Comparison of Han and Roman Empires?

[Alatriste]

Yes but curiosity at the least. And to find what was there, even just individuals exploring along coastlines, not necessarily a government action. Just doesn't make a lot of sense really.

It's the same with Greeks/Romans, Phoenicians and Africa. Perhaps they just didn't have our modern curiosity but I guess it was more a matter of technical limitations, including:

- Drinkable water. Ancient fleets needed to replenish their water supply incredibly often, due to the big number of oarmen (that was the reason galley fleets followed the coastlines even during the XVI and XVII centuries), scarce cargo space, and lack of any reliable way to store liquids - even barrels weren't a perfect solution, only appeared from the 3rd century AC, and back then they were very expensive.

- This applies to food too. The trouble with water was more pressing, but getting regularly healthy food for so many men was a matter for serious concern too.

- Lack of any reliable way to determine the position. Stars weren't good enough, changed if they travelled for long to the north/south, and couldn't be seen when they needed them the most, when the weather got rough. This was even more serious than it seems because it meant they couldn't draw accurate maps, each traveller had to start almost from scratch. 

- Diseases. Even in quite recent times (well known examples come from the American Civil War) getting together 1,000 young men was guaranteed to cause an outbreak of diseases amongs them, and they came roughly from the same area. Now imagine a fleet with thousands of sailors, dirty, weak, hungry, packed like sardines, and not even one hippocratic 'doctor' aboard, reaching a completely unknown location and contacting a new human group and its very own set of illnesses.

Add to that unfriendly natives, unscrupulous local rulers, other powers willing to keep some routes secret and even pirates, and the explorer's lot was not a happy one...   

[Josquius]

Also, is it just me, or would some kind of R:TW (or, to be honest, a Europa Barbarorum) that included Europe, the Middle East, India AND China from about 300 BC to the birth of Christ be about the coolest fucking thing ever?

Dunno how you would account for the insularity of the Chinese, though.  China was pretty much in a position to conquer the world several times, but always drew back because The World was "icky."

I'm amazed that neither China especially, nor Japan found and settled/traded/got resources from North America. Both very advanced tech and societies, and pretty much just had to follow the coastline to N. America. Maybe they made some journeys, probably did, but I'm not aware of any signicificant history there.

Myeh, after another hundred miles of shitty Siberian (or whatever the far east of Russia is called) landscape you start to get bored and say lets go home.
Heading south and west on the otherhand you had a bunch of lesser states with which to trade and/or extort.

[grumbler]

I know who you were, but I don't know who you ARE.

People that change their names deserve to be fed to CdM's cats.

Why would you wish such a fate on yourself, name-changer?

[Malthus]

The insularity of the Chinese has been much exaggerated. There were certainly Chinese explorers and traders, it is just that they quite naturally headed south to where the money was - in SE Asia (Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, India ...). They had no particular motive to explore northwards to where there was nothing but a bunch of fierce barbarians.

This lead to large communities of "overseas Chinese" merchants and traders in places like Indonesia.

The Europeans headed in the direction of North America as a short-cut to the riches of "the Indies"; the Chinese were already there.

Certainly the Chinese became more officially insular during the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties - but this was as a result, firstly, on a program of countering the central asian nomad threat, and secondly as a result of growing fear of the european barbarians. The Chinese of the Han and T'ang were not necessarily motivated in the same ways (in fact, one major motive for T'ang exploration was essentially Buddhist - to seek relics and texts from India/Central Asia).

[Valmy]

Yeah I was about to say.  The largest war in the 18th century was China's long and difficult war over Tibet and the central steppe with the Dzungars.  A huge war of bloody conquest that killed hundreds of thousands on both sides doesn't exactly sound like the actions of an insular nation to me.

[PDH]

Hippie

[The Brain]

I'm amazed that neither China especially, nor Japan found and settled/traded/got resources from North America. Both very advanced tech and societies, and pretty much just had to follow the coastline to N. America. Maybe they made some journeys, probably did, but I'm not aware of any signicificant history there.

China was so large and self-sufficient that there was no pressure to get resources from elsewhere.  It had everything it wanted.

Yes but curiosity at the least. And to find what was there, even just individuals exploring along coastlines, not necessarily a government action. Just doesn't make a lot of sense really.

