the name refers to the Roman province occupying the western part of what came to be known later as Asia Minor, together with the adjacent islands; some modifications took place in the course of time. When King Attalus III of Pergamum died in 133 B.C., he bequeathed his kingdom to Rome, and since the Romans knew the Attalid kings as "kings of Asia", the new province was called Asia. It was organized in 129 B.C. and occupied the area between the Mediterranean to the west, Bithynia to the north, Cilicia and Galatia to the east. It incorporated Mysia, Caria, Lydia, part of Phrygia as well as coastal cities and islands in the Aegean Sea, including Rhodes and Patmos. Augustus made it a senatorial province ruled by a proconsul with Ephesus as its capital. Asia was regarded as one of the richest provinces of the Roman Empire and was famous for its wool weaving and dyeing factories. In the 1st century A.D. many Jews resided in the province and their synagogues were found in many cities.

Asia is listed along with the provinces of Cappadocia, Pontus, Phrygia and Pamphylia as the regions from which Jews came to Jerusalem for the Pentecost (Acts 2:9-10). There were also Jews from Asia in Jerusalem's Synagogue of the Freedmen, who disputed with Stephen (Acts 6:9). The province was the scene of much of Paul's missionary activity. On his second missionary journey, he and Timothy "were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia" (Acts 16:6). However, it seems that they did pass through the province and when they reached Troas, Paul had a vision (Acts 16:7-9). After completing his work in Macedonia and Achaia, Paul spent a short time at Ephesus (Acts 18:19-21). During his third journey he spent over two years in and around Ephesus, "so that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks" (Acts 19:1, 10, 22). In his epistles, Paul mentions his hardships and his success in that province (Rom 16:5; I Cor 15:32; 16:8-9; II Cor 1:8). On his last journey to Jerusalem, Paul decided not to dally in Asia as he wanted to be back in time for the Pentecost (Acts 20:16).

In the Book of Revelation John addresses his messages to the seven churches in Asia: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea (Rev 1:4, 11).

Concordance
Acts 2:9; 6:9; 16:6; 19:10,22, 26-27, 31:20:4, 16, 18; 21:27; 24:18; 27:2. I Cor 16:19. II Cor 1:8. II Tim 1:15. I Pet 1:1. Rev 1:4, 11

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Asia 1. The continent. The early Greek geographers until c.500 BC divided the land mass of the world into two roughly equal parts, Europe in the north and north-west, and Asia including Africa (Libya) to the south and south-east. By the time of Herodotus in the fifth century BC they had separated Africa from Asia and set the boundaries of the latter at the Indian Ocean in the south and the river Tanais (Don) in the north. Herodotus saw Asia Minor as a peninsula jutting into the Mediterranean Sea. Asia extended east as far as India, beyond which the earth was desert and unknown, with the river Oxus apparently marking its northern boundary. Not until the expedition of Alexander the Great towards the end of the fourth century BC did the Greeks have any detailed knowledge of the eastern regions of the continent. The conquest by the Romans of Asia Minor and Syria and their wars with Mithridates and the Parthians in the first century BC greatly increased their knowledge not only of western Asia but more especially of the Caucasian north, a region of which the Greeks were almost totally ignorant. The Romans' taste for luxuries such as silk and spices led to their exploration of the ancient trade routes and even to contact with Chinese merchants.

2. The Roman province. When Attalus III of Pergamum died in 133 BC he bequeathed his kingdom to the Romans. It included all of Greek Asia Minor; its eastern boundary was a line from Bithynia in the north to Lycia in the south and it later included Phrygia. It was rich in natural resources and had flourishing agriculture, industry, and trade. As a consequence of the exactions of Roman governors and profiteers, it was ready to join Mithridates VI, king of Pontus, who, seeking to extend his territory, occupied most of Asia Minor in 88 BC. He was forced by the Roman general Sulla to make peace in 84 and to give up all his conquered territory. Sulla reorganized the province and its system of taxation, but it continued to suffer from periodic exactions. During the partition of the provinces between Augustus and the senate after 27 BC, Asia became a senatorial province to be governed by a proconsul. It was essentially made up of many city states, some of which remained nominally free under Roman rule. Their rivalries prevented any real sense of provincial unity but individual city-states were often enriched by the pride of their citizens. During the first two centuries of the empire Asia enjoyed great prosperity. The coastal cities retained a sophisticated Greek society but those of the interior became Hellenized only gradually, and always retained something of their non-Greek background. In the fourth century when Constantinople became the capital of the eastern Roman empire, Asian traffic was inclined to stop there, no longer passing on to Greece and Italy as it had for centuries. Thus Asia was deprived of the western influences which over the centuries had helped to mould its complex character.

