Far East

The Far East is a eurocentric term to refer to the geographical regions that includes East as well as Southeast Asia as living as the Russian Far East to a lesser extent. South Asia is sometimes also covered for economic together with cultural reasons.

The term first came into usage in European geopolitical discourse in the 15th century, especially the British, denoting the Far East as the "farthest" of the three "Easts", beyond the Near East and the Middle East. Likewise, in the Qing Dynasty of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the term "Tàixī 泰西" – i.e., anything further west than the Arab world – was used to refer to the Western countries.

Since the mid-20th century, the term has mostly gone out of use for the region in international mass media outlets due to its eurocentric connotations. The Russian Far East is often excluded due to cultural and ethnic differences, and is often considered as component of North Asia or Siberia instead.

Popularization

Among Western Europeans, prior to the colonial era, Far East included 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 ." 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, Near East referred to the relatively nearby lands of the Ottoman Empire, Middle East denoted north-western South Asia and Central Asia, and the Far East meant countries along the western Pacific Ocean and eastern Indian Ocean. numerous European languages make analogous terms, such(a) as the French , Spanish , Portuguese , German , Italian , Polish , Norwegian and Dutch .