Listening to an Iranian official describe his region as “West Asia” got me wondering if the word “Middle East” is on the outs and why. I suspect Middle East is eurocentric for some reason, but West Asia also preserves Europe as a continent, which is Eurocentric in its own way because Europe is not a continent and never was. If we’re calling anything West Asia, it should be Spain and Portugal.
Different parts of the world are going to look at geography differently. Different countries don’t even agree on the number of continents and what they are.
If an Iranian said West Asia, I probably wouldn’t disagree because that is them referring to their home country in a direct translation of how they see it. They don’t have the cultural baggage of English speakers, so they will look at themselves differently.
I have a strong suspicion that language prescribed by an Iranian official will have no bearing on what people call that region in English.
“Middle East” is a reference point from the British Isles where there is a more significant chunk of geography directly east of it. When you move into Central Europe, the ME region is called “near East” when translated literally. Because we are already a bit further east and the reference points change. There isn’t an English-language equivalent in the West because there’s mostly water.
Having exported this language to beyond mostly water to the new world, the designation stuck although it makes no sense from a North American perspective. If we all spoke a truly international version of Esperanto, things might be different. But that’s not how it worked out.
I don’t think ME as a term has acquired the same problematic stench as “orient” and variants thereof in English. Cardinal directions are quite resistant to that. The Confederate States of America haven’t ruined “South” as a term. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea hasn’t made “North” go out of style.
It’s an orientalist term, relative to “the far East”, and yes, Eurocentric too. The region known as the “Middle East” is actually West Asia. It’s in Asia.
Sure, Europe is an Asian peninsula, whatever, but at least “conventionally” Europe is considered its own continent. The countries in the “Middle East” are conventionally considered to be Asian and the westernmost part of Asia. Everybody, including the people who live there, considers the region a part of Asia. That’s not a disputed thing. So it makes sense to call them West Asia. I suppose if you want to recognise Europe as an Asian peninsula then we’d have to call West Asia something else.
So this ultimately goes back to the ancient Greeks, but really the last days of the Roman Empire.
Ancient Greeks drew a clear distinction between themselves and the Iranians, who were to the east. Hence “the East” was seen in Greece as uncouth, aggressive, and imperialist, in contrast to rational, honourable Greece. The Romans, who also didn’t get along with Iran, adopted the Greek idea and spread it around Europe. (And they all looked down on the Arabs, who the Greeks sort of lumped in with the Iranians).
But this separation wasn’t particularly a thing for the late ancient or entire medieval worlds; if people were aware of other lands, they mostly didn’t divide the world into East and West. No, the concept of a division came right at the start of the early modern era, when the Eastern Roman Empire, who identified with the Greeks as well as the Romans, was conquered by Ottoman Türkiye. Ethnic Greeks found references to the barbaric East in ancient sources and revived the idea of “the East” as evil, in contrast to the civilised “West” (ignoring the fact that the Iranians and Turks were plenty civilised, and the uncivilised Mongols had wrecked the shit of every civilisation they came across). Turks were perceived as bizarre, Satanic foreign invaders; Türkiye was also a highly-centralised multicultural state, while the rest of Europe was a patchwork of non-state peoples held together by custom and oaths. Türkiye was thus also seen as exotic and Other. Early modern Christians also attached these traits to Islam as a whole, as they initially were not really away of other Muslim cultures.
A couple of notes. Ottoman Türkiye spanned Europe and Asia, but was culturally a very European country, especially in the 15th century, when the above events went down. The sultans were more concerned with Rumelia than Anatolia; they thought positively of Europeans while heaoing scorn on Arabs, Armenians, and Kurds; and the Ottoman court was utterly dominated by Christian converts to Islam from the Balkans (which was an official policy). See The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, Caliphs by Marc David Baer for an extensive exploration of this, and also a sweeping look at all that was glorious and terrible about Ottoman Türkiye. You, the person reading this, should absolutely read that book.
