The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500-1700

"This masterful history of Europe's first great Early Modern maritime empire goes well beyond the limits of traditional nationalistic and Eurocentric interpretations. Integrating European and Asian sources, Subrahmanyam's new edition is a synthetic, interpretative and at times speculative book that sets the Portuguese Indian Ocean empire in the context of Asian and World history. There is no book in English that provides a better introduction to this topic."
—Stuart B. Schwartz, Yale University

"Sanjay Subrahmanyam's classic study of the Portuguese Empire in Asia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has stood the test of time. Rich in penetrating insights and firmly anchored in both an intimate knowledge of the Portuguese sources and a profound understanding of the Asian contexts, it describes and explains, with masterful clarity, a subject that was for long obscured by ignorance, prejudice and misunderstandings. Now, this second edition – with a new preface, thoroughly up-dated bibliography and minor additions and corrections to the text – will certainly be most warmly welcomed."
—A. R. Disney, La Trobe University

"Sanjay Subrahmanyam gives us a masterly overview of the early modern Portuguese Empire in Asia. Written by one the leading historians of our time, this is an illuminating study on the complex interactions between Portugal and Asia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Subrahmanyam truly redefines the field with this work, which explains why the present book was able to overcome the natural 'ageing effects' of a piece originally written two decades ago."
—Jorge Flores, European University Institute, Florence