What's a good place to start if I want to understand the

>>2960601
You start by realizing that considering "continental Asia" a group in any way makes no sense.

At your local library.

the khyber pass

File: 61I63ApQuWL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg (61KB, 333x499px) Image search: [Google]

61KB, 333x499px

>>2960601
I read this for a course last semester and I knew very little about any Asian history. Now I know some. I really enjoyed the book and it covers China, Japan, Korea, Mughal India, Transoxiana, the Ottomans, the Mamluks, the Saffavids, and some others. I really enjoyed it. Also, it's really about the Mongols.
tl;dr Europe is good at guns because everyone else got cucked by the Mongols and Turks. Japan was good at guns, then bad due to isolation, then good again. China got ultra cucked and could have been so much more.

>>2960601
Start gathering a list of topics you want to start with. For starters, you can begin with the most influential countries such as China and India. Keep reading, there's a tremendous amount of material you need to cover.
>>2960860
Local libraries usually have meme-tier stuff instead of proper introductions to regions. You might need to go to larger libraries or online bookstores OP.

>>2960972
>tl;dr Europe is good at guns because everyone else got cucked by the Mongols and Turks

That sounds like nonsense, given how enthusiastic the Turks were for firearms.

The Chinese also fielded huge numbers of arquebus and cannons, they simply weren't as good as European ones because Europeans were the best at making guns.

>>2960982
That was me being as succinct as possible. His thesis answers the question "Why did the Chinese invent firearms but Europeans perfected them?"
He makes a point that firearms were very effective at infantry warfare but pretty bad at cavalry warfare until technology improved (see the time frame of the book's title). He offers pretty good evidence for that. The Turks were one of his most interesting examples in that they were a sort of in between state in the oikemene. They were exposed to both steppe nomads and infantry forces and were originally nomads themselves. They were incredibly flexible. A large part of their firearm technology came from copying European designs. He even cites a Chinese source that basically does a power ranking of firearms they had encountered (I forget the year, but roughly 1600-ish). It went something like:
1. European firearms
2. Ottoman firearms
3. Japanese firearms

>power gap

4. dogshit
5. Chinese firearms
Basically, countries that were at less of a geographic disadvantage against nomads or countries who didn't have to deal with them but instead had to deal with infantry had greater incentive to pursue firearms and did (except for unified and isolated Japan).