Near East

[fredpuli47]

Where was the Near East ? What happened to the term?We have the Middle East and the Far East now but no Near East.Pretty sure that, decades ago,the Near East included Palestine, but Israel now seems to be in the Middle East !

[Quizmonster]

The Near East was broadly defined as "the countries of the eastern Mediterranean". This was sometimes expanded to include North Africa, the Balkans and south-west Asia...Saudi Arabia, Iraq etc. I haven't seen the term used in decades.

[jno]

In the days when when Israel was in the Near East, I don't know if there was a Middle East (perhaps it was out Afghanistan way?). The Far East is still there but increasingly being called East Asia while India/Pakistan/Sri Lanka and maybe Bangladesh get called South Asia.

[Quizmonster]

In 1902, A T Mahan wrote: "The Middle East, if I may adopt a term I have not seen, will some day need its Malta as well as its Gibraltar." Its earliest actually recorded definition from a year later says: "Those regions of Asia which extend to the borders of India..."
So, the actual term has been around for over a century and would certainly have includedPalestine/Israel.

[Quizmonster]

To tie up the time-line I've got involved in here, I should add that the earliest use of the phrase Near East was in the 1860s and even Kipling referred to the nearer East before the end of the 19th century.
As regards the demise of the phrase, the RAF Command known as the Near East Air Force (NEAF) was disbanded in the mid-1970s.