Also, no medieval Europe did not have countries, with the possible exception of the Eastern Roman Empire. Peasants gave part of their labour to a local minor lord, who would swear allegiance to a bigger lord, who swore allegiance to a still higher lord, and so on up to the king, but the king only directly controlled a relatively small area of land. The king had no direct authority over the lands of the lesser nobility, who owned those lands; custom and their respective oaths of allegiance, rather than law, dictated that people obeyed the king, and conversely, the king could only push his subjects around so much before they rebelled. Historian Bret Devereaux talks qutie a bit about how medieval Europe actually worked; there is a series here, comparing A Song of Ice and Fire to real history, and another one here, which uses a playthrough of Crusader Kings III to talk about medieval politics. Again, worth reading, though there is quite a lot.
A point that neither Baer nor Devereaux ever make, but can be inferred by reading both, is that the centralisation of power and increasing power and euthority of kings in central and western Europe was the Turks, with their highly-centralised government and powerful sultan, winning quite often, and so the Christian powers gradually became more Turkish. There were real concerns that Catholicism and nascent Protestantism would be conquered and subsumed by Islam.
But anyway! Early modern European Christians drew a distinction between themselves as the Muslim Turks (though before Süleiman the Magnificent became caliph, the majority of the sultan’s subjects were also Christian). Thus, “The West” was Christian, and they identified as the heirs of Greece and Rome. “The East” was Muslim/Turkish (though Baer argues that Türkiye had a far better claim to be the inheritors of Rome and Germany (the “Holy Roman Empire”) or Russia (the “Third Rome”)). There were real fears that Catholicism and nascent Protestantism would be conquered and subsumed by Islam; at best, they would be made subject to a Muslim autocrat, as had already happened to the Greek Orthodox Church. There was some real complexity and nuance here; Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was so unpopular he was derided as the “baptised Turk” (Süleiman was the unbaptised Turk), and Pope Clement VII declared it would be a positive devel
But on the whole, European Christian countries saw Türkiye as different to themselves. Muslim Turks belonged to “the East”, as opposed to European Christians, who belonged to “the West”.
Later on, as trade routes expanded and Europeans learned that Asia was rather large and home to multiple Muslim cultures, and even places that didn’t worship the god of Moses at all, they divided “the East” into three parts. Türkiye, the original “East”, became the Near East. India and China were lumped together as the “Far East”. And so Arabia and Iran, situated bewteen the “Near East” and the “Far East”, were naturally the “Middle East”. Nowadays, of course, “Middle East” mostly means “countries that write with the Arabic script” while “Far East” is rarely used and you don’t see “Near East” at all.
Oh, and at some point people quietly agreed that those European countries that went communist were not part of “the West”, because to many, “the West” is basically generally good and something to aspire to, which the Second World was not. Because the whole concept of “the West” and “places that aren’t the West” is about Othering, making people in “the West” feel superior for being “Western”.
And now you know.
Middle East and West Asia are both terms that can be used kind of interchangeably, it just depends on the context. And yes, Europe is a glorified peninsula of the continent of “Eurasia”. Interestingly, Russia and a few other countries that straddle the boundary of Europe and Asia teach it as one continent.
In my opinion, the idea of “continents” is ambiguous if we define it as no sea in between, Afro-Eurasia is a monster that isn’t helpful to categorise the world. There’s good videos on the topic by CGP Grey and Map Men (previously Jay Foreman), you should go look at that I think!
I would rather divide the world based on the geological definition of continents, about the major tectonic plates! But even that can be difficult since what constitutes as a “major” tectonic plate? It’s still better in my opinion, since it’s something that can be discussed by geologists rather than politicians.
According to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tectonic_plates
Under this definition, the continents are (if we only consider major plates as defined by Wikipedia):
- Eurasia
- Africa
- North America
- South America
- Australia
- Antarctica
- Pacific (mostly ocean)
if we include the some of the larger minor plates (I feel like we should):
- Carribean
- Arabia
- India (subcontinent has levelled up!)
- Somali
- Nazca (again, mostly ocean)
- Philippines (another ocean one)
There are lots of smaller ones but those are mostly ocean too
I think it would be neat if the world was divided to have India, Arabia, the Carribean, and Eastern Africa to have the Europe sort of treatment! India alone has more people than the whole of Europe combined
Russia “straddling” the continents is an understatement when it’s confusingly part of both. How can one country and continuous land mass be in two continents? Make that make sense.
