Why are we referred to as being in the "West" by Eastern countries when the worlds round?

Question

Technically therefore if you kept going west, you would eventually hit an eastern country, so why isnt that a western country ?

See my dilemma ?

I presume there must be some universal way of saying this vertical line splits east/west ?

Confused, because i am ?

Answer 1

Because the world is divided into hemispheres. The hemispheric system was designed by Europeans, who determined that people to the east of them were the "Eastern Hemisphere" and people to the west of them were the "western hemisphere." So there you go.

Answer 2

The world is split down the middle by the International Meridian which goes through London and comes up the other side through the Pacific Ocean. If you start from Greenwich and head west you will remain in the western hemisphere until you reach the 180 degree latitude line. Anything after that is the eastern hemisphere. That is the reason why the UK is always centre of a world map.

Answer 3

The terminology dates from when people did not know that the earth was round. They also did not know about the Americas (or for that matter Australia, Antartica and Greenland, although these are less relevant to the immediate question). When you draw a map of the world thinking that the entire extent of the landmass is Europe, Asia and Africa, then clearly Europe is in the West and Asia is in the East (and Africa is to the South). When America was settled by Europeans, and since it is to the west of Europe, the split became two Hemispheres, Americas and Europe in the Western Hemisphere and Asia in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Answer 4

The Prime Meridian (the zero point of the longitude scale) runs through Greenwich, England (being the superpower when such things were set up). Thus asian countries are the "far east", the eastern edge of the med is the "middle east", and the New World is to the west. Also explains how the "West Indies" are in the Caribbean...

Answer 5

You're right, it's arbitrary, but here are a couple of conventions that contribute to the labels:

1. There is a median drawn through Greenwich, England, UK that is arbitrarily defined as 0 degrees longitude. Strictly speaking, only points west of that line are in the "Western Hemisphere," but the colloquial definition has apparently inflates to include "first-world countries within a couple dozen points of that line and thence westward to 180 degrees west longitude." Other answerers have spoken to the Euro-centric mapmaking, colonialism, and trade routes that created an economic and cultural image of the world with the "center" in Europe.

2. The international dateline, which falls in the western Pacific, pretty much demarcates the dividing line on that side of the globe. But Australia, which is in the Eastern Hemisphere, is sometimes also referred to as "Western"--or first-world.

Some writers have gone to a "North-South" schema, to divide the "rich, first-world" countries of the world ("North") from the "South." However, Australia is often included in the "North" group.

Answer 6

It is simply a historical leftover. As in the history of the 'civilised' world back then.

Essentially it was far easier to trade across land than sea so trade routes went across land from Europe in the 'west' to Asia in the 'east'.

Ships generally followed the coast because neither ships or navigation were up to the job of accurately crossing very large bodies of water until much later. Also the world was flat for a very long time!

America simply did not exist on the world map at that time, until Marco Polo is historically famed as discovering it while trying to sail to China by going west across the ocean. It was thought that the sea at China was the same sea as in Europe. It never occurred to them that there might be something in the way!

Answer 7

The reason I think is because they are in the east and we are in the west just as Yorkshire is east of the Pennines and Lancashire is west of them. If your argument is correct that to keep going west you will arrive in an eastern country, then it is equally true that if you keep travelling west long enough you will eventually arrive back in the west. It is you that will cross borders and time lines. They countries are not moving at anything like the same rate.

Answer 8

When Britain and our relative neighbours (France, Spain, Holland, Portugal etc) all had empires, we produced the maps & atlases to show western Europe in the centre of the world. So most of the world's view of the globe was the American continent on the west, and Asia in the east. That image is so well established, that a map showing America in the centre and Siberia on the left (or west) would look strange to us now.

Answer 9

its just historic

any countries that trace a big part of their cultural heritage to rome, and greece, and the "cradle of civilization" areas, are sort of stuck with that geographic world view in our references

therefore,

china, india, japan is "the east"

and, western europe, and the america's "the west"

marco polo went east to find china
columbus went west to get to the americas

there is no real universal line, its just sort of an area

and of course, chinese sources do not put china in "the east"
I presume they consider that marco polo came from "the west"

Answer 10

I think it's we who started the "east-west" stuff. It's all based on Eurocentricity--i.e., we like to think of Europe and North America as the center of everything. We made up the meridians, the east-west dividing lines.