Oceania

Oceania is a geographical region made up of Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. It is also considered a continent, with mainland Australia serving as its continental landmass. Spanning both the Eastern and Western hemispheres and centered in the water hemisphere, Oceania covers roughly 9,000,000 square kilometers of land and had a population of about 46.3 million in 2024 (including Australia but excluding the Malay Archipelago). Among continental land areas, it is the smallest and the second-least populated, ahead of only Antarctica. The region contains the world’s third-largest remaining tropical rainforest, which covers much of New Guinea.

The economies of Oceania range widely: Australia, French Polynesia, Hawaii, New Caledonia, and New Zealand have highly developed, globally competitive financial markets and rank high in quality of life and Human Development Index, while Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Western New Guinea have much less developed economies. Australia is the largest and most populous country, and Sydney is the largest city. The highest peak is Puncak Jaya in Indonesia, at 4,884 meters.

Human settlement began more than 60,000 years ago, when the first people arrived in Australia, New Guinea, and the large islands to the east. European exploration started in the 16th century: Portuguese explorers reached the Tanimbar Islands, some Caroline Islands, and western New Guinea between 1512 and 1526. Spanish, Dutch, British, and French explorers followed. During his first voyage in the 18th century, James Cook visited Tahiti and charted the east coast of Australia for the first time; he later reached the Hawaiian Islands. The arrival of European settlers in later centuries dramatically changed Oceania’s social and political landscape. The Pacific was a major theater in both World Wars.

Aboriginal Australian rock art is the longest continuously practiced artistic tradition in the world. Most Oceanian countries are parliamentary democracies, and tourism is a major source of income for many Pacific island nations.

The term Oceania comes from the French océanie, derived from the Greek Okeanòs (Ωκεανός), meaning “ocean.” It was coined in 1812 by geographer Conrad Malte-Brun. Definitions of Oceania vary; the broadest includes all islands between mainland Asia and the Americas. Australia is the only landmass in the region large enough to typically be considered a continent. Before European contact, the ocean shielded Australia and the south-central Pacific islands from cultural influences that spread across large continents and nearby islands. The Malay Archipelago’s islands, north of Australia, lie mostly on Asia’s continental shelf, so their inhabitants had more exposure to mainland Asian culture.

In 1814, French cartographer Adrien-Hubert Brué shortened Malte-Brun’s phrase to Océanie. The term is used because, unlike other continental groupings, the ocean itself links the region’s parts. Since the mid-19th century, Western cartographers have used Oceania to organize and classify the Pacific. In the 19th century, geographers often divided Oceania into racially based subdivisions: Australasia, Malesia (the Malay Archipelago), Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Oceania has traditionally been considered a continent in anthropological studies, alongside Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Some 19th-century geographers classified the Pacific islands as a third continent—Oceania—alongside the New World (the Americas) and the Old World (Afro-Eurasia). British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace noted in 1879 that geographers commonly used Oceania to refer to the Pacific islands, with Australia as its central landmass; he did not explicitly call it a continent but considered it one of the six major world divisions. The Oxford Handbook of World History (2011) notes that Oceania is often treated as a secondary topic, appearing at the end of global narratives as a marginal region. In most non-English-speaking countries, Oceania is regarded as a continent (one of the “parts of the world”), with Australia seen only as an island nation; in other non-English-speaking countries, Australia and Eurasia are considered continents, while Asia, Europe, and Oceania are “parts of the world.” Some English-speaking writers have also described Oceania as a continent.