List of countries in Asia Being the biggest continent in the world, Asia includes 50 independent countries and occupies the eastern part of the single Eurasian landmass. Surrounded by the Arctic Ocean from the north, by the Pacific Ocean from the east and by the Indian Ocean from the south, it is separated from Africa […]

LAOS The earliest inhabitants of Laos were hunter-gatherers. Later they were farmers growing rice and pulses. The first farmers used stone tools but from about 2,000 BC bronze was used in Laos and from about 500 BC iron. However unlike Vietnam the people of Laos were influenced by Indian rather than Chinese culture. From the […]

MALAYSIA During the late 18th and 19th centuries, Great Britain established colonies and protectorates in the area of current Malaysia; these were occupied by Japan from 1942 to 1945. In 1948, the British-ruled territories on the Malay Peninsula formed the Federation of Malaya, which became independent in 1957. Malaysia was formed in 1963 when the […]

INDONESIA Indonesia is an archipelagic country of 17,000 to 18,000 islands (8,844 named and 922 permanently inhabited) stretching along the equator in South East Asia. The country’s strategic sea-lane position fostered inter-island and international trade; trade has since fundamentally shaped Indonesian history. The archipelago’s landforms and climate significantly influenced agriculture and trade, and the formation […]

SOUTH EAST ASIA CAMBODIA Cambodia’s history is marked with periods of peace and of great calamity. From its early cities to the introduction of Hinduism and Buddhism, the great kingdom of Angkor, colonialism, and the Khmer Rouge, this essay tries to put its current rebuilding of civil society in context of its incredible history and […]

FGHANISTAN The history of Afghanistan, began in 1747 with its establishment by Ahmad Shah Durrani. The written recorded history of the land presently constituting Afghanistan can be traced back to around 500 BCE when the area was under the Achaemenid Empire, although evidence indicates that an advanced degree of urbanized culture has existed in the […]