In the heyday of colonialism and empire, global connections conspired to produce a singular industrial and ‘civilized’ world on the ruins of many others. But another form of connectivity facilitated the survival of worlds of an entirely different kind. One example can be found in the late 19th century, in day-to-day interactions that linked East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Australasia at the non-state level. Indigenous and non-state actors turned to the ocean, where they undermined colonial forms of relating and created what I call the ‘Arafura Zone’. In this talk, I show how Asia was not just a historical backdrop for the expansion of industrial civilization but also the originator of an indigenous form of globalization.