Defining Parameters

Abstract

Derived from the Latin word oriens meaning ‘east’, literally as in ‘rising’, the term Orient refers today to the Far East in particular, and Asia in general, while Oriental describes people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent and Indo- Chinese South East Asian groups such as the Vietnamese. However, the Orient, ‘until the early nineteenth century had really meant only India and the Bible lands’ (Said, 1978, p. 4). The Occident, on the other hand, from the Latin word occidens or ‘sunset’, refers to the West, as distinct from the East, which has almost invariably evoked both mythical and geographical Orients in the Western mind. Even as such perceptions of the East as the Orient existed, more and new ‘Orients’ were discovered (or shifted) relative to the gaze of Europe, such as the ‘Muslim Orient’ of the Near East (subsequently, the Middle East) and the Orient of the Far East. The Far East referred not only to China, Japan and the Koreas, but also to the lands and islands to the east of British India along the Eastern Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile the Indian sub- continent (South Asia), South Eastern Asia and the islands of Oceania, including the Philippines and the Malay Archipelago, were referred to as the East Indies from the sixteenth century onwards. Associated with the spice trade (and the wars to gain its control) the Malay Archipelago (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2006) refers to the archipelago between mainland South East Asia and Australia, comprising Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Brunei, the East Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, on the large island of Borneo, and East Timor or Timor Leste. Geographically closer to the Far East than to Europe and America, Australia and New Zealand are considered part of the Asia- Pacific region.