Talk:Eastern world

A challenge: the Eastern "West"
The East-West terminology is messy, and we can not avoid that, but there is one aspect of it which is not being mentioned: The Eastern Roman, Orthodox, Eastern European etc. These are referred to both by themselves and others as Western or Eastern depending upon the context. The confusion started in Alexander's time when the Greek speaking world took over the old East, and became more and more like it, despite still maintaining an old idea of being separate at the same time. I would agree that this can not be a core feature of the article, but I do suggest a cross reference at least, mentioning the potential confusion, to the other relevant articles. The subject is surprisingly important. You just have to see the way in which someone as important Putin makes the contrast.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:37, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I concur. Besides highly Europhile Russians (a legacy of Peter the Great), no one in Orthodox countries considers themselves as a part of the "West." West-East terminology is inherently Roman-centric, an unavoidable point. While the West is a more cohesive whole, largely divisable North and South between latin and germanic peoples, the East covers a very broad spectrum. It is also a cultural and geographic term, and has no correlation with vague concepts of "race" (itself a dubious and ever-changing system). Countries, especially Great Powers which aren't caught under a 'sphere of influence', which have underwent Westernisation programmes also can not realistically be considered a part of the West, examples of such include Russia (which caused a massive stir, the population being Slavophile and Eurasianophile), China, Japan and the Ottoman Empire. Historically, the East has been broken up do to it's great size and covers: the Near East (ottoman/byzantine East), Eurasia (the Eurasian steppe and now Eurasian Union), the Middle East and the Far East. Vyaiskaya (talk) 20:53, 23 December 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree with the general need for some attention to the Orthodox world in this article (surprised it's barely mentioned at all or glossed over), which is sort of in between West and East. It can be in either, both, or neither depending on context and criteria used. That said, I don't think a blanket statement like "no one in Orthodox countries aside from Europhile Russians considers themselves as part of the West" is true. I think many do consider themselves as part of the "greater West" (especially when compared with other parts of the world), if not the more narrow definition of Catholic and Protestant Western Europe, and the Anglosphere and its associated culture. But many aspects of that culture permeated Eastern Europe and even Turkey and the Caucasus to some extent. This is relatively recent (over the last few centuries or so) but still older than the shallow or thin veneer of Western culture in other parts of the world like Asia or Africa, often spread by either imperialism or the rise of American "global" culture. For better or for worse there is some kind of "European" identity that has been forged, whatever it's roots, whether or not this was an organic or planned process or some combination of the two... nationalist movements of the 19th century certainly played a role. I also don't think Russians are any more Western-leaning than other parts of Eastern Europe further to the west and south; if anything, I would say they're the ones that have the most independent-minded "Eurasian" leaning identities in the region. Comparatively I've seen many people in Central-East Europe and Southeast Europe/Balkans prefer leaning more toward the rest of Europe, despite their unique local cultures and often Orthodox faiths. Catholicism played a role in that in places like Poland and Hungary and Croatia. In Romania the Latin language brings some people's identity more westward, and there was a strong influence from France in terms of architecture, literature, art, etc. in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and collaboration with Western countries throughout this period. Not to mention many of the monarchs of the region's countries being of German origin. The use of Latin vs. Cyrillic script may also be highlighted. Greece is also an interesting case since in many ways it was the birthplace of what eventually developed into Western culture, but was subsequently pulled away from that during the Byzantine era, with the schism and Crusades, and even more so during the Ottoman era, but now has intentionally began re-approaching the west over the last few centuries since its independence. The whole region is a complex mixture of East Roman influences from before Western Culture truly became what it was, with some eastern (e.g. Turkish) currents and later western additions. Western Culture mostly emerged from the Romans taking aspects of ancient Greek thought and the later Medieval and Renaissance Europeans further molding it into something else. Also, where does something like Israel fit into all this? I support more attention being given to these issues in the article. Word dewd544 (talk) 15:57, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Eastern vs Western world (contents)
Why this article is so poor, compared to the Western world?

