Asia is the world's largest continent, both in land area and in population. But did you know that in India alone, people speak more than 1,000 languages? Or that not everyone agrees about which countries should be considered part of Asia? Learn more about the diverse continent of Asia, from its people and countries to its landforms, economy, and more.

Over the course of less than a century, the U.S. transformed from a nation that excluded Asians from immigration and citizenship to one that receives more immigrants from Asia than from anywhere else in the world. Yet questions of how that dramatic shift took place have long gone unanswered. In this first comprehensive history of Asian exclusion repeal, Jane H. Hong unearths the transpacific movement that successfully ended restrictions on Asian immigration. The mid-twentieth century repeal of Asian exclusion, Hong shows, was part of the price of America's postwar empire in Asia. The demands of U.S. empire-building during an era of decolonization created new opportunities for advocates from both the U.S. and Asia to lobby U.S. Congress for repeal. Drawing from sources in the United States, India, and the Philippines, Opening the Gates to Asia charts a movement more than twenty years in the making. Positioning repeal at the intersection of U.S. civil rights struggles and Asian decolonization, Hong raises thorny questions about the meanings of nation, independence, and citizenship on the global stage.

Discusses the continent of Asia, answers questions including wildlife, people, landscapes, history, and Asia today.

Soon after the American Revolution, ?certain of the founders began to recognize the strategic significance of Asia and the Pacific and the vast material and cultural resources at stake there. Over the coming generations, the United States continued to ask how best to expand trade with the region and whether to partner with China, at the center of the continent, or Japan, looking toward the Pacific. Where should the United States draw its defensive line, and how should it export democratic principles? In a history that spans the eighteenth century to the present, Michael J. Green follows the development of U.S. strategic thinking toward East Asia, identifying recurring themes in American statecraft that reflect the nation's political philosophy and material realities. Drawing on archives, interviews, and his own experience in the Pentagon and White House, Green finds one overarching concern driving U.S. policy toward East Asia: a fear that a rival power might use the Pacific to isolate and threaten the United States and prevent the ocean from becoming a conduit for the westward free flow of trade, values, and forward defense. By More Than Providence works through these problems from the perspective of history's major strategists and statesmen, from Thomas Jefferson to Alfred Thayer Mahan and Henry Kissinger. It records the fate of their ideas as they collided with the realities of the Far East and adds clarity to America's stakes in the region, especially when compared with those of Europe and the Middle East.

This book sketches an outline of Southeast Asian history from earliest times to the present, showing how the diverse political, economic, social, and cultural patterns developed over several thousand years and the role played by the region in the larger world. Approximately one third will be devoted to the centuries before 1500 CE, when civilizations and kingdoms emerged and some Southeast Asians became active in Asian and Pacific maritime trade networks. It discusses the connections to India and China, the great kingdoms such as Angkor, the maritime trade, and the emergence of diverse cultural traditions, including the Theravada Buddhist, Islamic, and Vietnamese realms. Another third covers the period of Western expansion and colonization between 1500 and 1941, when various Western nations began to gradually influence and then reshape the region and Southeast Asians became more deeply involved with world trade. This includes an extensive discussion of the impact of colonialism on Southeast Asian societies, cultures, economies and politics. The final third examines the rise of nationalism and independence movements, decolonization, the wars in Indochina, and the links between past, present, and future.

A History of Asia is the only text to cover the area known as "monsoon Asia" - India, China, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia--from the earliest times to the present. Written by leading scholar Rhoads Murphey, the book uses an engaging, lively tone to chronicle the complex political, social, intellectual, and economic histories of this area. Popular because of its scope and coverage, as well as its illustrations, maps, and many boxed primary sources, the new edition of A History of Asia continues as a leader in its field.

Showing how entrepreneurs and investors can start up in Asia and go global, the book provides a first-hand, on-the-ground tour of the new technology centers that are gaining momentum all over Asia. Interviews with the most successful venture capitalists and entrepreneurs reveal their winning strategies and show how a new generation of entrepreneurs in China and India are no longer looking to the West for their cues - but are instead crafting their own local business models and success strategies.