Three centuries separate the missions of Vasco da Gama to India in 1498 and George Macartney to China in 1793. Da Gama opened a new sea route to the Orient; Lord Macartney, ambassador of Great Britain, sought to renegotiate the terms of trade with the Qing (Manchu) empire. During the course of the intervening centuries, successive waves of Europeans sailed into Asia—after the Portuguese came the Dutch, English, Spanish, and French. Their experiences taught them that there was more than one Asia. In south and east Asia, there were the powerful and expansive continental empires of the Mughals and the Manchus. In northeast Asia, there were the secluded kingdoms of Korea and Japan. But initially, for the Europeans, there was above all the Asia of the Indian Ocean trading network.

Europe Enters the Asian Trade Network

The Indian Ocean network consisted of three inter-locking circuits—the Arabian Seas, the Bay of Bengal, and Indonesia–east Asia. It was in this Asia that European merchantmen established small but permanent bases stretching around the entire Indian Ocean littoral, from the port of Mombasa in the west to Nagasaki in the east. From those bases, Europeans pressed for monopoly control over the spices, silks, porcelain, and other products that crossed the Indian Ocean's trading network. Until 1850, European ambitions in Asia raced ahead of their limited resource bases. Before the industrial revolution and the European drive for expansion, European states lacked both the financial means and the military power to effect any grand design in Asia.

As the first to arrive in Asian waters via the sea route around Africa, the Portuguese established a trading empire in the Arabian Seas circuit and maintained partial control over it for most of the sixteenth century. A century later the Dutch constructed the first colonial empire in Asia and revolutionized almost every dimension of the Indian Ocean trading system—from how it was organized to how business was transacted. The English East India Company arrived on the scene contemporaneously with the Dutch but did not become a major force in Asian trade until after the latter went into decline, between 1680 and 1720. Over the course of the remainder of the eighteenth century, the English developed a passion for empire, first in India and then in China. After 1720 they pushed first the Dutch and subsequently the late-arriving French East India Company aside and established themselves as the dominant European trader in Asian waters. Concurrently, they commenced building an empire on the subcontinent of Asia, and in 1793, with the Macartney mission to China, inaugurated a clash between the expanding empires of England and Qing China in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Two facets of the early modern history of European empire building in the Indian Ocean deserve to be emphasized. First is the intra-Asian or "country trade," to call it by its eighteenth-century name. From the Asian perspective, the emergence of three great Muslim empires (Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal) by the sixteenth century and the unprecedented growth of the Kiangnan region in the lower Yangtze valley of the Ming-Qing empire greatly stimulated the expansion of the intra-Asian regional trade, and with it, a nascent consumer culture in Asia. From the European perspective, it was Europe's good fortune to arrive at the moment the Asian system was undergoing a period of unprecedented growth. Once the Europeans learned how the system operated and the role Asian merchants played in it, they sought out partnerships with those merchants. For their part, the European traders contributed to the further expansion of the system by linking the "country trade" to the long-distance Atlantic trade routes that carried Asian products to Europe's own emergent consumer culture. Thus, over time, these partnerships, such as those between Portuguese and Gujarati merchants or between Dutch and Chinese traders, became one of the central features of the system. The English, too, were attuned to the importance of such partnerships and made a series of them during their eighteenth-century rise to dominance. It is worth repeating that Asian-European partnerships were a key feature of the Indian Ocean trading system and played an important role in its continued growth. From a world-historical perspective, some historians identify this as the "age of partnership" and interpret it as part of the deeper integration and globalization of trade linked to an emergent consumer culture in both East and West.

Alongside the intra-Asian trade, European initiatives came to be central to early modern European empire building in Asia. The collective effect of these initiatives transformed the Asian system of trade. These initiatives came in two chronological waves, the first in the sixteenth century and the second in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The first wave was primarily Portuguese in origin and included the opening of the Atlantic sea route around Africa to the Orient and the linkage of the intra-Asian regional trade routes to the Atlantic route; the introduction of the large ships called armed merchantmen; and the emergence of cultural intermediaries, the first of whom were Jesuit missionaries. In later centuries, sea voyagers and official embassies from various European countries greatly expanded the fund of European knowledge about Asia.

