Oceania ( , ) including Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Oceania is also described as a continent, with mainland Australia regarded as its continental landmass.

Spanning the Eastern and Western hemispheres, at the centre of the water hemisphere, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of about and a population of around 46.3 million as of 2024, when including Australia but excluding the Malay Archipelago. When compared against other continental land areas, Oceania is the smallest and the second-least populated after Antarctica. It is home to Earth’s third-largest remaining area of tropical rainforest, which covers much of the island of New Guinea.

Oceania has a diverse mix of economies from the highly developed and globally competitive financial markets of Australia, French Polynesia, Hawaii, New Caledonia, and New Zealand, which rank high in quality of life and Human Development Index, Oceania was first explored by Europeans from the 16th century onward. Portuguese explorers, between 1512 and 1526, reached the Tanimbar Islands, some of the Caroline Islands, and west New Guinea. Spanish and Dutch explorers followed, then British and French. On his first voyage in the 18th century, James Cook, who later arrived at the highly developed Hawaiian Islands, went to Tahiti and followed the east coast of Australia for the first time. The island nation of Australia is the only piece of land in the area which is large enough to typically be considered a continent. The culture of the people who lived on these islands was often distinct from that of Asia and pre-Columbian America. Before Europeans arrived in the area, the sea shielded Australia and south central Pacific islands from cultural influences that spread through large continental landmasses and adjacent islands. The islands of the Malay Archipelago, north of Australia, mainly lie on the continental shelf of Asia, and their inhabitants had more exposure to mainland Asian culture as a result of this closer proximity. which derives from the Latin word , and this from the Greek word (), 'ocean'. The term Oceania is used because, unlike the other continental groupings, it is the ocean that links the parts of the region together. John Eperjesi's 2005 book The Imperialist Imaginary says that Since the mid-19th century, Western cartographers have used the term Oceania to organize and classify the Pacific region.

thumb|1852 map by Jean-Denis Barbié du Bocage. Includes regions of [[Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, and Malesia]]

In the 19th century, many geographers divided Oceania into mostly racially based subdivisions: Australasia, Malesia (encompassing the Malay Archipelago), Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. The 2011 book Maritime Adaptations of the Pacific, by Richard W. Casteel and Jean-Claude Passeron, states that Oceania has traditionally been considered a continent in anthropological studies, similar to Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Bartholomew described Oceania as one of six major world divisions, including Australia and Pacific islands. American author Samuel Griswold Goodrich wrote in his 1854 book History of All Nations that, some 19th-century geographers classified the Pacific islands as a third continent called Oceania, alongside the New and Old Worlds. In this book, the other two continents were categorized as being the New World (the Americas) and the Old World (Afro-Eurasia). In his 1879 book Australasia, British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace commented that, geographers commonly used Oceania to refer to the Pacific islands, with Australia as its central landmass. He did not explicitly label Oceania a continent in the book, but did note that it was one of the six major divisions of the world.

<div>In most non-English-speaking countries, Oceania is treated as a continent in the sense that it is "one of the parts of the world", and Australia is only seen as an island nation. In other non-English-speaking countries Australia and Eurasia are thought of as continents, while Asia, Europe, and Oceania are regarded as "parts of the world". Various writers from English-speaking countries have also described Oceania as a continent over the years. Prior to the 1950s, before the popularization of the theory of plate tectonics, Antarctica, Australia, and Greenland were sometimes described as island continents, but none were usually taught as one of the world's continents in the English-speaking countries.. In his 1961 book The United States and the Southwest Pacific, American author Clinton Hartley Grattan commented that, by 1961, the term Oceania to describe Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands was considered somewhat outdated. Australia is a founding member of the Pacific Islands Forum in 1971, and at times has been interpreted as the largest Pacific island. Some geographers group the Australian tectonic plate with others in the Pacific to form a geological continent. National Geographic defines Oceania as a continent based on its connection to the Pacific Ocean rather than landmass. Others have labelled it as the "liquid continent". The Pacific Ocean itself has been labelled as a "continent of islands", and contains approximately 25,000, which is more than all the other major oceans combined. In a 1991 article, American archeologist Toni L. Carrell wrote, The vast size and distances within the Pacific Basin make it challenging to view it as a single geographical unit.

