Please excuse the unintended querulousness, but isn't the Greenwich meridian
merely the reification of this bias?
The Greenwich meridian division was established in 1884 by representatives
from 25 countries, mostly from Europe and the Americas. Though there were,
notably, representatives from Japan and Hawaii. See
http://greenwichmeridian.com for more info regarding this International
Meridian Conference.
Nonetheless, and more to my point, the terms "Near East" and "Far East"
were in use long before this.
@D
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Cowan" <cowan@mercury.ccil.org>
To: "David Gallardo" <dgallardo@mediaone.net>
Cc: "Marco Cimarosti" <marco.cimarosti@essetre.it>; <unicode@unicode.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2001 10:56 PM
Subject: Re: Term Asian is not used properly on Computers and NET
> David Gallardo scripsit:
>
> > Actually it would be more accurate to say that geographic expressions
> > involving cardinal points without an _explicit_ point of reference are
> > biased, because they traditionally assume that Europe is the _implicit_
> > point of reference
[rest of my quote omitted]
>
> Nevertheless, the convention of the Greenwich meridian, which defines
> East Longitude and West Longitude, is an internationally agreed-on
> one. The convention says that every point in East Longitude is
> east of every point in West Longitude, which gives "east" and "west"
> absolute if arbitrary meaning.
[additional deletia]
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