But he was a keen-eyed observer. He noticed that the Portuguese had landed artillery to protect the area in which Christians lived. On a visit to a P… - Kavalam Madhava Panikkar

Wilhelm II styled himself Admiral of the Atlantic, though that ocean had never been claimed to be an inland waterway. The fleet of gunboats that cruised up and down the Yangtze was a standing temptation for the local representatives of the Great Powers to give point to their often unreasonable demands by a demonstration or the threat of a bombardment. Many instances could be given of this kind of 'gunboat diplomacy' in the interests of missionaries, private debtors and even ordinary Christian converts.

The effects of Asian contacts on Europe, though considerably less, cannot be considered insignificant. The growth of capitalism in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in itself a profound and revolutionary change, is intimately connected with the expansion of European trade and business into Asia. The political development of the leading Western European nations during this period was also related to their exploitation of their Asian possessions and the wealth they derived from the trade with and government of their Eastern dependencies. Their material life, as reflected in clothing, food, beverages, etc., also bears permanent marks of their Eastern contacts. We have already dealt briefly with the penetration of cultural, artistic and philosophical influences, though their effects cannot still be estimated. Unlike the Rococo movement of the eighteenth century, the spiritual and cultural reactions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are deeper, and have not yet fully come to the surface. The influence of Chinese literature and of Indian philosophical thought, to mention only two trends which have become important in recent years, cannot be evaluated for many years to come. Yet it is true, as T. S. Eliot has stated, that most modern poets in Europe have in some measure been influenced by the literature of China. Equally the number of translations of the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads, which have been appearing every year, meant not for Orientalists and scholars but for the educated public, and the revival of interest in the religious experience of India, are sufficient to prove that a penetration of European thought by Oriental influences is now taking place which future historians may consider to be of some significance.

The Portuguese, we are told, came to India with a Cross in the one hand and a sword in the other. Their own pretensions in the East were based first on the Pull of Nicholas V, dated January 8th 1454, by which Affonso V was given, by virtue of the pontifical and apostolic authority of the Pope, exclusive right to all the countries that might be discovered by the Portuguese in Africa and India. The conversion of the inhabitants of the lands so discovered was to be one of the objects of Portuguese policy. In fact Dom Joao II, who was the real originator of the expedition, had much of this evangelistic spirit in him. To the pious Kings of mediaeval Europe conversion of the heathens seemed to be an imperative duty.