Where did the "Near East" go to?

I was reading some essays the other day written in the late 1940s and early 1950s, in which the phrase Near East (meaning Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, etc) recurred quite frequently. It then occurred to me that I hadn't heard that name recently, as it seems to have been replaced by Middle East.

So I wonder: when, and why, did the Near East become the Middle East? It hasn't moved, after all.

Solution 1:

The Middle East or Mideast is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa.The term is considered to be Eurocentric and used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East. The corresponding adjective is Middle-Eastern and the derived noun is Middle-Easterner.

Middle East

Near East