What role did Europeans play in the economic and intellectual worlds of South and East Asia?

Western imperialism in Asia involves the influence of people from Western Europe and associated states (such as Russia, Japan and the United States) in Asian territories and waters. Much of this process stemmed from the 15th-century search for trade routes to China that led directly to the Age of Discovery, and the introduction of early modern warfare into what Europeans first called the East Indies and later the Far East.