Curiosity like that didn't happen in Europe, why would it happen in China?

[Josquius]

Saw this some time ago and it really shed a lot of light on China. Explains it very well:

China has land borders with 14 other countries – a world record*. And yet you should not think of China as particularly well-integrated with its neighbours. In fact, as shown in this dramatic map, you should rather consider China to be an island.

That stark image can be found illustrating this article on John Mauldin's Outside the Box, a blog at Investors Insight, which is a website dedicated to 'Financial Intelligence for the Informed Investor'. On his blog, Mr Mauldin hebdomadally profiles one of the many articles he reads each week, to challenge and stimulate investors to 'think outside the box'. What follows is a very brief summary of the article he recently highlighted: 'The Geopolitics of China', taken from a series of Geopolitical Monographs by Stratfor.

The Chinese heartland, pictured here as the part of China above water, is favourable to agriculture and has traditionally held the bulk of the Chinese population (i.e. the ethnic Han, whom we think of as 'the' Chinese); Over a billion people live here, in an area half the size of the US. The heartland's northern part is dominated by the Yellow River and speaks Mandarin, the southern part by the Yangtze River and by Cantonese.

Population pressure has always pushed China to expand into Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia and Manchuria. Another factor is the historical threat emanating from this non-Han 'shell' surrounding the Han heartland, for example from the nomad Mongol horsemen that have long threatened and occasionally dominated the sedentary, agricultural Han.

In the past, when the Chinese state was strong, it managed to conquer and rule these outlying areas, providing a defensive buffer for the heartland. When central authority was weak, these fringes broke off – leaving the heartland vulnerable to invasion. China is strong again, even up to the point where the fringes now are the target of large migrations of Han, much to the chagrin of the native peoples.

This Han-ification of the Chinese fringe does not necessarily imply that the Chinese have more contact with the countries beyond their borders. Only in three places are the Chinese borders naturally permeable: at the Vietnamese frontier, via the Silk Road, and near Russian Far East. Hilly jungles separate China from Laos and Burma, the Himalayas shield it from the Indian subcontinent, almost impassable deserts divide it from Central Asia and the forbidding expanses of Siberia have never appealed to Chinese expansionism (until now, as the Russians fear).

With the exception of the Ming dynasty's sponsorship of admiral Zheng He's naval expeditions (as far away as Sri Lanka, Arabia and Africa) in the early 15th century, China has never attempted to be a naval-based power – so for most of its history, China's ports on the Pacific were hardly windows on the world either.

China's relative isolation, combined with the size of its population (1 in every 5 humans is Chinese), means China is virtually impossible to subdue militarily (as the Japanese discovered to their disadvantage in the 1930s). It also means China can – and often has – turned its back on the world, existing in splendid isolation.

Its size and its penchand for autarkism dictate China's three main geopolitical objectives:

    * maintain unity of the Han heartland;
    * maintain control over the non-Han buffer zone;
    * deflect foreign encroachment on the Chinese coast.

Clearly isolationist, these objectives also condemn China to poverty: as a densely populated country with limited arable land, China needs internatioal trade to prosper. The paradox is that prosperity will lead to instability. Prosperity will tend to be concentrated in the areas trading with the outside world (i.e. the coastal regions), creating economic tensions with the poorer interior. This might destabilise the Han heartland.

This is exactly what happened during an earlier ouverture towards the outside world, in the early 20th century. And this is why Mao's revolution first failed in the coastal areas, and only succeeded after his Long March towards the poorer interior. Mao's victory allowed him to reassert central control from Beijing (also over the buffer regions which had 'drifted away', such as Tibet). He also 're-isolated' the country, in the process making everybody equally poor again.

In the late 1970s, early 1980s, Deng Xiaoping took the gamble of reopening China in order to make it prosperous again. He counted on Mao's strong, centralised, single-party state system to keep the country together. Time will tell whether he was right, for the main threat to China's geopolitical goals has again become the economic bifurcation of the Han heartland, with 400 million Chinese living in the relatively wealthy coastal areas, and 900 million in the often still desperately poor interior.

