Sphere of influence
A
sphere of influence (
SOI) is an area or region over which an organization or state exerts some kind of indirect cultural, economic, military or political domination. Also, in some areas of habitation, shopping or retail outlets or indeed destination outlets, have a sphere of influence over towns of certain areas, for example the
Central Business District (CBD)
A country within the "sphere of influence" of another more powerful country may become a subsidiary of that state and serve in effect as a
satellite state or de facto
colony. For example, during the height of its existence, the
Japanese Empire had quite a large sphere of influence, with the Japanese government influencing, or directly governing events in
Korea,
Manchuria,
Vietnam,
Taiwan, and parts of
China. The Japanese "sphere of influence" could thus be quite easily drawn on a map of the Pacific Ocean as a large "bubble" surrounding the islands of Japan and the Asian nations it controlled.
During the
Cold War,
Western Europe,
Japan, and
South Korea were often said to lie under the sphere of influence of the
United States, while
Eastern Europe,
North Korea,
Cuba,
Vietnam, and (until the
Sino-Soviet split) the
People's Republic of China were said to lie under the sphere of influence of the
Soviet Union.
Sometimes portions of a single country can fall into two distinct spheres of influence. In the colonial era the
buffer states of
Iran and
Thailand, lying between the empires of
Britain/
Russia and Britain/
France respectively, were divided between the spheres of influence of the imperial
powers. Likewise, after
World War II,
Germany was divided into four occupation zones, which later consolidated into
West Germany and
East Germany, the former a member of
NATO and the latter a member of the
Warsaw Pact.
In rarer instances, multiple spheres of influence by different imperial powers can be established in a single country as a compromise between the imperial powers and also when establishing a single sphere of influence is not feasible due to the size of that single country. For example, between the
1870s and the
1910s, although the
Chinese Empire still existed as a
sovereign country, it was divided into 6 SOI zones officially in which Russia took the area north of the
Great Wall, Germany the
Shandong Province, Japan the
Fujian Province, Britain the
Yangtze River basin, France the southwestern Chinese provinces bordering
French Indochina and Britain/France jointly the
Guangdong Province. Similarly, the
Ottoman Empire was divided by the imperial powers into several SOIs at around the same time.
In
California "sphere of influence" has a legal meaning as a plan for the probable physical boundaries and service area of a local agency. Spheres of influence at California local agencies are regulated by Local Agency Formation Commissions (
LAFCO). Each
county in California has a LAFCO.
*
American Empire*
Hegemony*
Soviet Empire"Sphere of Influence Inc." is also the name of a consulting business."Sphere of Influence" is also the name of a Japanese rapper.
*
The CommonCensus Map Project - Calculates the spheres of influence for American cities based on voting