The Dutch and English sponsored the second wave of initiatives. These initiatives were truly revolutionary in terms of their impact on the Indian Ocean trading networks. Over a two-century period (1600–1800) they fundamentally transformed the Asian trading system. The two most important of these second-wave initiatives were the transplantation of a novel form of business organization (the joint stock company) into Asia and the fusion of private merchant interests and state policy. Ranking close behind these two initiatives in significance were the systematization of the intra-Asian carrying trade and its transference to European control after 1700; the shift of the center of trade from the west coast of India (the Arabian Seas circuit) to the Bay of Bengal and Indonesian circuits; and the altered composition of the trade, from spices and porcelains to "drug foods" (such as sugar, coffee, tea, and opium) and cotton textiles.

By the mid-eighteenth century, the combined effects of these initiatives were transforming not just Euro-Asian relations but also the world economy. Regarding the former, partnerships more and more resembled patron-client relationships, and Asians west of Guangzhou (Canton) were the clients. Regarding the European initiatives, by about 1750 they had begun to shift the center of gravity of the world economy away from the shores of the Indian Ocean to those of Atlantic Europe. In other words, the important economic decisions were more often made in Amsterdam and London rather than in Surat or Melaka or Guangzhou. Nonetheless, this shift was incremental. Although still incomplete by the time Lord Macartney undertook his mission to China in 1793, it eventually culminated in an armed confrontation between the expanding British and Qing empires over trade and sovereignty.

The Portuguese, the Dutch, and the Spice Trade

In 1498, all of this, of course, lay in the future. Neither Vasco da Gama nor his immediate successors, especially Afonso de Albuquerque (1453–1515), the chief architect of the Portuguese empire in Asia, entertained the slightest notion of creating partnerships with Asian merchants. Their intent was to establish trade monopolies and redirect the spice trade away from the Levantine caravan routes, with their links to the Arabian Seas circuit. Between 1500 and 1515, from their base at Goa, the Portuguese used their superior naval forces to effect a significant measure of control over most of this circuit, which included the Malabar Coast of western India, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the related caravan routes of Persia and the Tigris-Euphrates valley. During that brief period, they identified and then captured control of many of the major choke points of the Indian Ocean, such as strategically located entrepôts of Hormuz at the entrance of the Persian Gulf and Melaka on the Straits of Melaka. The latter controlled the trade of the Far Eastern circuit of the Indian Ocean. However, the Portuguese failed to capture Aden, located at the entrance of the Red Sea. That failure meant that the Levantine trade routes via the Red Sea remained open, and Portugal could not and did not establish a complete monopoly over the spice trade.

The Estado da India nonetheless remitted handsome profits from the pepper trade back to Lisbon for most of the sixteenth century. Estado officials and private Portuguese traders realized that even greater profits could be made through partnerships with Asian merchants. Together they continued to expand the trade of the Indian Ocean, linked some of its commerce to the new sea route around Africa, and grew wealthy servicing the expanding intra-Asian trade with silver, tin, copper, spices, and horses. By the mid-sixteenth century, the Portuguese had also become involved in the lucrative trade of the Far Eastern circuit. In fact, between about 1550 and 1637, Portuguese merchantmen had linked together all three trading circuits of the Indian Ocean, moving a variety of goods between its major entrepôts.

In 1637, a seemingly minor event in Japan—the decision of the military government to expel the Portuguese for meddling in Japanese politics—set in motion a series of events that undermined the Portuguese in east Asian waters, opened the way for Dutch competitors to displace them, and all but eliminated Japanese participation in intra-Asian trade until the 1860s. In any case, the Portuguese crown had received little if any of the profits from the intra-Asian trade; they primarily flowed into the pockets of corrupt Estado officials and private Portuguese merchants and their Asian partners. Thus, within a half-century of the Portuguese seizure of Goa and Melaka, Asians had assimilated most Portuguese into their social world, or, in the case of the Japanese, had expelled them. By about 1600 Asia was looking very much as it had before the Portuguese arrival in 1498.

