Everyone calls it ‘Middle East’, whether it's in a book or on television. But no one noticed why this term ‘East or West’ middle. There is a history behind this that is important to know when this particular phrase gets spoken at a very high level. This term was occupied during the British Empire. As reports suggest, this phrase was first used in 1902 by an American naval strategist, Alfred Thayer Mahan. At that time. He described the lands between India and the Persian Gulf as the ‘Middle East”. What happened is, Europe centred the map, measuring identity by distance from London. The "Middle" East sat strategically between the Near East (Balkans) and the Far East (China and Japan) in this Eurocentric worldview.
