Australia and the Pacific, Second Edition

Elizabeth Leppman

Description

This eBook introduces readers to the geography of Australia and the Pacific, covering the culture region as a whole rather than individual countries. The volume emphasizes the region's people and their various ways of life, considering how they have adapted to, used, and changed the natural environments in which they live.

Like other titles in the 10-volume Modern World Cultures set, Australia and the Pacific, Second Edition explores the geographical features, climate, and ecosystems; population, settlement, and culture; and the history and economy of the region at hand. Also covered are the region’s diversity, challenges, and prospects.

Illustrated with full-color maps and photographs, and accompanied by a chronology, glossary, and further readings, these accessible titles offer an ideal starting point for research on the culture regions of the world.

Sujets

• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Lifestyle
• Geography
• Demography
• Pacific Ocean
• Politics
• Anthropology
• Pacific
• History
• Australia
• Social
• Culture

Informations

• Publié par: Infobase Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438199436
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Australia and the Pacific, Second Edition
Copyright © 2021 by Infobase
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For more information, contact:
Chelsea House An imprint of Infobase 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001
ISBN 978-1-4381-9943-6
You can find Chelsea House on the World Wide Web at http://www.infobase.com
Contents Preface Chapters Introducing Australia and the Pacific Physical Geography Historical Geography Cultural Geography Political Geography Economic Geography Regional Geography Australia and the Pacific Islands Look Ahead Support Materials Glossary Chronology Bibliography Further Reading About the Authors and Series Editor Index
Preface

Geography provides a key that unlocks the door to the world's wonders. There are, of course, many ways of viewing the world and its people, places, and environments. In this series—Modern World Cultures—the emphasis is on people and their varied ways of life. As you step through the geographic door into the 10 world cultures featured in this set, you will come to better know, understand, and appreciate the world's mosaic of peoples and how they live. You will see how different peoples adapt to, use, and change the natural environments in which they live. And you will be amazed at the vast differences in thinking, doing, and living practiced around the world. The Modern World Cultures series was developed in response to many requests from librarians and teachers throughout the United States and Canada.

This is what the Earth looks like at night. This image is a composite of hundreds of pictures made by orbiting satellites. Human-made lights highlight the developed or populated areas of the Earth's surface.
Source: NASA.
As you begin your reading visits to the world's major cultures, it is important that you understand three terms that are used throughout the series: geography, culture, and region. These words and their meanings are often misunderstood. Geography is an age-old way of viewing the varied features of Earth's surface. In fact, it is the oldest of the existing sciences! People have always had a need to know about and understand their surroundings. In times past, a people's world was their immediate surroundings; today, our world is global in scope. Events happening half a world away can and often do have an immediate impact on our lives. If we, either individually or as a nation of peoples, are to be successful in the global community, it is essential that we know and understand our neighbors, regardless of who they are or where they live.
Geography and history are similar in many ways; both are methodologies—distinct ways of viewing things and events. Historians are concerned with time, or when events happened. Geographers, on the other hand, are concerned with space, or where things are located. In essence, geographers ask: "What is where, why there, and why care?" in regard to various physical and human features of Earth's surface.
Culture has many definitions. For this series and for most geographers and anthropologists, it refers to a people's way of life. It includes everything we possess because we are human, such as our ideas, beliefs, and customs, including language, religious beliefs, and all knowledge. Tools and skills also are an important aspect of culture. Different cultures, after all, have different types of technology and levels of technological attainment that they can use in performing various tasks. Finally, culture includes social interactions—the ways different people interact with one another individually and as groups.
Finally, the idea of region is one geographers use to organize and analyze geographic information spatially. A region is an area that is set apart from others on the basis of one or more unifying elements. Language, religion, and major types of economic activity are traits that often are used by geographers to separate one region from another. Most geographers, for example, see a cultural division between Northern, or Anglo, America and Latin America. That "line" is usually drawn at the U.S.-Mexico boundary, although there is a broad area of transition and no actual cultural line exists.
The 10 culture regions presented in this series have been selected on the basis of their individuality, or uniqueness. As you tour the world's culture realms, you will learn something of their natural environment, history, and way of living. You will also learn about their population and settlement, how they govern themselves, and how they make their living. Finally, you will take a peek into the future in the hope of identifying each region's challenges and prospects. Enjoy your trip!
Entry Author: Gritzner, Charles F.
Chapters
Introducing Australia and the Pacific