Oceania's subregions of Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia cover two major plates; the Australian Plate (also known as the Indo-Australian Plate) and the Pacific Plate, in addition to two minor plates; the Nazca Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate.</div>

thumb|upright=1.3|Map displaying parts of [[Near Oceania and Remote Oceania with a focus on Efate]]

The new terms Near Oceania and Remote Oceania were proposed in 1973 by anthropologists Roger Green and Andrew Pawley. By their definition, Near Oceania consists of New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands, except the Santa Cruz Islands. They are designed to dispel the outdated categories of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia; many scholars now replace those categories with Green's terms since the early 1990s, but the old categories are still used in science, popular culture and general usage.

Boundaries

Islands at the geographic extremes of Oceania are generally considered to be the Bonin Islands, a politically integral part of Japan; Hawaii, a state of the United States; Clipperton Island, a possession of France; Rapa Nui (Easter Island), belonging to Chile; and Macquarie Island, belonging to Australia.

United Nations interpretation

The United Nations (UN) has used its own geopolitical definition of Oceania since its foundation in 1947, which utilizes four of the five subregions from the 19th century: Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. This definition consists of discrete political entities and so excludes the Bonin Islands, Hawaii, Clipperton Island, and the Juan Fernández Islands, along with Easter Island, which was annexed by Chile in 1888. It is used in statistical reports, by the International Olympic Committee, and by many atlases. Hawaii had not yet become a U.S. state in 1947, and as such was part of the original UN definition of Oceania. The island states of Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, and Taiwan, all located within the bounds of the Pacific or associated marginal seas, are excluded from the UN definition; already in 1947 Dutch New Guinea was counted as part of Asia. The CIA World Factbook also categorizes Oceania as one of the major continental divisions of the world, but the name "Australia and Oceania" is used. Their definition does not include all of Australia's external territories, but is otherwise the same as the UN's definition, and is also used for statistical purposes. The Pacific Islands Forum expanded during the early 2010s, and areas that were already included in the UN definition of Oceania, such as French Polynesia, gained membership.

Early interpretations

thumb|upright=1.85|A German map of Oceania from 1884, showing the region to encompass Australia and all islands between Asia and [[Latin America]]

French writer Gustave d'Eichthal remarked in 1844 that Oceania's boundaries extended across the entire Pacific Ocean. Conrad Malte-Brun in 1824 defined Oceania as covering Australia, New Zealand, the islands of Polynesia (which then included all the Pacific islands) and the Malay Archipelago. Worcester described Oceania as a collection of numerous Pacific islands, categorizing it as one of the world's five major divisions. He also viewed Oceania as covering Australia, New Zealand, the Malay Archipelago and the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. In 1887, the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland referred to Australia as the area's westernmost land, while in 1870, British Reverend Alexander Mackay identified the Bonin Islands as its northernmost point, and Macquarie Island as its southernmost point. The Bonin Islands at that time were a possession of Britain; Macquarie Island, to the south of Tasmania, is a subantarctic island in the Pacific. It was politically associated with Australia and Tasmania by 1870.

Alfred Russel Wallace believed in 1879 that Oceania extended to the Aleutian Islands, which are among the northernmost islands of the Pacific. Wallace insisted while the surface area of this wide definition was greater than that of Asia and Europe combined, the land area was only a little greater than that of Europe. She stated that Oceania was divided up into three groups; Australasia (which included Australia, New Zealand, and the Melanesian islands), Malesia (which included all present-day countries within the Malay Archipelago, not the modern country of Malaysia) and Polynesia (which included both the Polynesian and Micronesian islands in her definition). Publication Missionary Review of the World claimed in 1895 that Oceania was divided into five groups: Australasia, Malesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. It did not consider Hawaii to be part of Polynesia, due to its geographic isolation, commenting that Oceania also included, "isolated groups and islands, such as the Hawaiian and Galápagos." In 1876, French geographer Élisée Reclus described Australia's plant life as highly distinctive and noted that Hawaii and the Galápagos had significant numbers of unique, endemic plant species. Rand McNally & Company, an American publisher of maps and atlases, defined Oceania as including Australia and the Pacific islands while classifying the Malay Archipelago as part of Asia. British linguist Robert Needham Cust argued in 1887 that the Malay Archipelago should be excluded since it had participated in Asian civilization. Cust considered Oceania's four subregions to be Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.</blockquote>

Regarding Australia and the Pacific, Chambers's New Handy Volume American Encyclopædia observed in 1885 that, the term "Oceania" has been used interchangeably with "Australasia," though often excluding the Malay Archipelago, which some writers referred to as "Malesia". British physician and ethnologist James Cowles Prichard stated that the Aleutian and Kuril Islands, along with the coasts of Asia and America, marked the northern boundary of Oceania. However, Prichard argued that these islands were generally not considered part of Oceania because their inhabitants were not connected to the indigenous peoples of the more remote Pacific islands. He added that Hawaii was the most northerly area to be inhabited by races associated with Oceania.

