The Anarchy, by William Dalrymple, brings us from Europe into Asia through the British conquest of India.
One of the successor states to the wider Mongol and Timurid world—the Mughal Empire—had conquered most of northern India. When that empire began to fragment, the British East India Company gradually consumed the pieces.
This happened partly by accident and partly through economic forces that the British did not fully understand themselves. The company’s representatives were often simply trying to make money, but their individual actions accumulated into conquest. The Anarchy explains how those forces rolled into a very large ball.