The region known as South Asia today emerged as the locus for order-building only in the early modern period (~1500–1750) as a “region” of Islamicate Asia. I demonstrate this through a cognitive-strategic process based on the interactions between polities and resources within and outside of South Asia. While the practices associated with the primary institutions of warfare, great power management, diplomacy, and political economy did not meaningfully differentiate South Asia from Eurasia in the pre-Mughal millennium, the deep rules associated with them marked South Asia off from Islamicate Asia after the rise of the Mughals.