The 1926 book Modern World History, 1776&ndash- 1926, by Alexander Clarence Flick, considered Oceania to include all islands in the Pacific, and associated the term with the Malay Archipelago, the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, the Aleutian Islands, Japan's Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, and the Kuril Islands. He further included in his definition Sakhalin, an island which is geologically part of the Japanese Archipelago, but that has been administered by Russia since World War II. Hong Kong, partly located in another marginal sea of the Pacific (the South China Sea), was also included in his definition. Australia and New Zealand were grouped by Flick as Australasia and categorized as being in the same area of the world as the islands of Oceania. Flick described the demographic composition of Oceania, stating that the majority of the population consisted of "brown and yellow races," while whites were primarily "owners and rulers."

Charles Marion Tyler's 1885 book The Island World of the Pacific Ocean considered Oceania to ethnographically encompass Australia, New Zealand, the Malay Archipelago, and the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. However, Tyler included other Pacific islands in his book as well, such as the Aleutian Islands, the Bonin Islands, the Japanese archipelago, the Juan Fernández Islands, the Kuril Islands, the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, California's Channel Islands and Farallon Islands, Canada's Vancouver Island and Queen Charlotte Islands (now known as Haida Gwaii), Chile's Chiloé Island, Ecuador's Galápagos Islands, Mexico's Guadalupe Island, Revillagigedo Islands, San Benito Islands and Tres Marías Islands, and Peru's Chincha Islands. Islands in marginal seas of the Pacific were also covered in the book, including Alaska's Pribilof Islands and China's Hainan. Tyler additionally profiled the Anson Archipelago, which during the 19th century was a designation for a widely scattered group of purported islands in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean between Japan and Hawaii. The Anson archipelago included phantom islands such as Ganges Island and Los Jardines which were proven to not exist, as well as real islands such as Marcus Island and Wake Island. Tyler described Australia as "the leviathan of the island groups of the world". Scottish academic John Merry Ross in 1879 considered Polynesia to cover the entire South and Central Pacific area, not just islands ethnographically within Polynesia. He wrote in The Globe Encyclopedia of Universal Information that, in its broadest sense, Polynesia could include islands spanning from Sumatra to the Galápagos, along with Australia. Ross acknowledged that Oceania had historically been applied to this vast region but noted that, by his time, the Malay Archipelago was often excluded.</blockquote>

Kennedy defined Oceania as including Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.</blockquote>

In 1948, American military journal Armed Forces Talk broke the islands of the Pacific up into five major subdivisions: Indonesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, and the non-tropical Islands. The Indonesian subdivision consisted of the islands of the Malay Archipelago, while the non-tropical islands were categorized as being North Pacific islands, such as Alaska's Kodiak archipelago, the Aleutian Islands, Japan, the Kuril Islands, and Sakhalin. Japan's Bonin and Ryukyu Islands are also considered to be subtropical islands, with the main Japanese archipelago being non-tropical. The journal associated the term Oceania with the Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian subdivisions, but not with the Indonesian or non-tropical subdivisions. The Pacific Islands Handbook (1945), by Robert William Robson, stated that, "Pacific Islands generally are regarded as Pacific islands lying within the tropics. There are a considerable number of Pacific Islands outside the tropics. Most of them have little economic or political importance." He noted the political significance of the Aleutian Islands, which were invaded by the Japanese military in World War II, and categorized New Zealand's Antipodes Islands, Auckland Islands, Bounty Islands, Campbell Islands, Chatham Island and Kermadec Islands as being non-tropical islands of the South Pacific, along with Australia's Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island. The Kermadec Islands, Lord Howe Island, and Norfolk Island are also considered to be subtropical islands. Other non-tropical areas below the equator, such as Chiloé Island, Macquarie Island, Tasmania, and the southern portions of mainland Australia and New Zealand, were not included in this category.

