The final years of the fifteenth century heralded a new era in the relationship between Asia and distant parts of the globe. The arrival of Vasco da Gama on the west coast of India in 1498 established direct contact between Europe and maritime Asia. It also initiated centuries of commercial, cultural, artistic and technological exchange. This course explores facets of that exchange, pursuing case studies in India, Southeast Asia, China and Japan. Readings, lectures, and student projects will address the varied nature of Asia's encounters with the Portuguese, Dutch, and British, and more recently with global modernity and post-modernity. Topics include cartography, exotica, gift exchange, diplomacy and protocol, trade, missionary activity, colonization, Orientalism, and the post-colonial condition. I. III. IV. 3, 4.