MINI-OCEANIA SAU INDIOCEANIA?
IMPORTANȚA GEOSTRATEGICĂ A INSULELOR DIN OCEANUL INDIAN

CSABA M. KOVÁCS¹

1 „Babeş-Bolyai” University, Faculty of Geography, 400009, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, e-mail: csaba.kovacs@ubbcluj.ro

Abstract: - Mini-Oceania or Indioceania? The Geostrategic Importance of the Indian Oceans’s Islands. The islands of the Indian Ocean are a remote and unfairly forgotten area of the world, though the ocean itself was the space for major trade routes since the earliest times. It was also an area affected by major natural catastrophes and always posed serious problems of security, as it still does today. With the spread of Islam it soon became the geographical centre of the Islamic world, though in the larger islands Muslims are in minority. The islands, of which first only Madagascar was permanently settled, became the target of slave trade and colonization in the modern era, until most of them became independent in the 20th century. Some of them gave place to large military bases and some are nowadays real touristic paradises, while others (especially in the subantarctic area) are still uninhabited. The largest Madagascar exceeds in surface by far the rest of the islands, but the similarities in climate, culture, economy and geopolitical situa-tion allow us to define a smaller area called Mini-Oceania, by analogy with the island world of the South Pacific, while the whole of the islands of the Indian Ocean are named here, by contrast, Indioceania.

Keywords: austral, austronezian, Islam, colonialism, ocean, insularitate, independență, teritorii de-pendente, armament strategic, terorism, piraterie, catastrofe naturale.

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