In Europe, in spite or more likely because of the Wars of Religion, the Dutch seized the opportunity to enter the Asian market. With their powerful market economy, the Dutch were well positioned to enter the arena of long-distance trading. They possessed an astonishingly rich resource base and a working knowledge of Asian waters. Jan Huyghen van Linschoten provided the latter. In 1594, he returned to Holland after serving the Portuguese for ten years, six of them in Goa. Using van Linschoten's maps, sailing directions, and detailed information about the spice trade, separate groups of Dutch merchants posted sixty-five ships to Asian waters between 1595 and 1602. As anticipated, the ships returned with cargoes of fine spices—mace, cloves, and nutmeg—that earned their sponsors handsome profits.

These unplanned ventures came at a cost, a marketplace glutted with spices. In order to remedy this situation, several groups of Dutch merchants agreed to pool their resources to create a unique commercial organization, the United East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC, founded in 1602). Its initial capitalization was an astounding 6.5 million guldens. What made the VOC unique was the separation of investors from the company's professional managers. In the early years of this experiment in business organization, the VOC usually paid between 25 and 30 percent dividends on shares in the company. The Dutch creation would soon be known as a "joint stock" company, a revolutionary business structure that had revolutionary consequences for Asian trade.

The Dutch Empire in Indonesia

Among the most successful of the first generation of VOC managers were Governors-General Jan Pieterszoon Coen (served 1617–1629) and his able successor Anthony van Diemen (served 1636–1645). Over the course of the seventeenth century, they and their successors fundamentally restructured the Indian Ocean trading network.

When Coen arrived in Asian waters, he discovered that the Spice Islands (the Moluccas) were not only a source of wealth but also stood at the crossroads of trade between India, China, and Japan. He decided that the center of trade had to be moved from the Arabian Seas circuit to the Indonesia–east Asia circuit. This meant abandoning the idea of a trading empire in favor of the establishment of an overseas capital, strategically located in Indonesia. From Indonesia he could deploy superior Dutch naval power, westward toward the Coromandel coast of India and the Bay of Bengal and eastward toward Japan and China. The navy would also be used to maintain control of the Spice Islands themselves.

As a first step, in 1619, Governor-General Coen seized the Javanese port of Jakarta and renamed it Batavia, the Roman name of Holland; it became the "major naval base, shipbuilding center, and entrepôt for the Dutch East India Company" (Ringrose, p. 158). Coen found local allies in the large Chinese community of Batavia. His two chief Chinese collaborators were Su Minggang, a godfather figure in the Chinese community, and his chief aide Jan Con, whose primary function was to recruit laborers from the southeastern coastal province of Fujian. Su and Jan also advised Coen and van Diemen on market conditions in the two eastern circuits of the Indian Ocean and, on their own initiative, developed the hinterland of Batavia. The Chinese established sugar plantations and harvested the timber resources of Java. In both cases, they used the labor of Fujianese coolies. Coen's collaboration with the Chinese points to an important reality about Batavia, that it was from the outset both a Dutch and a Chinese town. With the passage of time, the Chinese community became more and more robust at the expense of the Dutch. Finally, in the mid-eighteenth century, the Dutch turned on the Chinese residents (their former collaborators), massacring ten thousand of them and looting their homes and businesses.

Shocking as this massacre may seem, the Dutch had long before acquired a reputation for cruelty in their empire building. In fact, the systematic use of naval power was a basic tactic in Coen's strategy to create a "ring of force" around the Moluccas and the other Spice Islands (Fernandez-Armesto, p. 326). In pursuit of that goal, the Dutch used maximum force on a number of occasions. For example, in 1621 Dutch forces either killed or deported as slaves the entire population of the island of Banda. When the Ceramese rebelled against Dutch policy and killed 160 Dutch in 1651, the Dutch in retaliation forcibly resettled twelve thousand Ceramese from Ceram Island to Amboina and Manipa.

The Dutch completed their ring of force around the Spice Islands in 1669, when they reduced Makassar (Ujung Pandang), the most powerful of the Indonesian states, to a colony. The defeat of Makassar gave the Dutch a world monopoly over the production of spices. Only Bantam maintained a semblance of independence from the Dutch, but by 1682 it, too, had become a VOC colony. The isolated and fragmented island polities of Indonesia were simply no match for the powerful Dutch navy and the VOC's single-minded drive to control spice production.

