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Dixie is in the southern USA

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This source is important because not only does it give you a basic overview of the region, it shows what outsiders think of it.

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

Dixie, the Southern U.S. states, especially those that belonged to the Confederate States of America (1860-65). The origins of the name are debated, but it was popularized by the song " Dixie," composed in 1859 by Daniel Decatur Emmett. The tune was popular as a marching song of the Confederate army, and it was often considered the Confederate anthem.

According to the most common explanation of the name, $10 notes issued before 1860 by the Citizens' Bank of New Orleans and used largely by French-speaking residents were imprinted with dix (French: "ten") on the reverse side-hence the land of Dixies, or Dixie Land, which applied to Louisiana and eventually the whole South. Another theory suggests that the term refers to the Mason-Dixon Line, the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania. In the pre- Civil War period, the demarcation was regarded, together with the Ohio River, as the dividing line between the slave states south of it and free-soil states north of it.

The song "Dixie" was originally a "hooray song" or walk-around in Jerry Bryant's minstrel show, for which Emmett, a native Ohioan of Virginian parents, performed and wrote music. It was played at the inauguration of Confederate Pres. Jefferson Davis on February 18, 1861, in Montgomery, Alabama.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Michele Metych.

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Dixie | History, Definition, Meaning, Map, & Facts

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Dixie, the Southern U.S. states, especially those that belonged to the Confederate States of America (1860-65). The origins of the name are debated, but it was popularized by the song 'Dixie,' composed in 1859 by Daniel Decatur Emmett. The tune was often considered the Confederate anthem.

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In 1859, the musician and performer Daniel Decatur Emmett composed "Dixie," a minstrel song that included the now-famous refrain "Away, away, away down south in Dixie!" The song was a smash hit in its day-Abraham Lincoln called it "one of the best tunes I have ever heard"-and it later became the de facto national anthem of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Emmett's ditty is now generally credited with popularizing "Dixie" as a nickname for the southern states, but he never claimed to have coined the word itself. In fact, there are at least three competing theories for how the term originated.

The most straightforward explanation for the South-Dixie connection concerns the Mason and Dixon Line, a boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that was drawn in 1767 by English surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon. The line was originally crafted to settle a border dispute between the two colonies, but it later became an informal demarcation point between the southern slave states and the free states to the north. With this in mind, it's likely that "Dixie" and "Dixieland" first emerged as slang terms to refer to the territory south of Jeremiah Dixon's boundary line.

Yet another theory traces Dixie's roots to Louisiana. In the years before the Civil War, the state's Citizens' Bank of New Orleans issued ten-dollar notes with "dix"-the French word for "ten"-written on one side. The widely circulated bills became known as "Dixies," and some argue the term was later appropriated as a geographical nickname, first for New Orleans and Louisiana and then for the entire South.

A third common explanation of Dixie's origins involves a Manhattan plantation owner named "Dix" (or perhaps "Dixy") who had a reputation for being especially kind to his slaves. As the story goes, when the slaves were later sold and sent to the South, they spoke fondly of their former home in "Dixie's Land," and the term then entered the vernacular as shorthand for a peaceful plantation. Accounts of the "Dix" explanation date back as far as the 1860s, but many historians now dismiss it as a myth.

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In 1859, the musician and performer Daniel Decatur Emmett composed "Dixie," a minstrel song that included the now-famous refrain "Away, away, away down south in Dixie!" The song was a smash hit in its day-Abraham Lincoln called it "one of the best tunes I have ever heard"-and it later became the de facto national anthem of the Confederacy during the Civil War.

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Dixie is a perceptual region because of people identifying it with the Confederate States of America. The defining characteristic is not a central point of economics or a shared language, which would make it either a formal or a functional region.

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The Middle East can potentially encompass a lot of the world

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The Middle East can potentially encompass a lot of the world

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This article explains the history of the region and why it can take on so many different borders.

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The Middle East is the common term for a region consisting of countries in southwest Asia and, usually, at least part of North Africa. It is an interesting term - middle of what? east of what? While the term is now widespread both inside and outside the region, it is in fact relatively new. It was coined only at the end of the nineteenth century by the British foreign service, and used in a 1902 article by a United States naval officer.

It was originally used to distinguish the area east of the Near East - the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire - and west of India. It included Afghanistan and Persia. Of course, the Far East denoted the countries of East Asia, including China, Japan, and Korea. And of course, the term is entirely Eurocentric - the region is east from the perspective of western Europe, but not from China, or Russia, or Africa. Today, Near East and Middle East are synonyms, but Middle East is the more widely used term (except in archaeology, where Near East is still more common).

The origin of the name speaks volumes about the political realities of the nineteenth century, when the perspective of the British in particular carried enormous weight. Interestingly, today the term Middle East is commonly used within the region itself. The four most common languages of the Middle East all use the term in translation to describe the region:

Arabic: al-sharq al-awsat

Turkish: orta dogu

Hebrew: mizrach tichon

Persian: khavarmiyaneh

What's a region, anyway?

