Far East

The Far East is the geographical region that encompasses the easternmost portion of the Asian continent, including East, Northeast and Southeast Asia.^[1][2] South Asia is sometimes also included in the definition of the term.^[3][4]

The term first came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 15th century, particularly the British, denoting the Far East as the "farthest" of the three "Easts", beyond the Near East and the Middle East.^[5] Likewise, during 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 perceived eurocentric connotations.^[6][7][8] North Asia is sometimes excluded due to cultural and ethnic differences.^[9]

Popularization

Among Western Europeans, 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^[10] (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, Near East referred to the relatively nearby lands of the Ottoman Empire, Middle East denoted north-western Southern Asian region 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), Italian (Estremo Oriente), German (Ferner Osten), Polish (Daleki Wschód), Norwegian (Det fjerne Østen) and Dutch (Verre Oosten).

Cultural and 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 situation 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."^[11]

Far East, in its usual sense, is comparable to terms such as the Orient (Latin for "East"), Eastern world, or simply the East, all of which may refer, broadly, to East and South-East Asia in general. Occasionally, albeit more in the past, the Russian Far East and South Asia have been deemed to be part of the Far East.

Commenting on such terms, John K. Fairbank and Edwin O. Reischauer (both 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.^[8]

Today, the term remains in the names of some longstanding institutions, including the Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, Far Eastern University in Manila, the Far East University in South Korea, and Far East, the periodical magazine of the Missionary Society of St. Columban. Furthermore, the United States and United Kingdom have historically incorporated Far East in the names of several military units and commands in the region, such as the British Royal Navy's Far East Fleet, for instance.

Territories and regions conventionally included in the Far East

Name of region[12] and territory, with flag	Area (km2)	Population	Population density (per km2)	Capital	Forms of government	Currency	Official languages
North Asia
Russia [13][14]	13,100,000	37,600,000	2.6	Moscow[15]	Federal semi-presidential republic	Ruble	Russian and 27 other co-official languages
Southeast Asia
Brunei	5,765	417,200	72.11	Bandar Seri Begawan	Absolute Islamic Sultanate	Brunei dollar	Malay and English
Cambodia	181,035	16,245,729	81.8	Phnom Penh	Constitutional monarchy	Riel	Khmer
Christmas Island[16]	135	1,692	12.5	Flying Fish Cove	External territory of Australia	Australian dollar	None[17]
Template:Country data Cocos (Keeling) Islands[18]	14	593	42.4	West Island	External territory of Australia	Australian dollar	None[19]
Indonesia	1,904,569	261,115,456	138.0	Jakarta	Presidential republic	Rupiah	Indonesian
Laos	237,955	6,758,353	26.7	Vientiane	Socialist Republic	Kip	Lao
Malaysia	330,803	32,049,700	92.0	Kuala Lumpur	Federal constitutional monarchy, Parliamentary democracy	Ringgit	Malay
Myanmar (Burma)	676,578	53,582,855	76.0	Naypyidaw	Unitary presidential constitutional republic	Kyat	Burmese
Philippines	300,000	100,981,437	336.0	Manila	Unitary presidential constitutional republic	Philippine peso (Piso)	Filipino and English
Singapore	722.5	5,638,700	7,804.0	Singapore	Parliamentary republic	Singapore dollar	Malay, English, Chinese (Mandarin), and Tamil
Thailand	513,120	68,863,514	132.1	Bangkok	Constitutional monarchy, Parliamentary democracy	Baht	Thai
Timor-Leste (East Timor)	15,410	1,167,242	78.0	Dili	Parliamentary republic	United States dollar / Centavo coins	Tetum and Portuguese
Vietnam	331,212	94,569,072	276.03	Hanoi	One-party, Socialist Republic	đồng	Vietnamese
East Asia
China[20]	9,598,094[21]	1,371,821,094[22]	145.0	Beijing	One-party socialist republic	Yuan (Renminbi)	Chinese (Mandarin)[23]
Hong Kong[24]	1,108	7,448,900	6,777.0	Hong Kong	Special administrative region of the People's Republic of China.	Hong Kong dollar	Chinese,[25] English
Japan	377,973	126,440,000	334.0	Tokyo	Parliamentary democracy, Constitutional monarchy	Yen	None[26]
Macau[27]	115.3	653,100	21,340.0	Macau	Special administrative region of the People's Republic of China	Pataca	Chinese,[28] Portuguese
Mongolia	1,566,000	3,081,677	1.97	Ulaanbaatar	Parliamentary republic	Tögrög	Mongolian
North Korea	120,540	25,368,620	212.0	Pyongyang	Juche unitarian dictatorship Socialist Republic	North Korean won	Korean
South Korea	100,363	51,446,201	507.0	Seoul	Unitary presidential republic	South Korean won	Korean
Taiwan[29]	36,197	23,577,271	650.0	Taipei	Semi-presidential system	New Taiwan dollar	Chinese (Mandarin)

