Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Elizabeth Mrazek Nobles asks So this was bouncing around in my head last night at 2 am… when such thoughts often appear. We often refer to North America as the west. Asia is the east, and we have those countries in the middle east. What about the rest of the world? Is South America the Western world as well? What about Australia, they live a western culture lifestyle, but are in the east. Then Africa, is it just Africa?

The terms east and west, as you are describing them, primarily refer to culture.

The terms originally stemmed from the location of the cultures on the Eurasian continent.

“The West” referred broadly to European culture and “The East” referred broadly to Asian culture.

Asia was defined in the ancient world as that which was east of the Bosporus. Because Asia is so large, the part around the Eastern Mediterranean was known as the Near East, and the parts bordering the Pacific Ocean were the Far East.

In the early 20th century, the term Middle East replaced the term Near East. The term Middle East mostly refers to the Arab and Persian Islamic World in Asia.

When Europeans sailed west to the New World, they took their culture with them, which is why the United States and Canada are considered to be “western” countries.

For the same reasons, Australia and New Zealand are culturally considered to be “the West”, even though they would geographically be in the Far East.

Now, with respect to Africa and South America, they never really fit into the East/West dichotomy.

In the mid-20th century, a new metaphor for grouping countries was established, this time using North and South. These groupings weren’t based on culture so much as economics. The global north was considered rich, and the global south was considered poorer.

Under this, North America north of Mexico, Europe, Australia/NZ, and the richer nations in East Asia were considered to be the “north”, and everything else, in particular Africa, South America, and the Middle East, were considered to be in the South.

Just as East and West weren’t strictly about geography, neither is North and South. Australia is considered part of the West even though it is in the east, and it is considered part of the North, even though it is in the South.

Got that?