To decide what the Middle East is, and what area it covers, we have to understand what a region is. Regions are subjectively determined (and thus debatable) areas that we perceive to have certain characteristics in common. They may be defined by physical geography; for example, areas bordered by mountains or rivers or seas, or areas which share a similar climate. They may also be defined by characteristics of human geography, such as shared historical experience, the same language, the same religion, or similar cultural practices. In the case of the Middle East, both physical and human geographic considerations are brought to bear to define the region.

The Middle East is, very generally speaking, an arid region in Southwest Asia and part of North Africa stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf, bounded by the Black and Caspian Seas in the north and the Sahara Desert and Indian Ocean in the south. It has a long shared history and a shared religious tradition, being the birthplace of the three main monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is also often defined as being a locale of trade and cultural transmission, and sometimes conflict, between Europe, Africa and Asia.

Within the larger Middle East, one can also describe sub-regions, such as North Africa or the Levant, which share certain characteristics. The Levant, for example, encompasses modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories, and is often seen as an important area in part because of its close historical connection with countries in Europe and around the Mediterranean.

The Gulf countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman are linked not only by shared history, language and religion, but by the shared opportunities and problems caused by the presence of large oil reserves in these countries. These countries all lie at the eastern edge of a large geological plate (the Arabian plate) that is tilted down from west to east - thus there are mountainous areas on the western end of the plate and oil deposits concentrated along the eastern edge at the shores of the Persian Gulf.

What's In, What's Out?

The exact roster of countries thought to be a part of the Middle East region is often debated. If you look at different maps of the Middle East, you will see different countries included and excluded. Almost everyone would agree that the following countries are part of the Middle East:

Bahrain

Egypt

Iran

Iraq

Israel

Jordan

Kuwait

Lebanon

Oman

The Palestinian Territories

Qatar

Saudi Arabia

Syria

United Arab Emirates

Yemen

Notice that all but two are Arabic-speaking majority countries, the exceptions being Iran (where the national language is Persian) and Israel (where the national languages are Hebrew and Arabic).

Egypt is normally included in maps of the Middle East, although it is in Northeast Africa. Why? Egyptians speak Arabic, and Egypt has been a major player in the politics of the Middle East for literally thousands of years, so it is difficult to conceive of the region without Egypt.

Likewise, many experts also include the other countries of North Africa - Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco - because they are also Arabic-speaking and their history and culture are tied to those of the other countries of the Middle East.

Also, most experts in the region would include Turkey - in fact, it is often referred to as a bridge between the Middle East and Europe, both because it straddles the continents of Europe and Asia, and because its historical experience is intertwined both with that of European states and with that of the Middle East.

For our purposes, the Middle East will include all of the countries in the list above as well as:

Turkey

Morocco

Algeria

Libya

Tunisia

Not Quite the Middle East

Today, many maps include the countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Central Asian countries were usually studied as part of the Soviet bloc and Pakistan and Afghanistan as part of political and cultural region of South Asia, rather than as part of the Middle East.

However, particularly after the tragic events of September 11 and the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, these countries have more often been associated with the Middle East because of their political and religious connections, although there are also many dissimilarities in politics, language and culture between these countries and the Middle East.

Similarly, the countries of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, located between the Black and Caspian Seas, are sometimes included on maps of the Middle East. Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean, has a majority Greek-speaking population, although there is a minority Turkish population in the northern part of the island who claim independence in a republic recognized only by Turkey. These countries and their peoples have had long interrelationships with the Middle East, but again have strong local characteristics that also distinguish them from their neighbors to the south and east.

Sudan is another country that is sometimes considered to be a part of the Middle East, sometimes because of its close and often contentious relationship with Egypt. While there are significant Arabic-speaking and Muslim populations in Sudan, its other cultural and linguistic differences would usually place it in an African context rather than a Middle Eastern one.

Very often, countries on the periphery of the Middle East are incorporated into maps and into the discourse on the Middle East when there is political strife in these areas, often involving Muslims, simply because many Americans don't distinguish easily between the Middle East and Islam. For our purposes, we will not include these countries in our definition of the Middle East, but will incorporate them into our discussion where it is relevant.

What the Middle East is NOT

There are two common mistakes that are often made when referring to the Middle East. The first is to confuse the Arab world with the Middle East. The Middle East is a very diverse region, with many languages and cultures. While the majority of the inhabitants of the region speak Arabic, there are several countries in the Middle East that are not majority Arabic speaking, including Turkey, Iran, and Israel. Of course, there are also minority communities within the Middle Eastern Arab-majority states for whom Arabic is not their native language, including the Kurds, Berbers, and many other groups. At the same time, there are many Arabic speakers who live in non-Arab majority states, from Sudan to the United States. Although there is a great deal of overlap, the Middle East and the Arab world are not the same thing!

The second common mistake is to equate the Middle East and Islam. While Islam began in the area that is now the modern state of Saudi Arabia, it has spread over the centuries so that there are communities of Muslims all over the world.

Most Muslims today don't live in the Middle East or grow up speaking Arabic (although many do learn some Arabic for religious reasons, since it is the language of the Quran). In fact, less than 20% of all the Muslims in the world-and there are over 1.3 bill ion-are native speakers of Arabic.