Western world (53,165 bytes) vs Eastern world (5,194 bytes). 90.166.249.165 (talk) 01:53, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Systemic bias. Most people who use wikipedia come from the western world and write most about what they are most familiar with. --Khajidha (talk) 18:52, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

The term itself is Roman in origin. But many people who edit it have no understanding of culture and ethnicity or geography, and are obsessed with racial classifications, which are ahistorical to the terms usage. This page needs cleaning up. Vyaiskaya (talk) 21:06, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Needs expansion and different perpectives
I've added a notice for globalizing into different perspectives other than the existing "Western" perspective (as far as I can tell); obviously there is a lot of systemic bias on WP, and this is one of the striking differences on the coverage between "Western world" and "Eastern world" topics. This article will need to be expanded and written from outside the "Western" point of view. - OjdvQ9fNJWl (talk) 10:37, 2 December 2012 (UTC)


 * What made him think the terms are symmetric? One refers to the western 20% of the Eurasian continent, the other to the eastern 80%. Clearly one is going to be more contiguous than the other. Also, how are you going to globalise an English lexeme? Write a Wiktionary entry with a few hundred translations? The Chinese equivalent is 東洋, lit. "eastern expanse", pretty much an exact translation. The implication here appears to be that it is "western-centric" to state Europe is in the West and China in the East. I do not understand this at all, do people think that from the Chinese perspective people somehow think they are in the West?


 * The calls for "globalization", typical for Wikipedia of 2012 I think, were profoundly misunderstood. The original, or at least pertinent, point was that coverage density is unequal by nature of articles being written by English speakers, e.g. every village in Europe has its own page, but not so for every village in Burma. As far as this just reflects variance in geographical focus of editors, it can be fixed. But as far as it concerns the de-facto availability of printed or authoritatively published sources, it cannot and should not be "fixed", i.e. if no reliable publications about every village in Burma has ever been compiled, Wikipedians should not research Burmese villages on their own. Much less did this ever mean that every page needs to be written from all geographic and cultural perspectives at once. There does not absloutely need to be a "reception in Burmese culture" section in the Joan of Arc page. It would only need such a section if it can be argued to be notable and relevant. People never make such an argument, they always seem to invoke that it is "self-evident" that such perspectives can be documented, but they never bother to present their research, or conclusive evidence researched by third parties.
 * "Orientalism" is a cultural pheonmenon in the West. Because it concerns the "East", it may well be relevant to present a well-researched section on the reception of western Orientalism in eastern cultures. But this is not going to be a mirror image of the main topic, but a secondary, subordinate "reception" section, just as Hinduism is primarily an Indian topic and does not need to be rewritten to give equal weight to the reception of Hinduism in the West. This should go without saying, of course, but I have learned that it does not, mainly because people switch off their brains when they are singnalling political correctness. --dab (𒁳) 08:54, 14 July 2017 (UTC)


 * The terms are clearly not symmetric as they are terms created by Western cultures, or more specifically, the Romans from their perspective. The equivalent term in East Asian cultures about the Eastern world would actually be 東方, not 東洋, which according to its entry is a dated term much like the Orient. There is no implication being made that it is Western-centric to state Europe is in the West and China is in the East. That is simply a result of the geography of the Eurasian landmass and the development of human history with Europe to the west of the landmass and China to the east of the landmass. If the history of the regions were reversed and Europe was in the east and China in the west, then what we call the Western world would refer to China and the Eastern world would refer to Europe, and this is only comparing one region of the Eastern world.
 * Mentioning systemic bias is not about signaling political correctness, and suggesting that other people are signaling political correctness when doing so is an accusation made in bad faith. Systemic bias is a well-known and documented problem on the English Wikipedia as most editors are from English speaking cultures or Western countries, however it is much better than the situation in other language Wikipedias, which also have systemic bias but more commonly suffer from the absence of well-written and researched articles simply because there are not enough editors that contribute to those wikis. Your inaccurate generalizations of why people bring up systemic bias misrepresents the intent behind addressing systemic bias. Addressing systemic bias is not about writing on a topic from every perspective even if they are non-notable and unrelated. Nor is it about giving equal weight to different perspectives on a topic when there is clearly a primary topic and perspective. Rather, it is writing about perspectives that are relevant to the topic and bring in notable sources and points of view that have not been significantly written about in the article and that have been published in non-English speaking cultures or non-Western countries. As you mentioned, there is also an issue of published reliable sources which are not as common in developing countries. I don't agree with your view that editors should not research topics on their own. If editors have the ability to create published, peer-reviewed, and reliable sources, then they definitely should publish those sources if they don't exist for a topic that is less covered. If they can find reliable sources that exist about a topic from a relevant perspective that has not been written about, then they should include those perspectives and sources. From your examples, a more balanced and complete article on Hinduism would in fact include Hinduism in the West, but clearly would not make it the primary perspective and topic of the article. OjdvQ9fNJWl (talk) 05:18, 12 August 2022 (UTC)


