Peter Frankopan

What, if anything, unites Asia as a continent?

Nile Green blames ancient European geographers for lumping multitudes together in a landmass, regardless of their diversities

Portuguese merchants – or ‘southern barbarians’, as Europeans were known by the Japanese – bearing gifts in Nagasaki, c.1600. Detail of a byobu screen painting by Kano Naizen (1570-1616). [Alamy]

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