Eastern world

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Not to be confused with Eastern Hemisphere or Eastern Bloc.

The Eastern world in a 1796 map, which included the continents of Asia and Australia (then known as New Holland).

The Eastern world, also known as the East or historically the Orient, is an umbrella term for various cultures or social structures, nations and philosophical systems, which vary depending on the context. It most often includes at least part of Asia or, geographically, the countries and cultures east of Europe, the Mediterranean region and the Arab world, specifically in historical (pre-modern) contexts, and in modern times in the context of Orientalism.[1] It is often seen as a counterpart to the Western world, and correlates strongly to the southern half of the North–South divide.

The various regions included in the term are varied, hard to generalize, and do not have a single shared common heritage (see Christendom). Although the various parts of the Eastern world share many common threads, most notably being in the "Global South", they have never historically defined themselves collectively.[2] The term originally had a literal geographic meaning, referring to the eastern part of the Old World, contrasting the cultures and civilizations of Asia with those of Europe (or the Western world). Traditionally, this includes all of Central Asia, East Asia, the Greater Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.

Conceptually, the boundary between east and west is cultural, rather than geographical, as a result of which Australia and New Zealand, which were founded as British settler colonies, are typically grouped with the Western world despite being geographically closer to the Eastern world, while the Central Asian nations of the former Soviet Union, even with significant Western influence, are grouped in the East.[3] Other than much of Asia and Africa, Europe has successfully absorbed almost all of the societies of Oceania, North Asia and the Americas into the Western world because of settler colonization.[4][5]

Countries such as Israel,[6] and the Philippines,[7][8] which are geographically located in the Eastern world, may be considered westernized in some aspects of their society due to immigration and cultural influences from the United States and Europe.

Overview[edit]

Historically, certain regions of Asia were classified as different "races". For example, East Asians were once classified as "Mongoloids", while other people from other Asian regions were not. As with other regions of the world, Asia is also made up of many different, extremely diverse countries, ethnic groups and cultures.[9] This concept is further debated because in some English-speaking countries, common parlance links "Asian identity" to people of East Asian origin,[10][11] though in other contexts, other Asian regions such as South Asia are also included. Western Asia (which includes Israel, part of the Arab world, Iran, etc), which may or may not see themselves part of the Eastern world, are sometimes considered "Middle Eastern" and separate from Asia.[12]

The division between 'East' and 'West', formerly referred to as Orient and Occident, is a product of European cultural history and of the distinction between Christian Europe and the cultures beyond it to the East. With the European colonization of the Americas, the East-West dichotomy became global. The concept of an Eastern, "Indian" (Indies) or "Oriental" sphere was emphasized by ideas of racial as well as religious and cultural differences. Such distinctions were articulated by Westerners in the scholarly tradition known as Orientalism and Indology. Orientalism, interestingly, has been the only Western conception of a unified Eastern world not limited to any specific region(s), but rather all of Asia together.[13][14]

Culture[edit]

Main article: Culture of Asia
An image of the "Eastern world" defined as the "Far East", consisting of three overlapping cultural blocks: East Asia (Green), Southeast Asia (Blue), and South Asia (Orange)
The spread of Syriac Christianity to East Asia.
Distribution of Eastern religions (yellow), as opposed to Abrahamic religions (violet).
Distribution of Haplogroup O-M175
Spread of Buddhism throughout Asia
Dispersal of Austronesian languages
East Asia cultural region
Map of the Middle East
Indian cultural sphere

Eastern culture has developed many themes and traditions. Some important ones are:

Gallery[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Thompson, William; Joseph Hickey (2005). Society in Focus. Boston: Pearson plc. 0-205-41365-X.
  2. ^ Lee, Sandra S.; Mountain, Joanna; Koening, Barbara A. (2001). "The Meanings of 'Race' in the New Genomics: Implications for Health Disparities Research" (PDF). Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics. 1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 November 2006. Retrieved 26 October 2006.
  3. ^ Meštrovic, Stjepan (1994). Balkanization of the West: The Confluence of Postmodernism and Postcommunism. Routledge. p. 61. ISBN 0-203-34464-2.
  4. ^ "Embassy of Brazil – Ottawa". Brasembottawa.org. Archived from the original on 29 April 2011. Retrieved 6 May 2011.
  5. ^ Falcoff, Mark. "Chile Moves On". AEI. Archived from the original on 17 April 2009. Retrieved 6 May 2011.
  6. ^ Sheldon Kirshner (16 October 2013). "Is Israel Really a Western Nation?". Sheldon Kirshner Journal. Retrieved 9 November 2013.
  7. ^ Heydarian, Richard (12 January 2015). "Philippines' Shallow Capitalism: Westernization Without Prosperity". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 19 November 2016.
  8. ^ Hunt, Chester L. "THE 'AMERICANIZATION' PROCESS IN THE PHILIPPINES". India Quarterly. 12 (2): 117–130. Retrieved 5 July 2022.
  9. ^ Cartmill, Matt (September 1998). "The Status of the Race Concept in Physical Anthropology" (PDF). p. 651-660. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 June 2021. Retrieved 16 October 2021.
  10. ^ For example, "Asian and Indian people" are referred to in the New Zealand Heart Foundation's BMI calculator Archived 2009-05-31 at the Wayback Machine.
  11. ^ Schiavenza, Matt (19 October 2016). "Why Some 'Brown Asians' Feel Left Out of the Asian American Conversation". Asia Society. Retrieved 14 June 2022. And that, unfortunately, did not include any South Asians and only one Filipino. That caused a bit of an outcry. It raises a legitimate issue, of course, one about how 'brown Asians' often feel excluded from the Asian American conversation.
  12. ^ Khatib, Lina (2006). Filming the modern Middle East: politics in the cinemas of Hollywood and the Arab world. Library of Modern Middle East Studies, Library of International Relations. Vol. 57. I.B. Tauris. pp. 166–167, 173. ISBN 1-84511-191-5.
  13. ^ Tromans, 6
  14. ^ from the Latin oriens; Oxford English Dictionary
  15. ^ Dawson, Christopher; Glenn Olsen (1961). Crisis in Western Education (reprint ed.). p. 108. ISBN 9780813216836.
  16. ^ a b "Global Christianity – A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Christian Population" (PDF). Pew Research Center.
  17. ^ Hindson, Edward E.; Mitchell, Daniel R. (1 August 2013). The Popular Encyclopedia of Church History. Harvest House Publishers. p. 225. ISBN 9780736948074.
  18. ^  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Kohler, Kaufmann (1901–1906). "Judaism". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
  19. ^ C. Held, Colbert (2008). Middle East Patterns: Places, People, and Politics. Routledge. p. 109. ISBN 9780429962004. Worldwide, the Druze number 1 million or so, with about 45 to 50 percent of them living in Syria, 35 to 40 percent living in Lebanon, and less than 10 percent living in Israel. Recently, there has been a growing Druze diaspora.
  20. ^ "Ramoji Film City sets record". Business Line. Archived from the original on 8 December 2008. Retrieved 3 August 2007.
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