Was the spice monopoly worth the price? Most historians would agree that an Asian market for spices remained very active throughout this period, while European spice consumption was declining. Only the growing mid-eighteenth-century popularity of cinnamon from Ceylon increased the total VOC revenue from spices. Still, the question persists, and it may well be that the VOC's spice monopoly was not profitable in the long run. First, it limited the ability of the VOC to maneuver in a changing world market. Although spices were a safe source of profit, they had little potential for growth, at least in Europe. Meanwhile, a consumer culture had emerged in Europe and Asia that was demanding such goods as textiles, tea, and coffee. The VOC seemed incapable of responding to these new demands, because its labyrinthine bureaucratic structure was tied to the flow of spices. The VOC's chief rival, the English East India Company (EEIC), founded in 1600, had already decided that these new commodities had a much larger potential market than spices. Furthermore, the cost of maintaining a naval force large enough to enforce the VOC's monopoly was enormous. In other words, the cost of empire may ultimately have exceeded its profits. The Dutch were able to reduce the gap between cost and profit only by introducing the cultivation of coffee in the eighteenth century.

Creating a ring of force around the fine spices in Indonesia was but one aspect of the Dutch presence in Asia. Indeed, the largest part of seventeenth-century VOC activity was in the "country trade" of the Indian Ocean. In the 1630s and 1640s the company derived its largest profits from its monopoly over the sale of spices within Asia and its transportation of Japanese silver to China. More importantly, in carving out a major role for the VOC in the "country trade," the Dutch fundamentally altered the intraregional trading system. The revolutionary organizational structure of the VOC allowed the Dutch to systematize the intra-Asian carrying trade in a way never before possible, and, in the process, displace Asian merchants. By 1700, VOC managers through the organizational efficiencies of their company were transforming once-independent Asian merchants into their clients. The decline of the Asian merchants' status continued into the eighteenth century as the Dutch (and later the English) came to control more and more of the country trade through their joint stock companies.

The Rise of the English in Asia

The decline of the VOC relative to its European competitors, primarily the EEIC, can be placed somewhere between 1680 and 1720. It has been attributed to three factors: excessive dividends; the high cost of maintaining the spice monopoly; and the inflexibility of VOC, which rendered it unable to respond to the demands of new consumer cultures of Europe and Asia. Although the VOC remained a viable economic force in Asia throughout the eighteenth century, the EEIC was also slowly displacing it as the dominant European trader in Asia.

In 1600, no one could have predicted that England would become Europe's most successful empire builder in Asia. The earlier achievements of the Portuguese and Dutch and those of the late-arriving French pale in comparison with English successes of the eighteenth century. In a matter of a half-century, from about 1750 to about 1800, the English had become masters of most of the Indian subcontinent, and in 1793 they were prepared to push farther east and challenge the mighty Qing empire for sovereignty and power in east Asia.

What historical pushes and pulls transformed the English East India Company from its seventeenth-century status as beggar at the court of the great Mughal emperors to that of masters of a British India in the eighteenth century? In 1600, the English did indeed beg the Mughals of India for a farman, an imperial directive that would grant England regular trading privileges throughout the Mughal empire and, with it, access to the markets of south Asia. In 1608 Captain William Hawkins (c. 1560–1613), the first of the English East India Company's envoys, received permission for the company to trade at Surat, but the Mughal emperor offered no farman encompassing the whole empire. Other envoys followed, Sir Thomas Roe in 1618 and William Hedges in 1682. The latter's mission is particularly revealing of the EEIC's status in late-seventeenth-century Mughal India.

EEIC officials in Bengal and the company's governor in London, Sir Josiah Child, interfered with Hughes's mission, causing Emperor Aurangzeb (‘Ālamgir; ruled 1658–1707) to break off the negotiations. Challenged, or, perhaps embarrassed, Child decided on war with the Mughals. "Child's War," 1686–1690, ended in disaster for the English. In 1689 the Mughal fleet commanded by the African Sidi Yakub took Bombay, which had been an English entrepôt since 1668. After a year of resistance, the English surrendered, and in 1690 the company sent envoys to Aurangzeb's camp to plead for a pardon. The company's envoys had to prostrate themselves before the emperor, pay an enormous indemnity, and promise better behavior in the future. The emperor withdrew his troops and the company subsequently reestablished itself in Bombay and set up a new base in Calcutta.