China is now less isolated than it once was – although its points of contact remain coastal rather than terrestrial, meaning the insularity portrayed in this map has not completely vanished. But what makes the Chinese leadership nervous is that its Deng-instigated preference for prosperity over stability is precariously linked to circumstances beyond Beijing's total control: the health and growth of the global economy. What will happen if a global recession threatens the Chinese model? Will the fringe rebel, will the heartland fracture? Or will the center hold – if necessary by again choosing the stability of an isolationist, hardline dictatorship over openness and prosperity?

Many thanks to Eric Johnson for providing a link to this map.

* North Korea, Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar/Burma, Laos and Vietnam. China shares the world record with Russia, which also borders 14 countries: Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea.

Makes it even more Roman really....

[The Brain]

STFU Tim.

[Eochaid]

Saw this some time ago and it really shed a lot of light on China. Explains it very well:

What's the source?

Kevin

[Josquius]

Saw this some time ago and it really shed a lot of light on China. Explains it very well:

What's the source?

Kevin

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/

[Jacob]

Lately I've been getting a bit more interested in China (mostly due to Fallows' excellent blog at the Atlantic, and when I stumbled upon this odd Wikipedia article comparing the Han and Chinese Empire ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_Roman_and_Han_Empires ) I started thinking how interesting it would be to read a book on the subject; two Empires, both alike in dignity, ruling over two of the greatest parts of the world in (relatively) similar ways and (eventually, with the Roman adoption of heavy cavalry) even fighting in similar ways.  Would also find this interesting as I want to know more about Steppe history of the period (the Chinese interaction with the Xiongnu seems particularly interesting).

Any books to recommend on Han history?  Any great history books specifically draw comparisons?

John Keay's China: A History is excellent, I highly recommend it.

[Jacob]

I'd also recommend against explaining "the Chinese" as having one constant character across character across time and geography, including being "insular".

There have definitely been periods of insularity, but it has not been constant - just look at the far flung communities of overseas Chinese for example.  However, to me, on striking difference with Western powers is the lack of distant, directly administered colonies.  Perhaps the explanation is that China has always had nearby "uncivilized people" to subject to it's imperialism in its hinterland, rather than having to look abroad for it?

[KRonn]

I'm amazed that neither China especially, nor Japan found and settled/traded/got resources from North America. Both very advanced tech and societies, and pretty much just had to follow the coastline to N. America. Maybe they made some journeys, probably did, but I'm not aware of any signicificant history there.

Of course it did. Even the Vikings made more perilous journeys and colonized Iceland, Greenland and some parts of present coastal Canada. The Chinese being a lot more advanced and industrious could possibly have made a journey along the coastlines more easily. But as others point out, for what ever reasons the Chinese weren't that interested in heading in that direction, or the logistics were too difficult. It's just surprising to me that it never happened and they could pretty much have followed the coasts, putting ashore for food, water, boat repairs. However, also, there may have been periods of colder weather causing too much ice that far north, which could have prevented them from going too far (even though the Vikings did manage it, it surely was a treacherous journey).


China was so large and self-sufficient that there was no pressure to get resources from elsewhere.  It had everything it wanted.

Yes but curiosity at the least. And to find what was there, even just individuals exploring along coastlines, not necessarily a government action. Just doesn't make a lot of sense really.

Curiosity like that didn't happen in Europe, why would it happen in China?

Euros journeyed all over the world, probably mainly at first by following coastlines, going to Asia. For trade, exploration/curiosity. Vikings with lesser technology made journeys across the frigid north Atlantic ocean, away from coastlines, to found colonies on Iceland, Greenland and the coast of Canada. I'm just still quite surprised that the more advanced Chinese never made significant journeys to N. America following the coastlines. However, there would be a lot of ice and freezing weather and that may have discouraged them, especially if attempted in colder climate times. They could have put ashore to resupply water, food, and repair boats.

But as others say here, the Chinese basically weren't interested in that, or the logistics of the trip was too difficult. Understandable, but then, Vikings did it in similar conditions, so I will remain a bit surprised that China never did.

[Jacob]

Also, while not being about the Han I enjoyed Genhgis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford.

Definitely shows a non-isolationist side to a Chinese dynasty, though of course it was Mongol based.  That said, I think any understanding of China has to include the push and pull between the settled agriculturalists of the Han heartland and the various peoples of the "buffer zones", whether it be the various nomads and semi-nomads or the Tibetans.

Apparently Khublai Khan (IIRC) sent an ambassador to England and the Vatican.