Ah, that was avery insightful video. Thanks:
I’m Iranian and can confirm that it’s terminology that is being pushed in the general resistance to the West, as the ‘Middle East’ is seen as a colonial term. It describes the region’s relationhip to Britain. So the term West Asia appeals to lots of people in China, India, Pakistan and former colonies in general.
I personally don’t like it. If we’re scrapping the term ‘Middle East’, I’d like to emphasize how the region does in fact sit in the middle between Europe, Africa and Asia. It’s at the center of this supercontinent (and it’s strategic geography is making itself known at the moment). It’s the middle of the ‘World Island’ so to speak, but I have trouble coming up with a catchy phrase for it.
The answers to your primary and secondary questions: it’s political.
Iran calls itself “west Asia” specifically to be contrarian to the Western vernacular. That, and “middle east” is a Roman thing (as is Asia) and Iranians are still a bit put out by the Persian empire falling to Greece and Rome. Most Iranians identify as Persian and consider Iran a Western political entity they’re stuck with but that doesn’t define them.
You know how there’s people in the southern US that live as though the Confederates never lost and they want to hold on to their history and culture? Persians are much more that way.
Who else advocates for “West Asia”? Is it just Iran?
There was a really insane dude I ran into somewhere on the internet that would just always talk about how great Persia was and was always bringing up the Persian Empire and talking about how Persian armies defeated Rome or Greece (aka The West) in this or that battle–totally out of context–so I know what you’re talking about.
Oh, and the Iranian guy who uses “West Asia”, also refers to “The West,” meaning Europe and the US, so I guess everyone falls into geographical relativitity eventually.
Iranians hold no grudge toward Greece, Rome or Alexander the Great.
Iranians do not identify as Persian first. Iran is home to multipld ethnicities including Fars, Arab, Azeri, Kurd, Turk, Lur, Baluch and more. Normally, members of these groups identify as Iranian first.
In the diaspora it is more common for Iranians to try to distance themselves from Iran, and that is why some tend to emphasize their ethnicity first. That’s would be a really weird thing to do in Iran. What if you met someone who said “I’m a New Yorker, not an American?”
It might be really weird, but it’s what my friends who live in Tehran do. There’s also this odd relationship with Afghani Persians and with non-Persian Iranians.
They’ll still claim Iran as their nation though. I’ve always found it odd, because with most other groups it’s what you’d find with the diaspora, although the Irish in Northern Ireland call themselves Itish, the Welsh call themselves Welsh, the Scottish call themselves Scottish, even though they’re all officially part of the UK — kind of a similar thing here. And like how someone from Georgia US or Kentucky identifies themselves by their state and not their nation first.
Hm, interesting. In my experience, it is much more common for the minority groups to emphasize their ethnicity. Which makes sense, because they speak another language and often have family or even a farm ‘back home’ in some specific region of the country. Persians rarely speak of themselves in those terms.
For Afghani I think the difference comes back to the nation split again - they may be Persian, but they’re not Iranian. (It doesn’t really make sense but that’s how I think a lot of people think about this issue.) They are very much the target of a lot of prejudice as well.
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Yeah, and we also adopted continental for mainland European, which makes very little sense, though I guess that’s more the inheritance of language.
I always thought of things between the mediteranian and india as the middle east but it kinda needs to be south of russia. can’t say these are hard boarders but its the feel I have when its mentioned.
we call it the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, and NE Africa
but if someone said “Eastern Mediterranean” or “Southwest Asia” I suppose I’d know what they meant
Maybe Asia Minor can make a come back too
Asia Minor is more like Turkiye, North Macedonia, the Baltics
The Middle East is in the middle of the Eastern hemisphere.
No, it is roughly in the middle of the Old World. The middle of the Eastern Hemisphere is further east, in the Bay of Bengal southwest of Myanmar.
The counteies like Iraq, Iran, and the Stans are just west of 90E. They could be considered West Middle East, but they’re closer to the middle than either edge of the hemisphere.
