Far East

The Far East is an alternate geographical term in English (with equivalents in many other languages – see the infobox on the right for examples), that usually refers to East Asia (including Northeast Asia), the Russian Far East (part of North Asia), and Southeast Asia.^[1] South Asia is sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons.^[2]

Since the 1960s, East Asia has become the most common term for the region in international mass media outlets.^[3][4] Far East is often deprecated as archaic, offensive, and sometimes even racist.^[3] In 2010, The Economist commented:

Remember... the Far East? If so, speak softly. Labels are handy ways of sorting out countries by history or geography. But lazily conceived and out-of-date ones are offensive and misleading.... The "Far East", as East Asia used to be called, is indeed far away from Europe but quite nearby for people who live there.

In other words, "Far East" is inherently Eurocentric because it is part of a geographical paradigms in which even Western Asia is the "Near East" or "Middle East". Until the end of the 20th century, it could be argued that Europe was the "center of gravity" of the global economy, although even that is no longer true.^[5]

The term Far East came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 12th century, denoting the Far East as the "farthest" of the three "easts", beyond the Near East and the Middle East. For the same reason, Chinese people in the 19th and early 20th centuries called Western countries "Tàixī (泰西)"—i.e. anything further west than the Arab world.

Popularization

Prior to the colonial era, "Far East" referred to anything further east than the Middle East. In the 16th century, King John III of Portugal called India a "rich and interesting country in the Far East^[6] (Extremo Oriente)." The term was popularized during the period of the British Empire as a blanket term for lands to the east of British India.

In pre-World War I European geopolitics, the Near East referred to the relatively nearby lands of the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East denoted northwestern South Asia and Central Asia, and the Far East meant countries along the western Pacific Ocean and eastern Indian Ocean. Many European languages have analogous terms, such as the French (Extrême-Orient), Spanish (Extremo Oriente), Portuguese (Extremo Oriente), German (Ferner Osten), Italian (Estremo Oriente), Polish (Daleki Wschód), Norwegian (Det fjerne Østen) and Dutch (Verre Oosten).

Cultural as well as geographic meaning

Significantly, the term evokes cultural as well as geographic separation; the Far East is not just geographically distant, but also culturally exotic. It never refers, for instance, to the culturally Western nations of Australia and New Zealand, which lie even farther to the east of Europe than East Asia itself. This combination of cultural and geographic subjectivity was well illustrated in 1939 by Robert Menzies, a Prime Minister of Australia. Reflecting on his country's geopolitical concerns with the onset of war, Menzies commented that:

The problems of the Pacific are different. What Great Britain calls the Far East is to us the Near North."^[7]

Far East in its usual sense is comparable to terms such as the Orient, which means East; the Eastern world; or simply the East. Southeast Asia, the Russian Far East, and occasionally the Indian Subcontinent might be included in the Far East to some extent.

Concerning the term, John K. Fairbank and Edwin O. Reischauer, professors of East Asian Studies at Harvard University, wrote (in East Asia: The Great Tradition): "When Europeans traveled far to the east to reach Cathay, Japan and the Indies, they naturally gave those distant regions the general name 'Far East.' Americans who reached China, Japan and Southeast Asia by sail and steam across the Pacific could, with equal logic, have called that area the 'Far West.' For the people who live in that part of the world, however, it is neither 'East' nor 'West' and certainly not 'Far.' A more generally acceptable term for the area is 'East Asia,' which is geographically more precise and does not imply the outdated notion that Europe is the center of the civilized world."^[4]

Today, the term remains in the names of some longstanding institutions, including the Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, Far Eastern University in Manila, and the Far East University in South Korea. Furthermore, the United Kingdom and United States have historically used Far East for several military units and commands in the region:

Territories and regions conventionally included under the term Far East

Name of region[8] and territory, with flag	Area (km²)	Population (2008 est.)	Population density (per km²)	Capital	Government	Currency	Official languages
East Asia
China[9]	9,598,094[10]	1,370,536,875[11]	161.0	Beijing	One-party led state, Socialist republic	Yuan (Renminbi)	Chinese (Mandarin)[12]
Hong Kong[13]	1,104	6,985,200	6,352.0	Hong Kong	Special administrative region of the People's Republic of China.	Hong Kong dollar	Chinese (Cantonese),[14] English
Macau[15]	28.6	520,400	17,310.0	Macau	Special administrative region of the People's Republic of China	Pataca	Chinese (Cantonese),[16] Portuguese
Japan	377,873	127,433,494	337.0	Tokyo	Parliamentary democracy, Constitutional monarchy	Yen	None (Japanese as de facto)
Mongolia	1,564,116	2,951,786	1.7	Ulaanbaatar	Parliamentary republic	Tögrög	Mongolian
North Korea	120,540	23,301,725	190.0	Pyongyang	Juche unitarian dictatorship Socialist Republic	North Korean won	Korean
South Korea	100,032	49,044,790	493.0	Seoul	Presidential republic	South Korean won	Korean
Taiwan[17]	36,188	22,911,292	633.12	Taipei	Semi-presidential system	New Taiwan dollar	Chinese (Mandarin)
Southeast Asia
Brunei	5,765	381,371	66.0	Bandar Seri Begawan	Absolute Islamic Sultanate	Brunei dollar	Malay and English
Cambodia	181,035	14,241,640	78.0	Phnom Penh	Constitutional monarchy	Riel	Khmer
East Timor[18]	15,410	1,115,000	64.0	Dili	Parliamentary republic	U.S. dollar / Centavo coins	Tetum and Portuguese
Indonesia[19]	1,919,588	237,512,355	123.8	Jakarta	Presidential republic	Rupiah	Indonesian
Laos	236,800	6,521,998	25.0	Vientiane	Socialist Republic	Kip	Lao
Malaysia	329,847	27,730,000	83.0	Kuala Lumpur	Federal constitutional monarchy, Parliamentary democracy	Ringgit	Malay
Myanmar (Burma)	676,578	55,390,000	75.0	Naypyidaw	Unitary presidential constitutional republic	Kyat	Burmese
Papua New Guinea	462,840	6,732,000	14.5	Port Moresby	Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy	Kina	Hiri Motu, Tok Pisin, and English
Philippines	300,000	90,500,000	295.0	Manila	Unitary presidential constitutional republic	Philippine peso (Piso)	Filipino and English
Singapore	707.1	4,588,600	6,489.0	Singapore	Parliamentary republic	Singapore dollar	Malay, English, Chinese (Mandarin), and Tamil
Thailand	513,115	63,038,247	122.0	Bangkok	Parliamentary democracy, Constitutional monarchy	Baht	Thai
Vietnam	331,690	86,116,559	253.0	Hanoi	One-party led state, Socialist Republic	đồng	Vietnamese
North Asia
Russian Far East (Russia)[20]	6,215,900[21]	6,692,865[21]	3.0	Moscow	Federal semi-presidential republic	Ruble	Russian and 27 other co-official languages

Cities

Organizations

• British Far East Command
• RAF Far East Air Force
• U.S. Far East Air Force
• The U.S. Far East Network

See also

Look up far east in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Far West
• Adoption of Chinese literary culture
• East Asia
• East Asian cultural sphere
• Far Eastern Economic Review
• Four Asian Tigers
• Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
• Indosphere
• Russian Far East
• South Asia
• Southeast Asia
• Spanish East Indies
• Y-DNA haplogroups by populations of East and Southeast Asia

Notes

References

• Ankerl, Guy (2000). Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations: Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and Western. Geneva: INU Press. ISBN 2-88155-004-5.
• Whitaker, Brian (February 23, 2004). "From Turkey to Tibet". The Guardian.

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