"...So when you look at the scale and scope of their explorations and colonizations you know that Europeans always had Asia on the mind; they were always looking to Asia..." -Gary Okihiro, historian, Columbia University

1275 MARCO POLO arrives in Shandu, China near Peking, meeting with Kublai Khan. Returning to Venice, Polo recounts the wonders of the Orient becoming known as "Il Milione" the man of a million stories. Marco Polo is a kind of early EAST/WEST reporter, telling popular stories, stirring the imagination of the alluring, exotic "Orient" to the East: "spices, silks, rugs, porcelain..." -- setting into motion the legions who followed him.

1492 Columbus "discovers" America.
Seeking Cathay and the Indies, Columbus encounters the Dominican Republic, and calls the people "Indians," thinking he has arrived at the Indies.

The following year, POPE ALEXANDER VI announces in a PAPAL BULL the division of world between Portugal and Spain and formalizes it with the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) signed by Portugal and Spain.

" ...The world as it was known then, was divided up by the Church between Portugual and Spain; and it was a curious idea that the indigenous people didn’t matter, and the land could just be divided..." -Prof. Gary Okihiro, Columbia University

In the Pacific by 1521 MAGELLAN, also seeking the "Orient" and acting for Spain, reaches a group of islands and re-names them the "Philippines," after King Philip II of Spain.

In EAST ASIA, PORTUGAL by 1590 has taken the island of FORMOSA off the coast of China, and 10 years later takes MACAO in China.