According to the 1998 book Encyclopedia of Earth and Physical Sciences, Oceania refers to Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, and more than 10,000 islands scattered across the Pacific Ocean. It notes that, "the term [has] also come under scrutiny by many geographers. Some experts insist that Oceania encompasses even the cold Aleutian Islands and the islands of Japan. Disagreement also exists over whether or not Indonesia, the Philippines, and Taiwan should be included in Oceania." The Japanese Archipelago, the Malay Archipelago and Taiwan and other islands near China are often deemed as a geological extension of Asia, since they do not have oceanic geology, instead being detached fragments of the Eurasian continent that were once physiographically connected. Certain Japanese islands off the main archipelago are not geologically associated with Asia. The book The World and Its Peoples: Australia, New Zealand, Oceania (1966) asserts that, "Japan, Taiwan, the Aleutian Islands, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia [and] the Pacific archipelagos bordering upon the Far East Asian mainland are excluded from Oceania", and that "all the islands lying between Australia and the Americas, including Australia, are part of Oceania." Furthermore, the book adds that Hawaii is still within Oceania, despite being politically integrated into the U.S., and that the Pacific Ocean "gives unity to the whole" since "all these varied lands emerge from or border upon the Pacific." Brown also categorized Japan and Taiwan as being in the same part of the world as the islands of Oceania, and excluded them from The Countries of the World: Volume 5, which covered mainland Asia and Hong Kong. Chile's government also categorizes Easter Island, the Desventuradas Islands, and the Juan Fernández Islands as being part of a region titled Insular Chile. They further include in this region Salas y Gómez, a small uninhabited island to the east of Easter Island. PLOS One describes Insular Chile as having "cultural and ecological connections to the broader insular Pacific." The International Union for Conservation of Nature stated in a 1986 report that they include Easter Island in their definition of Oceania "based on its Polynesian and biogeographic affinities even though it is politically apart", further noting that other oceanic islands administered by Latin American countries had been included in definitions of Oceania. In 1987, The Journal of Australasian Cave Research described Oceania as being "the region from Irian Jaya (Western New Guinea, a province of New Guinea) in the west to Galápagos Islands (Equador) and Easter Island (Chile) in the east." In a 1980 report on venereal diseases in the South Pacific, the British Journal of Venereal Diseases categorized the Desventuradas Islands, Easter Island, the Galápagos Islands and the Juan Fernández Islands as being in an eastern region of the South Pacific, along with areas such as Pitcairn Islands and French Polynesia, but noted that the Galápagos Islands were not a member of the South Pacific Commission, like other islands in the South Pacific. The South Pacific Commission is a developmental organization formed in 1947 and is currently known as the Pacific Community; its members include Australia and other Pacific Islands Forum members. In a 1947 article on the formation of the South Pacific Commission for the Pacific Affairs journal, author Roy E. James stated the organization's scope encompassed all non-self-governing islands below the equator to the east of Papua New Guinea (which itself was included in the scope and then known as Dutch New Guinea). Easter Island and the Galápagos Islands were defined by James as falling within the organization's geographical parameters. The 2007 book Asia in the Pacific Islands: Replacing the West, by New Zealand Pacific scholar Ron Crocombe, defined the term "Pacific Islands" as being islands in the South Pacific Commission, and stated that such a definition "does not include Galápagos and other [oceanic] islands off the Pacific coast of the Americas; these were uninhabited when Europeans arrived, then integrated with a South American country and have almost no contact with other Pacific Islands." He adds, "Easter Island still participates in some Pacific Island affairs because its people are Polynesian." While not oceanic in nature, Taiwan and Malay Archipelago countries like Indonesia and the Philippines share Austronesian ethnolinguistic origins with Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, hence their inclusion in the book. The book defined Oceania's major subregions as being Australia, Indonesia (which included all areas associated with the Malay Archipelago), Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. In 2010, Australian historian Bronwen Douglas claimed in The Journal of Pacific History that "a strong case could be made for extending Oceania to at least Taiwan, the homeland of the Austronesian language family whose speakers colonized significant parts of the region about 6,000 years ago." For political reasons, Taiwan was a member of the Oceania Football Confederation during the 1970s and 1980s, rather than the Asian Football Confederation.

