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Originally Posted by Val_1
Well, Set the Way Back Machine to 1652. How old is that map? Yes, the Middle East was considered the Orient once, but I think it refers to Eastern Asian as of late.
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This is my point. The meaning of the word has changed over the years. Language does that. It discards certain meanings, while retaining others.
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Traditionally, the Orient referred primarily to the cultures and countries of what are now considered the Middle East... As awareness of the countries of Eastern Asia grew in Western European and American consciousness in the late 19th century, the term came to refer to China, Japan, Korea, and surrounding nations.
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You can expand the definition of "the Orient" to include the problem of "Orientalism" and it's Euro-centric pejorative meaning (i.e. colonialism and European empire). This is a bad thing. As I hinted at earlier, it would be like hoity-toity Britons referring to Americans as backward uncultured colonials, and, let's face it, the British do have a much richer history and deep tradition of culture than Americans do. It's a matter of etiquette and sociability that those Americans simply lack.