This chapter examines Western infiltration into maritime Asia over the seventeenth century. I focus on three questions. First, how did Westerners establish territorial toeholds in maritime Asia? Second, why did Westerners find it so much easier to insinuate themselves into the Mughal Empire and other south and southeast Asian polities, compared to the Qing Empire? Third, how did this process of uneven insinuation pave the way for the West’s subsequent rise to at least partial dominance in Asia from the late eighteenth century? The chapter is organized as follows. The first section traces the gravitational pull of Asian prosperity for Europeans during the sixteenth century. The second section concentrates on the company-state as the main institution through which Europeans forged their Asian maritime empires. The third and fourth sections then contrast the varied success of European company-states in infiltrating the Mughal and Qing empires. I conclude by revisiting the larger parallels uniting the European maritime empires with their Asian terrestrial counterparts, and the legacies of their differential integration into South versus East Asia for the West’s later rise to global pre-eminence.