The 1690s were the start of a period of economic expansion for the EEIC in Asia. Only Bombay on the subcontinent's west coast did not share in the general expansion of the company's other major entrepôts, Madras and Calcutta, on the east coast. Bombay's trade suffered because the Marathan admiral Kanhoji Angria targeted its shipping, and until the 1730s, the advantage lay with Kanhoji. Meanwhile, Madras and Calcutta prospered as the volume of trade grew exponentially in such items as cotton textiles, silks, molasses, and saltpeter. Although the tea trade had its origins back in the 1660s, it was not until the turn of the century that it began to take hold as the preferred beverage among English of all social strata; the boom in tea profits had to wait until the eighteenth century. Meanwhile, American silver paid for the bulk of English imports, including tea. London critics denounced the outflow of bullion for Asian goods, but handsome dividends had a way of silencing mercantilist rhetoric.

Beginning in the 1690s and reaching into the 1750s, the EEIC started shedding its beggar status and laying claim to a loftier standing within the Asian trading world. Neither the EEIC nor its ally, the English government, had decided on a course of empire building in Asia. Rather, the convergence of a number of historical developments in the mid-eighteenth century not only made empire building possible but also invited it. First, the EEIC encouraged its servants and free traders to pursue trade aggressively within the intra-Asian trading system. This policy allowed men like the country trader Thomas Pitt, who later became governor of Madras, to earn vast fortunes. A second development was the company's merger with the many private syndicates operating in Asian waters. These syndicates, called "interlopers," had regularly disregarded the EEIC's legal monopoly over Asian trade. The merger resulted in the heavy recapitalization of the EEIC (at about 3.2 million pounds) and its renaming in 1708 as the United East India Company. Third, concurrent with the merger with the "interloper" syndicates was the systematization of the company's bureaucracy. Its streamlined organization gave it a competitive edge over the VOC and Indian-operated shipping. The effects of this combination—heavy English investment and an efficiently functioning bureaucracy—were almost immediately visible. English shipping interests pushed the Dutch aside and greatly reduced Indian participation in the intra-Asian trade of the Indian Ocean. Fourth, the early successes of the EEIC depended upon alliances with Indian merchants, like the house of Jagat Seth. By the mid-eighteenth century, however, the Indian partners had already begun the long slide into dependency on the company. Such dependencies would become a feature of English-Indian relations after 1750, as partnerships gave way to client status for Indian merchants. In this regard, the eighteenth-century English experience in Asia paralleled to a great extent that of the Dutch in Indonesia.

The English East India Company's continued fortunes in south Asia ultimately turned on its ability to obtain an empire-wide farman from the now declining Mughal overlords of India. After another English ambassador in 1701 had failed to obtain the elusive guarantee, a new mission to Delhi headed by John Surman threatened to withdraw the company's factors from Surat and its other establishments in Gujarat unless it was granted. Because the company's economic stake in this western region of India generated a significant amount of revenue for the Mughals, the emperor, Farrukhsiyar, relented. He granted a farman on 31 December 1716, little realizing the far-reaching consequences of his action. EEIC officials now resembled other imperial officeholders of the Mughal empire. More importantly, under the terms of the directive, the EEIC could take action against anyone infringing on its rights. It was this aspect of the farman that opened the way for future intervention in the political affairs of India, and intervention over the course of the eighteenth century eventually led to the incorporation of India into a British empire.

Was English intervention after 1716 a result of an alliance struck between the company and wealthy and powerful Indian merchants, such as the house of Jagat Seth? Was the company drawn into Indian politics in order to safeguard its own growing economic, political, and territorial investments? Was conquest the result of the transplantation of eighteenth-century Anglo-French rivalries into Asian waters, a rivalry that carried over into Indian politics? These are some of the questions historians are presently debating regarding the British conquest of India. The debate continues; the best that can be offered here is a brief account of the stages of the conquest, with an eye toward Macartney's 1793 mission to China.

