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What do history and global connections tell us about the Indo-Pacific and the emerging order in Asia? When seen in the longue durée, the contemporary regions of Asia – South Asia, Southeast Asia, and (North) East Asia as well as the maritime space connecting them from the Indian Ocean into the South China Sea – have formed a single interconnected continuum. There are three characteristic features of this larger Asia as they have emerged over the centuries. First, Asia has always been an “open” region. Being the historical center of gravity of the global economy, this region stretching from India to China via Southeast Asia was deeply connected with the larger Afro-Eurasian world economy, and therefore its outer boundaries were open and fluid. Second, despite China’s sheer size, Asia was decentered economically and ideationally. Economically, the multi-centered Indian subcontinent was just as important as China, while ideationally, Sinic ideas co-existed with Indic and Islamicate ideas. Third, the era of Western domination in Asia has been relatively short-lived. It began with British imperialism in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars and has continued up to the present with American primacy. The rise of British power and the near simultaneous Qing expansion in Central Asia also generated a continental Asia that has continued to exist until the present while interacting with maritime Asia. However, several developments, including the Cold War, the 1962 Sino-Indian War, the formation of Asean, and emergence of “area studies” programs in American academia (for reasons at least partly related to the Cold War) gave rise to the “divided” Asia that is more familiar to us today. As the larger interconnected Asia of history re-emerges in its modern guise as the Indo-Pacific today, it is likely to share the three characteristics that have emerged over the longue durée: its openness and fluid outer boundaries, its decentered-ness despite the Sino-American rivalry, and the interconnected nature of its maritime and continental strategic dimensions. However, the term Indo-Pacific is ultimately reflective of America’s material and discursive power.