There was once a very famous book titled Asia and Western Dominance (G Allen and Unwin, London, 1953) by the historian-diplomat KM Panikkar. The book made quite a splash when it first appeared half a century ago, but now it is nearly forgotten. While it still does find mention in PhD dissertations and books on modern Indian history, Panikkar's work is no longer part of a living discourse either in Asia or elsewhere.
In many ways, the language that Panikkar employed appears almost forgotten. Nobody talks of Western dominance anymore. There is occasional reference to Asia, but unlike in Panikkar's heyday, the term is not used in any political or cultural sense. 'Asia' is reserved for mere geographic usage. When Pannikar wrote his book, everybody was certain what Asia was and meant. Today, nobody is. The term is used more to denote a landmass which is not Europe or Africa. Indeed, was there ever a meaningful reality called Asia?
It is interesting to note that most of the Indian languages, the classical Indian tongues such as Sanskrit or Pali, or even modern languages, some of which are 1000 years old, do not have a word for Asia. At best, they have coinage such as 'Ashiya', which is nothing but a transliteration of 'Asia'. In other words, the Indian language world has no awareness of an Asia from pre-colonial times. I am not certain if the Chinese word for Asia, 'Yazhou', is also not merely a transliteration. A modern dictionary of Chinese gives the meaning of Yazhou merely as a word for Asia. But we do know that the classical Chinese tradition has hardly any awareness of Asia.
It is possible to argue that it was Europe which created the notion or awareness of Asia. For the Europeans, Asia constituted the world to discover and to dominate. Asia was in that sense a territory to be colonised. One can even say that historically Asia was, to use the Chinese term Ya, 'inferior' or second in status. Europe invented Asia as an area to be occupied and exploited and, perhaps for that reason, to be celebrated. When the Suez Canal was opened in 1869, the queen's representative spoke of connecting the two continents of Europe and Asia. Interestingly, he went on to add that the canal would also link two periods of history. In his view, Asia belonged to a historical epoch while Europe was contemporary. The dominating colonialism was modern and contemporary and the colonised and the dominated world was the dated 'Asian' world.