Australia and the Pacific, also referred to as "Oceania," is a vast region with seemingly endless seas that for eons kept people from entering and moving about the region because of the tyranny of distance and water. Australia, New Zealand, and the many island groups in the southern Pacific Ocean all feel the effects, in one way or another, of the world's largest ocean: the Pacific. The Pacific is larger than the area of all of the continents put together plus another Africa. To reach these oases of lands in the sea, various groups of settlers had to cross the ocean in whole or in part. A journey for the fearless. The ocean's nourishing counter clockwise currents in the Southern Hemisphere affect the climate and movement of animals and plants. Nevertheless, this region is very diverse; the ocean affects the lands in different ways.


Source: Infobase.
The cultural region formed by Australia and the Pacific involves a huge swath of the Earth's surface. Australia is about as big as the United States, without Alaska and Hawaii, and it is a continent in its own right. About 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) to the southeast lies New Zealand, an island country about the size of Colorado. The eastern half of the island of New Guinea, making up the country of Papua New Guinea, lies north of Australia and is a little larger than California. (The rest of the island of New Guinea is part of the Southeast Asian country of Indonesia.) The smaller islands in the Pacific Ocean are often divided into three groups, based on cultural differences recognized by early European voyagers to the region. Nearest to Asia are the largest islands, forming Melanesia, from the Greek words for "black" ( melanos ) and "islands" ( nesos ) because the people there have dark skin coloring. Micronesia, from "small" ( micros ) and "islands" ( nesos ) is to the north of Melanesia and includes the Marianas, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia. Polynesia ("many islands") stretches to the east as far as Easter Island.
Islands have been grouped together for purposes of governing, in some cases rather arbitrarily for the convenience of former colonial rulers. Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu are independent countries. The United States controls Wake, Northern Marianas, Howland, Baker, and Palmyra islands. French Polynesia is still French, as are New Caledonia, Wallis, and Futuna. New Zealand rules the Cook Islands, Tokelau, and Niue. Pitcairn is British, and Easter Island belongs to Chile. Australia and New Zealand were once British colonies, then became dominions (internally self-governing), and today are independent countries that maintain ties to the British monarch and the Commonwealth of Nations. Papua New Guinea was governed by Australia on behalf of the United Nations after World War II and then became independent in 1975.

Palau is comprised of more than 200 islands in the western Pacific Ocean.
Source: Shutterstock. BlueOrange Studio.
All these countries and islands, large and small, together stretch from 110° west longitude (Easter Island) to about 110° east longitude (western Australia), and from about 21° north latitude (Northern Marianas) to about 47° south latitude (Southwest Cape, New Zealand). To put it another way, when it is noon on Easter Island, it is 3:00 A.M. the next day across the international date line in Perth, Australia. On the same day, weather may range from tropical warmth on Baker Island almost on the equator to a snowstorm on South Island in New Zealand. Papua New Guinea receives rain all year and has tropical rain forests, whereas central Australia is a desert.
Location also helps create the region's distinctiveness. It is about as far away from Europe and North America as you can get on Earth. Yet, many of its people maintain ancestral, cultural, social, and business ties to those regions. People in the Northern Hemisphere often call Australia and New Zealand "Down Under," because they are so used to seeing maps and globes with north at the top. Looking at a globe this way almost gives the impression that people in those countries are standing on their heads! Of course, that's a false idea because "up" and "down" refer to "away from" and "toward" the center of the Earth, and Australians and New Zealanders are standing on the Earth just like people anywhere. Before World War II, Europeans and North Americans referred to East Asia as the "Far East," and Australians and New Zealanders adopted that point of view. However, World War II in the Pacific Ocean quickly demonstrated that the East Asian "Far East" was really the "Near North." Today these countries are part of the Pacific Rim, building trade and other connections with their Asian neighbors to the north. They have also received many immigrants from Asia since the 1970s.
Like the Americas and Africa south of the Sahara, Australia and the Pacifi