South and East Asia in the foreign cultural policy of France

Southeast Asia is a diverse and ambiguously defi ned region. Th e total area of Southeast Asia, 4.5 million km2, includes archipelagos, islands and peninsulas lying between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, making a platform, on the one hand, between the Pacifi c and the Indian Ocean, and on the other, between the north and south., the area Since the sixteenth century this strategic location has always been the concern of world powers. It includes both the countries located in Asia – on Indochina and the Malay peninsulas – and islands of the Malay and Philippine archipelagos. Usually it is assumed that the South-East Asia include Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, oft en singled out as a subregion called Indochina, moreover, Th ailand and Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, and the Philippines. Sometimes there is mentioned a questionable belonging of Burma (Myanmar) to the region, which is sometimes considered a South Asian country, and East Timor, which, having received independence from Indonesia in 2002, is looking for its place between Oceania (Melanesia) and South-East Asia.