 * I've given the article a 'facelift', so to say. It was way too slanted towards east Asian culture. I included the cultures of South Asia and Middle East, including the beliefs of the indigenous peoples there, such as Iraqi and Syrian Christians - Nobody knows that Syriac Christianity is a large minority religion in the Middle East and the fact that the Middle East is not just Islamic with a Jewish minority. Christianity is more widespread there than Judaism even. Also, the article before was rather synonymous with Asia - Who said the 'eastern world' has to be purely Asiatic? As such, I made the article more 'broader' and included Oceanian countries. Because historically Australia was considered part of "southeast Asia", and geographically Australia and NZ are technically in the "eastern world". The article should not be split. The orient page should specifically be about the orients (which excludes Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures) and the culture of Asia should cover the culture of Asia. This article should take a more broader perspective and regard non-Asian countries which are geographically in the east. - Meganesia (talk) 12:37, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

The term is inherently Roman in origin, and by descent English. East-West are limitless designations, and the East and the West were defined in Roman origin and an accepted part of the English language, they do no refer to cardinal East and West. This is an English language page and the meaning of East is within that historical ntoion and concept. Having a directional East or West is a separate conceptualisation to which everyone is both east and west of everyone else. The West can be laregly divided into germanic and latinate blocs (North and South), while the East, being a well-established Roman term, is divided into four parts: the Near East (Ottoman/Byzantine East), Eurasia (Eurasian steppe/EaU), the Middle East, and the Far East. Vyaiskaya (talk) 21:04, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Map 'An image of the "Eastern world" defined as Asia or the "Far East"'
The caption doesn't fit the map - it misses out huge chunks of Asia (Western Asia, Central Asia, Siberia). It doesn't even include all the Far East, as it misses out the Russian Far East. The caption doesn't even match the actual map description, which is "The Eastern world, defined as "South Asia and beyond"...". Iapetus (talk) 16:16, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

This is problematic. While the West is a short definition, the East due to it's size has been subdivided: the Near East (i.e. former Ottoman/Byzantine), Eurasia (i.e. the steppe and EaU), the Middle East (Persia etc.), the Far East. Each should be clearly delineated to be explanatory of the complexity of what the 'East' implies. Vyaiskaya (talk) 20:56, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose merging Orient into Eastern world. I think the content in Orient can easily be explained in the context of Eastern world, and a merger would not cause any article-size or weighting problems in Eastern world. Occident redirects to Western world, which I thank is logical. The Orient and Occident are just outdated (but still widely used) terms for Eastern and Western worlds. --Heanor (talk) 08:21, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
 * IMO not a good idea. There is an immense amount of material and sourcing on the term there including historical and usage. An article in Wikipedia is that place to learn about that.    It also meets all of the criteria for a stand-alone article.  North8000 (talk) 15:14, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose merger. Orient may be move to something like Eastern culture, similar like we have Western culture. --Thesmp (talk) 18:29, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I created a stand-alone article for the term Occident too. Olchug (talk) 10:14, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose as well per reasons already stated. Clear Looking Glass (talk) 00:00, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Eastern Culture which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 21:52, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Has the West ever Influenced Asian culture.
I heard that East Asia has a growing influence on the Western Popular Culture such as Anime, Manga, Karate, Taekwondo, Kpop, Squid Game etc, but has the West ever influenced East Asian Popular Culture ? 2A02:C7C:38BD:EC00:490F:5616:DDC1:C241 (talk) 21:27, 22 December 2022 (UTC)