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Encounters
In the 16th century the Portuguese established a coastal trading empire that stretched from India to Japan. However, managing and policing this empire was to prove financially crippling. After 1600 the Portuguese monopoly was further undermined by competition from the Dutch and English East India companies. These leaner organisations were driven purely by profit and unencumbered by the missionary zeal of the Portuguese.
Maritime Asia was as vast as it was varied, and the response to the arrival of the subsequent waves of Europeans was correspondingly diverse. In China, Japan and early Mughallndia, the encounter took place on Asian terms. By contrast, in coastal south India and the Indonesian archipelago, Europeans were able to dictate their terms, sometimes using superior firepower. Many of the encounters were marred by greed, misunderstanding and violence. Yet this was also a period of cross-cultural enrichment and mutual fascination between East and West.
