Mainland Southeast Asia
Mainland Southeast Asia is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of Mainland China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west and the Pacific Ocean to the east. It includes the countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam as well as Peninsular Malaysia.
The term Indochina was coined in the early nineteenth century, emphasizing the historical cultural influence of Indian and Chinese civilizations on the region. The term was later adopted as the name of the colony of French Indochina. Today, the term "Mainland Southeast Asia" is more commonly used, in contrast to Maritime Southeast Asia for the island groups off the coast of the peninsula.
Terminology
In Indian sources, the earliest name connected with Southeast Asia is. Another possible early name of mainland Southeast Asia was Suvarṇabhūmi, a toponym, that appears in many ancient Indian literary sources and Buddhist texts, but which, along with Suvarṇadvīpa, are also thought to refer to insular Southeast Asia.The origins of the name Indo-China are usually attributed jointly to the Danish-French geographer Conrad Malte-Brun, who referred to the area as indo-chinois in 1804, and the Scottish linguist John Leyden, who used the term Indo-Chinese to describe the area's inhabitants and their languages in 1808. Scholarly opinions at the time regarding China's and India's historical influence over the area were conflicting, and the term was itself controversial—Malte-Brun himself later argued against its use in a later edition of his Universal Geography, reasoning that it overemphasized Chinese influence, and suggested Chin-India instead. Nevertheless, Indo-China had already gained traction and soon supplanted alternative terms such as Further India and the Peninsula beyond the Ganges. Later, however, as the French established the colony of French Indochina, use of the term became more restricted to the French colony, and today the area is usually referred to as Mainland Southeast Asia.
Biogeography
In biogeography, the Indochinese bioregion is a major region in the Indomalayan realm, and also a phytogeographical floristic region in the Oriental Paleotropical Kingdom. It includes the native flora and fauna of all the countries above. The adjacent Malesian Region covers the Maritime Southeast Asian countries, and straddles the Indomalayan and Australasian realms.Geography
The Indochinese Peninsula projects southward from the Asian continent proper. It contains several mountain ranges extending from the Tibetan Plateau in the north, interspersed with lowlands largely drained by three major river systems running in a north–south direction: the Irrawaddy, the Chao Phraya, and the Mekong. To the south it forms the Malay Peninsula, located on which are Southern Thailand and Peninsular Malaysia; the latter is variably considered part of Mainland Southeast Asia or separately as part of Maritime Southeast Asia. Most of it has a tropical climate except for subtropical places such as Northern Vietnam.Political divisions
Sovereign states
Culture
Mainland Southeast Asia contrasts with Maritime Southeast Asia, mainly through the division of largely land-based lifestyles in Indochina and the sea-based lifestyles of the Indonesian archipelago and Philippine archipelago, as well as the dividing line between the Austroasiatic, Tai–Kadai, and Sino-Tibetan languages and the Austronesian languages. The languages of the mainland form the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area: although belonging to several independent language families, they have converged over the course of history and share a number of typological similarities.The countries of mainland Southeast Asia received cultural influence from both India and China to varying degrees. Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand are all influenced by Indian culture, only Vietnam is influenced by Chinese culture but still has minor influences from India, largely via the Champa civilization that Vietnam conquered during its southward expansion.
Overall, Mainland Southeast Asia is predominantly Buddhist with minority Muslim and Hindu populations.