“The peoples of Asia did not perceive of themselves as ‘Asians’ until the Europeans classified them in that way,” as the cartographical scholar A. J. Klinghoffer once remarked. Geographical orderings like the continents, the “Middle East,” or the “Third World,” are concepts usually invented by Europeans. Europeans have viewed the world in relation to themselves: one only needs to think of the Prime Meridian, where the longitudinal divisions of the world radiate out from the Greenwich Observatory in London. This chapter is concerned with “East” and “West,” and more specifically, with “Asia” and “Europe”: what do those terms imply? “The West”: that ubiquitous term in our daily media, but West of what? The East means “East of Europe,” but it has not always remained static. From about 700 ce in Western usage, “East” began increasingly to be associated with the Muslim religion and the areas it came to dominate. Later this East expanded to include the Indian subcontinent, as the Europeans discovered a new colonial Orient. Other variations would later include the Ottoman Empire (as in the “Orient Express”) and the Far Eastern “Yellow Peril.” East and West are thus terms culturally constructed by Europeans rather than being scientifically or geographically defined: “the East” is designated according to the changing dictates of the West.