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The Middle East is the common term for a region consisting of countries in southwest Asia and, usually, at least part of North Africa. It is an interesting term - middle of what? east of what? While the term is now widespread both inside and outside the region, it is in fact relatively new.

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The Middle East can be considered a functional region because its inhabitants share a sense of culture and history as well as being bounded in by the physical landscape

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YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THEM ALL AT ONCE

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This encyclopedia definition gives a slightly different overview than that of the above article.

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Middle East, the lands around the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, encompassing at least the Arabian Peninsula and, by some definitions, Iran, North Africa, and sometimes beyond. The central part of this general area was formerly called the Near East, a name given to it by some of the first modern Western geographers and historians, who tended to divide what they called the Orient into three regions. Near East applied to the region nearest Europe, extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf; Middle East, from the Persian Gulf to Southeast Asia; and Far East, those regions facing the Pacific Ocean.

The change in usage began to evolve prior to World War II and tended to be confirmed during that war, when the term Middle East was given to the British military command in Egypt. By the mid-20th century a common definition of the Middle East encompassed the states or territories of Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, and the various states and territories of Arabia proper ( Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, and the Trucial States, or Trucial Oman [now United Arab Emirates]). Subsequent events have tended, in loose usage, to enlarge the number of lands included in the definition. The three North African countries of Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco are closely connected in sentiment and foreign policy with the Arab states. In addition, geographic factors often require statesmen and others to take account of Afghanistan and Pakistan in connection with the affairs of the Middle East.

Occasionally, Greece is included in the compass of the Middle East because the Middle Eastern (then Near Eastern) question in its modern form first became apparent when the Greeks rose in rebellion to assert their independence of the Ottoman Empire in 1821 ( see Eastern Question). Turkey and Greece, together with the predominantly Arabic-speaking lands around the eastern end of the Mediterranean, were also formerly known as the Levant.

Use of the term Middle East nonetheless remains unsettled, and some agencies (notably the United States State Department and certain bodies of the United Nations) still employ the term Near East.

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Middle East | History, Map, Countries, & Facts

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Middle East, the lands around the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, encompassing at least the Arabian Peninsula and, by some definitions, Iran, North Africa, and sometimes beyond. The central part of this general area was formerly called the Near East, a name given to it by some of the first modern Western geographers and historians, who tended to divide what they called the Orient into three regions.

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What is the 'Organization Of Petroleum Exporting Countries - OPEC'

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is a group consisting of 12 of the world's major oil-exporting nations. OPEC was founded in 1960 to coordinate the petroleum policies of its members, and to provide member states with technical and economic aid. OPEC is a cartel that aims to manage the supply of oil in an effort to set the price of oil on the world market, in order to avoid fluctuations that might affect the economies of both producing and purchasing countries.

!--break--OPEC, which describes itself as a permanent intergovernmental organization, was created in Baghdad in Sept. 1960, by its founding members: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. The headquarters of the organization are in Vienna, Austria, where the OPEC Secretariat, its executive organ, carries out OPEC's day-to-day business.

The Chief Executive Officer of OPEC is its Secretary General. As of July 2016, the position is held by Abdalla Salem El-Badri of Lybia. He has been Secretary General since 2007.

OPEC Membership

According to its statutes, OPEC membership is open to any country that is a substantial exporter of oil and that shares the ideals of the organization. Along with the five founding members, OPEC has 9 additional member countries, as of 2016. They are: Qatar, Indonesia , Libya, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Nigeria, Ecuador, Gabon and Angola.

It is notable that some of the world's largest oil producers, including Russia, China and the United States, are not members of OPEC and pursue their own objectives.

OPEC Policies

Officially, OPEC's mission is to "coordinate and unify the petroleum policies of its Member Countries and ensure the stabilization of oil markets in order to secure an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consumers, a steady income to producers, and a fair return on capital for those investing in the petroleum industry."

OPEC's influence on the market has been widely criticized. Because its member countries hold the vast majority of crude oil reserves (about 80%) and nearly half of natural gas reserves in the world, the organization has considerable power in these markets. As a cartel, OPEC members have a strong incentive to keep oil prices as high as possible, while maintaining their shares of the global market.

The advent of new technology, especially fracking in the United States, has had a major effect on worldwide oil prices and has lessened OPEC's influence on the markets. As a result, worldwide oil production has increased and prices have dropped significantly, leaving OPEC in a delicate position. As late as June 2016, OPEC decided to maintain high production levels, and consequently low prices, in an attempt to push higher-cost producers out of the market and regain market share.

BREAKING DOWN 'Organization Of Petroleum Exporting Countries - OPEC'

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Organization Of Petroleum Exporting Countries - OPEC

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The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is a group consisting of 12 of the world's major oil-exporting nations. OPEC was founded in 1960 to coordinate the petroleum policies of its members, and to provide member states with technical and economic aid.

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An article about the popularization of the song Dixie

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Civil War Lyrics Dixie by Daniel Decatur Emmett | Civil War Music

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Civil War Lyrics Dixie at www.civilwarheritagetrails.org - Loved by many, despised by others, Dixie is still among the most recognizable of all American songs. Ironically, it was written by a ....