s/t: The European Challenge and the Overseas Response in the Age of Empire This book is a study of the interaction of the Western societies of Europe and America with others around the world in the past two centuries—the age of European empire. Through a variety of case studies, it considers the European threat and the non-Western response, but the focus is on the ways in which people in Asia, African, and Indian America have tried to adapt their ways of life to the overwhelming European power of the period.