ABSTRACT
‘Pacific Rim’ has been traditionally used to refer to all those countries with coastlines bordering the Pacific Ocean. However, in more recent years the term has become increasingly used to define an area that includes East and Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand and North America, sometimes stretching to include South Asia and Latin America. This extension of the concept clearly reflects the shifting of the economic power toward the East and the emerging economies, BRICS first of all. It is also true, however, that the concept still lacks the kind of definition at the academic level that others have, as it has been correctly observed by Paul D'Arcy, since so far it has not been attempted ‘to construct an image of the Pacific Ocean as a coherent entity in the way that Fernand Braudel has for the Mediterranean or K.N. Chaudhuri has for the Indian Ocean’ (D'Arcy, 1998:31), and that more is needed in this sense.
