South Asia
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EU and Morocco
Review of North Africa & SW Asia
Questions
South Asia
– Scope and Features
– Major Qualities
THE REALM
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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
Monsoons
Impact of the Monsoon
• Regional variation
• Vital to rice production in India
• But:
– Widespread flooding and property damage
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• 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
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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