Ian Todd's 1974 book Island Realm: A Pacific Panorama also defines oceanic Latin American islands as making up a Spanish language segment of Oceania, and includes the Desventuradas Islands, Easter Island, the Galápagos Islands, Guadalupe Island, the Juan Fernández Islands, the Revillagigedo Islands, and Salas y Gómez. Cocos Island and Malpelo Island were not explicitly referenced in the book, despite being areas that would fall within this range. All other islands associated with Latin American countries were excluded, as they are continental in nature, unlike Guadalupe Island and the Revillagigedo Islands (both situated on the Pacific Plate) and the oceanic islands situated on the Cocos Plate and Nazca Plate. Todd defined the oceanic Bonin Islands as making up a Japanese language segment of Oceania, and excluded the main Japanese archipelago. He did not include the volcanic Kuril Islands and Ryukyu Islands, which similarly border both the Eurasian Plate and the Pacific Plate, nor did he include the neighbouring Kodiak archipelago in the North Pacific Ocean, which is firmly situated on the North American Plate. The Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies stated in 1996 that Oceania was defined as Australia and an ensemble of various Pacific Islands, "particularly those in the central and south Pacific [but] never those in the extreme north, for example the Aleutian chain." In the Pacific Ocean Handbook (1945), author Eliot Grinnell Mears claimed, "it is customary to exclude the Aleutians of the North Pacific, the American coastal islands and the Netherlands East Indies", and that he included Australia and New Zealand in Oceania for "scientific reasons; Australia's fauna is largely continental in character, New Zealand's are clearly insular; and neither Commonwealth realm has close ties with Asia." In his 2002 book Oceania: An Introduction to the Cultures and Identities of Pacific Islanders, Andrew Strathern excluded Okinawa and the rest of the Ryukyu Islands from his definition of Oceania, but noted that the islands and their indigenous inhabitants "show many parallels with Pacific island societies."

In the 2006 book Extinction and Biogeography of Tropical Pacific Birds, American paleontologist David Steadman wrote, "no place on earth is as perplexing as the 25,000 islands that make Oceania." Steadman viewed Oceania as encompassing Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia (including Easter Island and Hawaii). He excluded from his definition the larger islands of New Guinea and New Zealand, and argued that Cocos Island, the Galápagos Islands, the Revillagigedo Islands, and other oceanic islands near the Americas were not part of Oceania, due to their biogeographical affinities with that area and lack of prehistoric indigenous populations.

American marine geologist Anthony A. P. Koppers wrote in the 2009 book Encyclopedia of Islands that, "as a whole, the islands of the Pacific Region are referred to as Oceania, the tenth continent on earth. Inherent to their remoteness and because of the wide variety of island types, the Pacific Islands have developed unique social, biological, and geological characteristics." Koppers considered Oceania to encompass the entire 25,000 islands of the Pacific Ocean. In this book, he included the Aleutian Islands, the Galápagos Islands, the Japanese archipelago, the Kuril Islands and continental islands off the coast of the Americas such as the Channel Islands, the Farallon Islands and Vancouver Island; all of these islands lie in or close to the Pacific Ring of Fire, as is the case with New Guinea and New Zealand, which were also included. In the 2013 book The Environments of the Poor in Southeast Asia, East Asia and the Pacific, Paul Bullen critiqued the definition of Oceania in Encyclopedia of Islands, and wrote that since Koppers included areas such as Vancouver Island, it is "not clear what the referents of 'Pacific Region', 'Oceania' or 'Pacific Islands' are." Bullen added, "Asia, Europe, and the Maritime Continent are not literal geographic continents. The 'Asia–Pacific region' would comprise two quasi-continents. 'The Pacific' would not refer to the Pacific Ocean and everything in it, e.g., the Philippines." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names (2017), by John Everett-Heath, states that Oceania is "a collective name for more than 10,000 islands in the Pacific Ocean" and that "it is generally accepted that Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the islands north of Japan (the Kurils and Aleutians) are excluded." In his 1993 book A New Oceania: Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands, New Guinea-born Fijian scholar Epeli Hauʻofa wrote that, "Pacific Ocean islands from Japan, through the Philippines and Indonesia, which are adjacent to the Asian mainland, do not have oceanic cultures, and are therefore not part of Oceania." It has been theorized that the indigenous Jōmon people of the Japanese archipelago are related to Austronesians, along with the indigenous inhabitants of the Ryukyu Islands. Some also theorize that Indigenous Australians are related to the Ainu people, who are the original inhabitants of Japan's Hokkaido, the Kuril Islands and the southern part of Sakhalin. In their 2019 book Women and Violence: Global Lives in Focus, Kathleen Nadeau and Sangita Rayamajhi wrote:

