always historically a part of Africa
I dont think this is accurate. Im sure certain areas were considered africa in historic times, but others were considered asia instead. To be honest, i think even in historic times the vast majority of this region was always thought of as seperate from africa and asia and europe, no matter what demonym they used to describe those peoples.
But, arguing only semantics makes my response worthless, imo. So, ill now turn my focus on a "what if" scenario: What if they used the term "Middle East" for a specific purpose?
Well, this term is inherently ambiguous, unless we consider the entire globe. However, the globe is a sphere, so how can we do that?
I recall a point in northern egypt (actually, Giza IIRC) as being the center of all landmass on the globe. Thus, this could explain the use of "Middle" in "Middle East". But what about the "East" part?
This is where a more unilateral decision was likely made, consciously, for a certain reason. What constitutes East versus West, on a sphere? (North and South are quite easy). To be honest, it makes more sense to me to consider the longitude of Giza (the center of all land mass) as the dividing line between the western and eastern hemispheres. Yet, it is that this longitude is in Greenwich, United Kingdom, aka the Greenwich Meridian.
Considering this, it woukd be more logical to label the Indian Subcontinent region as the Middle East, as it is right in the middle of the eastern hemisphere.
This leads me in two directions, wherein i will pause for awhile at the fork:
The europeans, most likely the British, are the originators of this term. For brevity, ill save consideration of purpose for later comment. However, i would make a small bet that says it has something to do with Greenwich and the designation of the Prime Meridian.
The Westerners (most likely the Americans, with strong influence from the British in regards to this topic) came up with this term. For this to make any sense, semantically speaking, we could surmise that by labelling the Middle East as such, it was from the American continent's perspective, which would mean europe would be, more or less, the near east (reasoning that the European continent would still be considered the "East".
Version 1 might have more malintent than the 2nd, imo.
Food for thought
Masticated. Your turn to swallow.