South Asia

• EU and Morocco

• Review of North Africa & SW Asia

• Questions

• South Asia– Scope and Features– Major Qualities

THE REALM

Five Regions

• India

• Pakistan

• Bangladesh

• Mountainous North

• Southern Islands

Major Geographic Qualities of South Asia

• Well defined physiographically– Monsoon climate

• The world’s second largest population cluster– 1.4 billion

• Grinding poverty– 22% of world’s population, 3% of land area

• Population concentrated in villages – North Indian Plain – Uttar Pradesh

• British colonial legacy, India, a federal state• Religion and nationalism• Boundary issues

– Kashmir

WHAT CLIMATE VARIABLES HELP TO EXPLAIN

THIS DISTRIBUTION?

Aw: The World’s monsoon climates

MONSOONS

• Monsoon– India is the ‘textbook example’– 50% of arable land irrigated by monsoon– Over half world’s population is in monsoonal

regions– It is a wind, not the rain

• Seasonal reversal of winds • General onshore movement in summer• General offshore flow in winter

MonsoonsMonsoons

Impact of the Monsoon

• Regional variation• Vital to rice production in India• But:

– Widespread flooding and property damage• Transportation• Housing

– Erosion and destruction of agricultural land– Disease– Malnutrition– Death

• Impact exacerbated by deforestation

Culture

• Religion– Islam is dominant in Pakistan and

Bangladesh.• But 150 million Muslims in India

– Hinduism is dominant in India.

– Sikhism in northern India, Punjab

– Buddhism is dominant in Sri Lanka.

Culture Hearth: The Indus River

• Early agriculture & hydraulic civilizations

• Arts and trade routes emerged from isolated tribes and villages to towns and beyond. – Hinduism emerged from the beliefs and practices

brought to India by the Indo-Europeans c. 600 BC

– Buddhism – Prince Siddhartha 300 BC

– Diffusion of Islam 700-1600 CE

Two more Early Culture Hearths

LANGUAGES

RELIGION

HINDUISM

• The world’s oldest religion

• Culture hearth of the Indus River Valley

• Diffused south and east down the Ganges

HINDUISM

• Intricate web of religious, philosophical, social, economic, and artistic elements

• No common creed

• No single doctrine

• No direct divine revelation

• No rigid narrow moral code

• Caste system: rigid social stratification

Colonial Transformation 1

• East India Company – 1599– Benefits from factionalization

• Warring principalities

• Islam-Hinduism-Buddhism

– Drives out French, Dutch and Spanish rivals– Indian Mutiny (Sepoy Rebellion) of 1856– British Viceroy assumes control 1857-1947

Colonial Transformation 2

• Benefits of Colonial Era– British civil service and public administration– Centralization of political control of rival states– Railway network– Irrigation canal network– Discouraged suttee, infanticide, child marriage

• Costs of colonial era– Dependency and indignity– Resources extracted for Britain’s benefit

• Independence and partition, 1947

PARTITION AND

ISLAM

Independence and Partition

15 million refugees