<blockquote>The Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and most of Indonesia are not usually considered to be part of the region of Oceania as it is understood today. These regions are usually considered to be part of Maritime Southeast Asia. These regions, as well as the large East Asian islands of Taiwan, Hainan, and the Japanese archipelago, have varying degrees of cultural connections.</blockquote>

In Reptiles and Amphibians of the Pacific Islands: A Comprehensive Guide (2013), George R. Zug claimed that "a standard definition of Oceania includes Australia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, and New Zealand, and the oceanic islands of Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia." He went on to write that his preferred definition of Oceania emphasizes islands with oceanic geology, stating that oceanic islands are, "islands with no past connections to a continental landmass" and that, "these boundaries encompass the Hawaiian and Bonin Islands in the north and Easter Island in the south, and the Palau Islands in the west to the Galápagos Islands in the east." Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand and New Caledonia (which is geologically associated with New Zealand) were all excluded, as these areas are descendants of the ancient Pangaea supercontinent, along with landmasses such as the Americas and Afro-Eurasia. Volcanic islands which are geologically associated with continental landmasses, such as the Aleutian Islands, Japan's Izu Islands, the Kuril Islands, the Ryukyu Islands, and most of the Solomon Islands, were also excluded from his definition. Unlike the United Nations, the World Factbook defines the still-uninhabited Clipperton Island as being a discrete political entity, and they categorize it as part of North America, presumably due to its relative proximity (situated 1,200 kilometres off Mexico on the Pacific Plate). Clipperton is not politically associated with the Americas, as is the case with other oceanic islands near the Americas, having had almost no interaction with the continent throughout its history. From the early 20th century to 2007, the island was administratively part of French Polynesia, which itself was known as French Oceania up until 1957. In terms of marine fauna, Clipperton shares similarities with areas of the Pacific which are much farther removed from the Americas. Scottish author Robert Hope Moncrieff considered Clipperton to be the easternmost point of Oceania in 1907, while Ian Todd also included it in his definition of Oceania in Island Realm: A Pacific Panorama.

Other uninhabited Pacific Ocean landmasses have been explicitly associated with Oceania, including the highly remote Baker Island and Wake Island (now administered by the U.S. military).

Boundaries between subregions

Depending on the definition, New Zealand could be part of Polynesia, or part of Australasia with Australia. New Zealand was originally settled by the Polynesian Māori, and has long maintained a political influence over the subregion. Through immigration and high Māori birth rates, New Zealand has attained the largest population of Polynesians in the world, while Australia has the third largest Polynesian population (consisting entirely of immigrants). Modern-day Indigenous Australians are loosely related to Melanesians, and Australia maintains political influence over Melanesia, As with Australia and New Zealand, Melanesia's New Caledonia has a significant non-indigenous European population, numbering around 71,000. Conversely, New Caledonia has still had a similar history to the rest of Melanesia, and their French-speaking Europeans make up only 27% of the total population. As such, it is not also culturally considered a part of the predominantly English-speaking Australasia. Some cultural and political definitions of Australasia include most or all of Melanesia, due to its geographical proximity to Australia and New Zealand, but these are rare. Australia, New Zealand and the islands of Melanesia are more commonly grouped together as part of the Australasian biogeographical realm. Papua New Guinea is geographically the closest country to Australia, and is often geologically associated with Australia as it was once physiologically connected. Both were uninhabited when discovered by Europeans during the 17th century. Approximately half of the population on these islands are European Australian mainlanders (with smaller numbers being European New Zealanders), while the other half are immigrants from China or the nearby Malay Archipelago. Australia's Indian Ocean external territory Heard Island and McDonald Islands lie on the Antarctic Plate and are also thought of as being in Antarctica or no region at all, due to their extreme geographical isolation.

Norfolk Island, an external territory of Australia, was inhabited in prehistoric times by either Melanesians or Polynesians, and is geographically adjacent to the islands of Melanesia. The current inhabitants are mostly European Australians, and the UN categorizes it as being in the Australasia subregion. The 1985 edition of the South Pacific Handbook also groups the Galápagos Islands as being in Polynesia, while noting that they are not culturally a part of the subregion. The islands are typically grouped with others in the southeastern Pacific that were never inhabited by Polynesians.