The terms near east, middle east, and far east are labeled as such because of their position relative to the prime meridian, which runs through Europe.
Eurocentric map. Well done proving everyone who is pushing back against middle east right.
Also it’s not “middle” of the eastern hemisphere either. That’d be India and China.
Europe is only in the middle because that’s where the prime meridian is at. Everyone uses the same longitude and latitude and the hemispheres are the same for everyone. It’s definitely in the middle third of the Eastern hemisphere.
That’s not where the name comes from. It comes from the distinction of the “far east” (China, Japan, etc) vs. the “middle east” or the “near east.” Which is why many people think it’s Eurocentric, it literally treates Europe as the center.
The prime meridian runs through western Europe. Most of Europe would be in the near East, relative to that point. China is on the far east of the hemisphere. They are fair labels based on their position to the prime meridian.
Middle East is meaningless, officially. East of what, middle of where? It’s a cultural designation rather than one that is strictly defined by geography. In the Obama administration, we tended to refer to it as “The Middle East and North Africa.”
It’s East of the prime meridian and it’s in the middle of the Eastern hemisphere. It is strictly defined by geography.
Yes, but if we’re going to avoid cultural designations, we’d also have to avoid granting Europe continent status and calling the ME “West Asia” implicitly does that.
What was the logic in throwing North Africa in there?
North Africa is mostly Arab Muslims just like the Middle East, so for many purposes it makes some sense to talk about those regions as a group.
Asia is a most curious continent. It has a centre, a south, an east, a far east, and a south east.
It doesn’t have a north. It doesn’t have a west. It certainly has no northwest.
The north is called russia. The west and southwest are called the middle east.
The definition of a continent is geological. Geology is a science. By all rights, Europe is part of the Asian landmass. And that should be the end of the story. Culture and history shouldn’t play a part.
It would be like if biologists said, “We know dogs aren’t really human, but we love them so much we’re going to classify them as Homo fidelis anyway.”
It doesn’t make any sense.
Continents are social conventions, not strictly scientific. If it was purely scientific you’d either end up with 4 (if going by “big contiguous land mass”), 7 (if going by “major tectonic plates” thereby putting Hawaii and bits of California on one continent), or almost 20 (if going by “any tectonic plates”) (or 6 or 5 depending on how else you want to slice the pie).
There are scientific interpretations of “continent,” but with everything in science there’s ongoing refinement to determine reality and thus a consensus on the exact classification of a landmass as a continent is not uniformly shared.
The existence of a scientific term does not preclude the existence of colloquial or political usage with a different definition, and to prescribe a single definition (and a minority one at that) as the single source of truth is myopic.
Generally, I like colloquial terms to stay colloquial and scientific terms to stay scientific. I am not going to correct someone for calling a mountain goat a goat–looks like a goat, acts like a goat, close enough, but don’t say it’s in Capra.
For me, I’m perfectly happy defining landmasses by conjoined areas on a map, with the only real sticking point being how small a landmass is small enough to discount as conjoining (North and South America). That’s based on objective physical fact; how those facts are interpreted would be a matter of consensus, of course, but the problem set is much more simplified.
This is kind of related to the whole Pluto debate. “Planet” is a word that has popular meaning, but we all kind of agree that astronomy gets to be the ultimate arbiter. “Continent” has no such committee.
The concept of “continent” doesn’t really have clear consensus.
I’d argue that this is closer to “don’t put tomatoes in a fruit salad” rather than the Pluto thing.
There’s no colloquial definition of planet that would include Pluto and exclude the potentially hundreds of things like Pluto in our solar system save for “what I learned in school.” Pluto got planetary status because humanity saw it. It lost it because we found out more about it, it’s neighbors, and planets in general. Because no other definition really makes sense the scientific one prevails.
There are multiple colloquial definitions of continents and fruits/vegetables that make sense that are at odds with any scientific understanding therefore the scientific one doesn’t prevail.
Generally I like colloquial terms to stay colloquial and scientific terms to stay scientific.
