|
Sponsored Links
The Indies or East Indies (or East India) is a term often used to refer to the islands of SE Asia, especially the Malay Archipelago.[1][2] In a wider sense, the Indies is also used to describe lands of South and Southeast Asia[1], occupying all of the present Indian Union, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and also Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Brunei, Singapore, the Philippines, East Timor, Malaysia and Indonesia. (Dutch-held colonies in the area were known as the Dutch East Indies before Indonesian independence). The East Indies may also include Indochina, the Philippine Islands, Brunei, Singapore and East Timor. It does not, however, include western New Guinea (West Papua), which is part of Melanesia. The inhabitants of the East Indies are sometimes called East Indians, distinguishing them both from inhabitants the subcontinent of India, the Caribbean which is also called the "West Indies," and from the indigenous peoples of the Americas who are often called "American Indians." (In North America however, the term East Indian may be used for people originating India living in North America.) However, the peoples of the East Indies comprise a wide variety of cultural diversity, and the inhabitants do not consider themselves as belonging to a single ethnic group. Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam are the most popular religions throughout the region, while Christianity, Sikhism, Jainism and various other traditional beliefs and practices are also prominent in some areas. The major languages in this area draw from a wide variety of language families, and should not be confused with the term Indic, which refers only to a group of Indo-European languages from South Asia. The extensive East Indies are subdivided into two sections (from a European perspective), archaically called Hither India and Further India. The first is the former British India, the second is modern Southeast Asia or the ASEAN Bloc.
|
East Indies Subcategories
East Indies Articles
|
|