History

Colonisation of Oceania

Australia

thumb|upright=1.2|A 19th-century engraving of an Aboriginal Australian encampment

Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands who migrated from Africa to Asia 70,000 years ago

Melanesia

The original inhabitants of the group of islands now named Melanesia were likely the ancestors of the present-day Papuan-speaking people. Migrating from Southeast Asia, they appear to have occupied these islands as far east as the main islands in the Solomon Islands archipelago, including Makira and possibly the smaller islands farther to the east. It is the lowest, flattest, and oldest landmass on Earth

Fauna

thumb|upright=0.75|The [[Pacific robin inhabits the islands of the south western Pacific.

Climate

thumb|right|August 2011 winter's snowfall in [[Dunedin, Otago]]

The Pacific Islands are ruled by a tropical rainforest and tropical savanna climate. In the tropical and subtropical Pacific, the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) affects weather conditions. Australia boasts the largest amount of manufacturing in the region, producing cars, electrical equipment, machinery and clothes.

New Zealand

New Zealand's economy is the 53rd-largest in the world measured by nominal gross domestic product (GDP) and 68th-largest in the world measured by purchasing power parity (PPP). A major economic and cultural powerhouse of the Southern Hemisphere, Auckland is ranked as a Beta+ world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Auckland and Wellington are frequently ranked among the world's most liveable cities, with Auckland being ranked first in the world according to the Global Liveability Ranking. The economy diversified and by 2008, tourism had become the single biggest generator of foreign exchange. The New Zealand dollar is the 10th-most traded currency in the world.

Pacific Islands

thumb|[[Honolulu viewed from Diamond Head crater]]

The overwhelming majority of people living in the Pacific islands work in the service industry, which includes tourism, education, and financial services. Oceania's largest export markets include Japan, China, the United States, and South Korea. The smallest Pacific nations rely on trade with Australia, New Zealand, and the United States for exporting goods and for accessing other products. Australia and New Zealand's trading arrangements are known as Closer Economic Relations. Australia and New Zealand, along with other countries, are members of Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the East Asia Summit (EAS), which may become trade blocs in the future, particularly EAS.

The main produce from the Pacific is copra or coconut, but timber, beef, palm oil, cocoa, sugar, and ginger are also commonly grown across the tropics of the Pacific. Fishing provides a major industry for many of the smaller nations in the Pacific, although many fishing areas are exploited by other larger countries, namely Japan. Natural Resources, such as lead, zinc, nickel, and gold, are mined in Australia and Solomon Islands. Oceania's largest export markets include Japan, China, the United States, India, South Korea, and the European Union.

thumb|Aerial view of [[Bora Bora, French Polynesia]]

Endowed with forest, mineral, and fish resources, Fiji is one of the most developed of the Pacific island economies, though it remains a developing country with a large subsistence agriculture sector. estimate ( boundaries)

| list_by_pop = <!-- link to the list of cities in the given country, if possible sorted by population -->

| div_name = Country

| div_link = List of sovereign states and dependent territories in OceaniaCountry

| city_1 = Sydney| div_1 = Australia| pop_1 = 5,131,326| img_1 = Sydney Opera house 3.jpg

| city_2 = Melbourne| div_2 = Australia| pop_2 = 5,031,195 | img_2 = Melbourne CBD and Ceremonial Avenue (in 2024) as seen from the rooftop of Shrine of Remembrance.jpg

| city_3 = Brisbane| div_3 = Australia| pop_3 = 2,408,223 | img_3 = River views of Brisbane CBD seen from the top of 135 Coronation Drive, in March 2019, 14.jpg

| city_4 = Perth| div_4 = Australia| pop_4 = 2,043,138| img_4 = Skyline of Perth seen from Perth Stadium, March 2021 02.jpg

| city_5 = Auckland| div_5 = New Zealand| pop_5 =

| city_6 = Adelaide| div_6 = Australia| pop_6 = 1,333,927

| city_7 = Honolulu| div_7 = United States| pop_7 = 953,207

| city_8 = Gold Coast, Queensland| div_8 = Australia| pop_8 = 646,983

| city_9 = Wellington| div_9 = New Zealand| pop_9 = 497,200

| city_10 = Newcastle, New South Wales| div_10 = Australia| pop_10 = 436,171

| city_11 = Canberra| div_11 = Australia| pop_11 = 435,019

| city_12 = Jayapura| div_12 = Indonesia| pop_12 = 414,862

| city_13 = Port Moresby| div_13 = Papua New Guinea| pop_13 = 420,000

| city_14 = Christchurch| div_14 = New Zealand| pop_14 =

| city_15 = Sunshine Coast, Queensland| div_15 = Australia| pop_15 = 317,404

| city_16 = Wollongong| div_16 = Australia| pop_16 = 295,669

| city_17 = Sorong| div_17 = Indonesia| pop_17 = 294,978

| city_18 = Hobart| div_18 = Australia| pop_18 = 224,462

| city_19 = Geelong| div_19 = Australia| pop_19 = 196,393

| city_20 = Hamilton, New Zealand| div_20 = New Zealand| pop_20 =

Religion

The predominant religion in Oceania is Christianity (73%). In absolute numbers, Australia has the largest population of Hindus in Oceania constituting 2.7% of the country's population. In New Zealand, Hindus form 2.65% of the population of. Samoa also has a significant Hindu population.