Cities

See also

• Asia-Pacific
• East Asia
• East Asian cultural sphere
• East–West dichotomy
• Far West, a term for Europe
• Four Asian Tigers – Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan
• Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Japanese idea from the 1930s–1940s
• Inner Asia
• List of Mongol states
• North Asia
  • Russian Far East
  • Siberia
  • Ural (region)
• Northeast Asia
• Orient
• Pacific Asia, a region highly coterminous with the Far East
• South Asia
• Southeast Asia
• Tropical Asia
• Turkic migration

Organizations

• ASEAN+3
• Comprehensive Economic Partnership for East Asia
• East Asian Community
• Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership
• Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center

References

Further reading

• Burghart, Sabine, Denis Park, and Liudmila Zakharova. "The DPRK's economic exchanges with Russia and the EU since 2000: an analysis of institutional effects and the case of the Russian Far East." Asia Europe Journal 18.3 (2020): 281–303. on North Korea
• Clyde, Paul Hibbert, and Burton F. Beers. The Far East: A History of Western Impacts and Eastern Responses, 1830–1975 (1975). online
• Crofts, Alfred. A history of the Far East (1958) online
• Fairbank, John K., Edwin Reischauer, and Albert M. Craig. East Asia: The great tradition and East Asia: The modern transformation (1960) [2 vol 1960] online, famous textbook.
• Green, Michael. By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific Since 1783 (2019) excerpt
• Iriye, Akira. After Imperialism; The Search for a New Order in the Far East 1921–1931. (1965).
• Keay, John. Empire's End: A History of the Far East from High Colonialism to Hong Kong (Scribner, 1997). online
• Louis, Wm Roger. "The road to Singapore: British imperialism in the Far East, 1932–42." in The fascist challenge and the policy of appeasement (Routledge, 2021) pp. 352–388.
• Macnair, Harley F. & Donald Lach. Modern Far Eastern International Relations. (2nd ed 1955) 1950 edition online free, 780pp; focus on 1900–1950.
• Norman, Henry. The Peoples and Politics of the Far East: Travels and studies in the British, French, Spanish and Portuguese colonies, Siberia, China, Japan, Korea, Siam and Malaya (1904) online
• Paine, S. C. M. The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949 (2014) excerpt
• Ring, George C. Religions of the Far East: Their History to the Present Day (Kessinger Publishing, 2006).
• Solomon, Richard H., and Masataka Kosaka, eds. The Soviet Far East military buildup: nuclear dilemmas and Asian security (Routledge, 2021).
• Stephan, John J. The Russian Far East (Stanford University Press, 2022).
• Vinacke, Harold M. A History of the Far East in Modern Times (1964) online free
• Vogel, Ezra. China and Japan: Facing History (2019) excerpt
• Woodcock, George. The British in the Far East (1969) online.

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