Eighteenth-century English expansion into India falls into three periods. The first was a period in which the company agents and private traders found their way into "a lively market in commercial, fiscal and military opportunities" (Keay, p. 377). This was the "market opportunities" stage, 1716–1748. "Colonial imperialism" made its appearance in the 1740s. Beginning in that decade, the English and French engaged in a series of wars for empire. In India, the most famous protagonists of these conflicts were Joseph-François Dupleix and Charles de Bussy-Castelnau on the French side and Robert Clive and Charles Watson on the English side. Victory ultimately came to the English in the 1760s because of three factors: the decisive leadership of men like Clive, Watson, and William Pitt, the architect of victory in the Seven Years' War (1756–1763); the superior ability of the English to pay for Indian allies and Indian troops (called sepoys); and finally an appetite for empire, which had begun to emerge during the course of the Seven Years' War in India. Certainly Robert Clive was its first proponent, and almost all of his late-eighteenth-century successors, especially Richard Wellesley, shared Pitt's and Clive's imperial ambitions.

The period between 1764 and the end of the century marked the true beginnings of British dominion in India. The French had been defeated. However, before the English could truly lay claim to the title of raj, they had to overcome stiff Indian resistance. In addition to the Four Mysore wars (1767–1804), the three Maratha wars (1780–1803), and the two Sikh wars (c. 1840–1856), there were a host of lesser battles fought and won. The English may not have had a plan of conquest for India, but this succession of wars strongly suggests that their appetite for empire grew with the eating of the Indian pudding. Seen from this perspective, the mission of Macartney to China was but a further extension of England's expanding Asian empire.

Before the Macartney mission, English East Indiamen had been trading on the South China coast since the second decade of the eighteenth century. What had attracted them was tea, a product for which there was an expanding consumer market in the Atlantic world. By the 1780s, Western demand had grown to a point where it was causing balance of payment problems for English merchantmen. As mercantilists they parted reluctantly with their silver, but that was precisely what the Chinese demanded for their tea. Secondly, English traders chafed under Qing empire–imposed restrictions requiring that all commerce must be conducted at the port of Canton (Guangzhou) and through designated Chinese merchants. It was in hopes of ending these trade restrictions and opening markets for English manufactured products as a way to solve the balance of payments problem that the British government dispatched Macartney to China in 1793.

Asia in the European Imagination

By the time Ambassador Macartney sailed for China, Eurocentrically imagined Asians had become familiar figures on the European scene. During the nearly three centuries since Vasco da Gama had made landfall on the Malabar coast, a large body of literature about Asia and Asians had accumulated. Contributors included Jesuit missionaries, land and sea voyagers, official embassies, fictional writers, and "Asianist" scholars of several varieties, none of whom had ever visited any part of Asia, but who still wrote "knowingly" about it. From the fifteenth-century beginnings of Europe's contacts with Asia, Asia became whatever suited the needs of the Western imagination. More importantly, the Western perspective on Asia shifted over time. The shift occurred very late in the early modern period, around the 1770s. Until then an idealized Asia prevailed. At some indeterminate moment in the late seventeenth century China came to represent this idealized Asia. Asia (read China) was a land of wisdom, moral philosophy, and good government by a cultured elite. China was everything Europe should be. The idealization culminated in the eighteenth-century China vogue known as chinoiserie. In France, it expressed itself in a cult of Confucius, and in England it influenced everything from art to architecture to garden designs.

Suddenly, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, this particular Eurocentrically idealized imagine of Asia came crashing down. Those who brought it down were men of the high Enlightenment, the Daniel Defoes, Horace Walpoles, Montesquieus, and Voltaires. Aided by a new "scientific" approach to history, the philosophes discovered that Asia (read China) was backward, despotic, and intellectually stagnant, and that Asians were physically inferior. From the vantage point of this new perspective, Europeans believed that they had little to learn from Asians, but that Asians had much to learn from progressive, modern Europeans. It was this perspective that Macartney took with him when he met the Qing emperor in 1793. It has been this perspective that has informed much of the writings about Europe's contact with Asia since then. It was only in the last twenty years or so of the twentieth century that a rising generation of historians has sought to revise this Eurocentrically imagined perspective of Asia and reimagine Eurasia in a global setting.

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—CHARLES LILLEY

World's largest continent, joined to Europe to the west, forming Eurasia.

• Site of some of the world's earliest civilizations.
• With three-fifths of the world's population, Asia has some of the world's greatest population densities.

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - Asien

Français (French)
n. - Asie

Deutsch (German)
n. - Asien

Português (Portuguese)
n. - Ásia

Español (Spanish)
n. - Asia

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
亚洲

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 亞洲

한국어 (Korean)
아시아

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮אסיה‬

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asia	the population of asia
asia aquaculture