Though not colonized as directly or thoroughly as Africa, Asia was heavily influenced by the imperial aspirations of Western industrial societies. British colonial rule directly reshaped the Indian economy and Indian culture, forcibly incorporating many Indians into the British-dominated world economy. In East Asia, treaties gave multiple Western powers — and Japan — economic, political, and military control over key areas of China. Spared the full brunt of Western attention, Japan incorporated Western ideas as it pushed to become an industrial power in its own right. But in every case, Asian nations wrestled with the presence of Westerners and Western ideas as well as their own domestic transformations. The documents in this chapter reflect the broad range of strategies that Asians used to appropriate or contest what they understood to be a new framework of international power.