That’s all well and good for terms that originate from and remain in science–there’s probably never going to be a conflicting term for “adenosine triphosphate” for instance, but for terms that originated elsewhere first and science had to adopt that’s not gonna happen. My previous comment was to your assertion that continent is a scientific term, when in reality it’s use predates the establishment of geology as a formal discipline by hundreds of years. To claim therefore that it is a scientific term and that you want it to stay that way is predicated on an untrue foundation.
There’s really no way to stop the masses from picking up and misusing scientific jargon, and whereas science is the means through which humanity learns more about the world, continued scientific progress will inevitably lead to more new terms that leak from science into a common parlance. When talking to scientists you just gotta mean the scientific thing; when talking to others you just gotta mean the other thing.
It’s also not just science, BTW. Every field has specialty language that conflicts. If you’re not a programmer you may not know what a string is. If you’re not in IT, you may not know the difference between a CPU and a monitor. That’s fine. That’s just how language works, and that’s what let’s us communicate with each other.
That was an enjoyable and elucidating read! Thank you!
ah ok, so you aren’t asking a question, you and your fuckboy @cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com are just there to push an agenda.
Meh. More like I don’t think I’m supposed to be calling it the Middle East without seeming like an imperialist and I don’t want to call it West Asia because I don’t like Europe being a continent, so I’m kinda stuck.
I’m also wondering how people interpret “Middle East”, because I’m sensitive to that shit, especially on a global website. Like I don’t want to be calling placed “third world” if that’s offensive to people in the developing world / global south / ???.
“Middle East” is what I’ve always known the region as, and it’s just a historical-cultural accident that, in my defense, makes just as much sense as separating Europe from Asia. So either we keep both ME and Europe, or we get rid of both, is my logic.
So do I have agenda? Sort of. But also just wondering what people’s thoughts are on the subject.
One of my recent posts here was, “What’s a very specific opinion you have phrased as a question?” in homage to that evergreen and annoying problem of push polling on question forums.
I don’t think I’m supposed to be calling it the Middle East without seeming like an imperialist
Then call it what people in the region call it themselves.
I don’t want to call it West Asia because I don’t like Europe being a continent, so I’m kinda stuck.
Not stuck at all. A unified continent wouldn’t be called “Asia.” The region called “Asia” (which itself is ambiguously defined) would still be called “Asia” (and still be ambiguously defined) and thus “West Asia” would be the region on the west side of “Asia” which would decidedly not be Europe.
The fact of the matter is that what we call ourselves and others is all political and a great deal of it is imperialism. We need terms to refer to areas and groups so people know what we’re talking about. If those groups aren’t like us there’s a great many terms we can use which just end up being dog whistles.
Is there any big difference in referring to “The Middle East and North Africa” vs “The Arab speaking world?” No, not really. Would people understand what you’re talking about either way? Yeah, probably. Would people understand what you mean by “West Asia?” So long as they aren’t being imperialist pedants, yes.
As an aside, it’s not the ‘Arab speaking world’. You could try ‘Arab World’ or ‘Arabic Speaking World’. Neither of which is technically correct, since Iranians, for example, neither speak Arabic nor consider themselves to be Arabs. ‘Muslim World’ might be better, if half-Christian Lebanon doesn’t object …
Where would this sub be without pedantry?
I like your answer the best–call it what people there want to be called.
But your solution raises a problem if there’s a disagreement in that region. Turkey can decide to call itself Türkiye, but a region with separate countries might have a disagreement on what to call their shared region. I bet Turkey would love to be in the region called, “The Former Ottoman Empire”, but Greece might not care for it.
How is Asia even a continent? And Europe is a continent? These are political lines but all one continent. I could have sworn that continent was once called Eurasia.
And yes, north of Asia is Russia. West of Asia is Europe (and Africa, which is another continent).
Eastern Europe is just the middle of the continent. It’s eastern Europe that is west of Russia.
NearEast. Long live the EU.
I call it middle Europe, and I hope it catches on. Europe is really one big continent spreading from Atlantic to Pacific, and it’s time we stopped giving it two different names.
Greater Macedonia?
