Eastern world

The term Eastern world refers very broadly to the various cultures or social structures and philosophical systems, depending on the context, most often including at least part of Asia or geographically the countries and cultures east of Europe, north of Oceania. The term is usually not used by people in this region itself, since this Eastern world is a varied, complex and dynamic region, hard to generalize, and although these countries and regions have many common threads running through them, historically they never needed to define themselves collectively against another entity, real or superficial.

The term originally had a literal geographic meaning. It contrasted Asia with the cultures and civilizations of Western Europe. Traditionally, This includes Central Asia (comprising Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), the Far East (comprising mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan in East Asia; Russian Far East in North Asia; plus Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam in Southeast Asia), the Middle East (a.k.a. the Near East) or Western Asia (comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Cyprus, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen), Siberia (a.k.a. North Asia), and the Indian subcontinent (comprising Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Maldives, and Sri Lanka plus the British Indian Ocean Territory and the island countries in the Indian Ocean).

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