Other religions in the region include Islam and Buddhism, which are prominent minority religions in Australia and New Zealand. Judaism, Sikhism and Jainism are also present. Sir Isaac Isaacs was the first Australian-born Governor General of Australia and was the first Jewish vice-regal representative in the British Empire. Prince Philip Movement is followed around Yaohnanen village on the southern island of Tanna in Vanuatu.

<gallery widths=200 heights=200>

File:Holy Innocent's Anglican Church, Amberley.jpg|Holy's Innocent Anglican Church in Amberley, New Zealand

File:Saione.jpg|Saione, the church of the King, a Free Wesleyan Church in Kolomotua, Tonga. Especially, British and American missionaries brought various Protestant denominations to Oceania.

File:Nadi_Sri_Siva_Subramaniya_Temple.jpg|Sri Siva Subramaniya temple in Fiji

</gallery>

Languages

Native languages of Oceania fall into three major geographic groups:

  • The large Austronesian language family, with such languages as Malay (Indonesian), and Oceanic languages such as Gilbertese, Fijian, Māori, and Hawaiian
  • The Aboriginal Australian languages, including the large Pama–Nyungan family
  • The Papuan languages of New Guinea and neighbouring islands, including the large Trans–New Guinea family

Immigrants brought their own languages to the region. There are also Creoles formed from the interaction of Malay or the colonial languages with indigenous languages, such as Tok Pisin, Bislama, Chavacano, various Malay trade and creole languages, Hawaiian Pidgin, Norfuk, and Pitkern. Contact between Austronesian and Papuan resulted in several instances in mixed languages such as Maisin.

Immigration

thumb|[[Dutch Australians|Dutch immigrants arriving in Melbourne, Australia in 1954]]

The most multicultural areas in Oceania, which have a high degree of immigration, are Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii. Since 1945, more than 7 million people have settled in Australia. From the late 1970s, there was a significant increase in immigration from Asian and other non-European countries, making Australia a multicultural country. The most popular sport among Australian women is netball, while Australian rules football garners the highest spectatorship numbers and television ratings. Australia's team the Wallabies have won the World Cup twice, despite Rugby union being less popular among Australians. In Papua New Guinea, the most popular sport is Rugby league.

Vanuatu is the only country in Oceania to call association football its national sport. However, it is also the most popular sport in Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu, and has a significant (and growing) popularity in Australia. In 2006, Australia left the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) for the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), and their men's team the Socceroos has qualified for every subsequent FIFA World Cup as an Asian entrant. Like Australia, the Micronesian dependent territories of Guam and Northern Mariana Islands currently compete in the AFC instead of the OFC. The OFC was dominated by Australia for many years, and became known for one-sided results.

Australians view sport as an important part of their cultural identity, and the country performs well on the international stage, despite having a relatively small population. They have hosted two Summer Olympics: Melbourne 1956 and Sydney 2000, and the city of Brisbane is also set to host the 2032 edition. Australia has hosted five editions of the Commonwealth Games and New Zealand three times. The Pacific Games (formerly known as the South Pacific Games) is a multi-sport event, much like the Olympics on a much smaller scale, with participation exclusively from countries around the Pacific; Australia and New Zealand competed in the games for the first time in 2015.

See also

  • Flags of Oceania
  • Indigenous peoples of Oceania
  • List of cities in Oceania
  • United Nations geoscheme for Oceania

Sources

References

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Sources

Further reading

  • Lawson, Stephanie. Regional Politics in Oceania: From Colonialism and Cold War to the Pacific Century (Cambridge UP, 2024), encyclopedic coverage; online review of this book
  • "Australia and Oceania" from National Geographic
  • Oceania photographs, recordings, and digital objects drawn primarily from the Tuzin Archive for Melanesian Anthropology at the UC San Diego Library.