When did the idea of certain countries being Easterly & others Westerly first appear?
Was it with the ‘invention’ of Greenwich Mean Time which first gave the globe a centre line to measure against?
I was reading a book on anthropology which explained the different words countries had evolved over the years for ‘foreigners’, and many of these were derivations of “man from East”, “person from West” or such like.
Surely if you lived in China you would see India as a Westerly country. Similarly, a Japanese man would see China as a Westerly country, and Canada as an Easterly. It’s all relative.
But this does not appear to be the case in the creation of these words, with even China & Japan considering themselves Easterly.
Are these asumptions all post-Greenwich Mean Time?
Well, just to muddy the waters a bit. Speaking from a Chinese perspective. The Japanese and Chinese see themselves as neighbors, and Asians. Not as East and West.
The Russian Far East is still seen as the caucasion Russia rather than fellow Asians vis-a-vis China/Japan/Korea.
India is seen as South or Southwest. But certainly not part of “The West”. In what is now known as North Asia, the people don’t really think of India as part of whatever North Asia is part of.
NOrth/south is an easy geographic divide. East West simply can not be defined in terms that anywhere near a majority can accept. There are no clear geographic, linguistic, cultural, religious divides between Eur-Asia.
On the face of it, it derives from the Euro-centric view of the world. Before the foundation of the American Empire, most important world powers were in Europe. Apart from Europe, all important foreign countries were to our east.
The area around Turkey and the Caucasus - the Ottoman Empire - were the Near East. After that, you came to the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia, Persia, Iraq and much of India are now. Finally, you came to the Far East, which was China and Japan.
The Greenwich line goes through London for similar reasons. If it had been invented by an American today, it would probably go through Greenwich Village.
I think it had to do with the Iron Curtain that fell across Europe after World War II. It was basically an imaginary line that seperated East Europe from West Europe. As the years wore on, West Europe prospered while East Europe fell in to shambles. So when we say “Western nations”, we are generally referring to prosperous Western European nations, as well as a few of its traditional allies, such as the USA, Australia… etc.
Well, Japan has considered itself the land of the Rising Sun because… there is pretty much no land beyond that until you cross the entire Pacific which they did not do too often until recently. So they do consider themselves the “East” and it makes sense to me. Until relatively recently in history the Atlantic/Americas/Pacific were the great division. Japan was to the East of everything Europeans and Asians knew while Europe was to the West of everything they knew.