[I gotta start by apologising for how long this took—I only realised when I started drafting this essay that almost all my knowledge of Rome comes from Chinese historians.
In re house servants getting political power: There was definitely a thing where the Praetorian Guard (the personal bodyguards of the emperor) had a lot of political power. This is less because they could subtly influence the emperor and more because they had a huge if unofficial role in determining who the next emperor would be. ETA: Also, they could literally have the emperor killed if they wanted, and in some cases did so. That probably also made the emperor inclined to listen to them. This sort of thing is why the Byzantine Empire eventually decided to have the emperor's bodyguards consist entirely of foreign mercenaries, since they would have no connections to any domestic political faction.
In re Confucius being a musclebro: Plato was also famously like this, that's why he was called Plato ("broad", as in having a broad chest). He was a skilled wrestler.
In re Confucius getting more and more impressive titles: The same has happened to George Washington. Every time the military structure of the US is changed the government retroactively promotes Washington so he still outranks everyone, because who's going to vote against promoting George Washingtion?
It's interesting to me that different countries base their national identities on different things. America defines itself politically, France defines itself culturally, Britain defines itself geographically, Japan defines itself ethnically, et cetera.
I once read a historical fiction novel set during the Ming Dynasty in which one of the main characters was a young man preparing for the Imperial Examination, and one of the ways this is reflected in his internal monologue is that he always has a Confucius quote that's relevant to the situation. With one exception: When he's hanging out with his girlfriend, instead of Confucian quotes about the importance of proper behavior and a rationally-ordered universe his monologue is filled with quotes from Daoist philosophers about naturalness and spontaneity and freedom.
Actually, now that I think about it, I don't recall China ever having a problem with the Praetorian Guard getting too influential. They only successfully usurped the Emperor entirely on their own once. I wonder why that is? Naively, I would assume it's because despite them being responsible for the Emperor's safety, they didn't actually talk to him on a day-to-day basis the way his personal eunuch would. They managed the safety of the Forbidden City, but it's not just an imperial palace. It's practically the size of a real goddamn city. The Han palace covered over 6 square kilometres, and the guards would only be allowed on the outer perimeters of it. They weren't allowed inside the proper palace, because of um. Dick related reason. I think that helps a lot. The Emperor obviously would still talk to them whenever things needed done, but they weren't around all the time for dinnertime conversation, so it's harder to build a proper bond of friendship.
Ming Dynasty Confucianism is the worst Confucianism. Bleh.
I think part of it may be just that civil wars and other violent means of practicing politics were fairly common in Rome and thus the Guard killing the emperor didn't provoke the same kind of outrage that you might expect. There wasn't a single dynasty of the Western Roman Empire that lasted as long as a century; of the twelve dynasties of the Eastern Roman Empire only three lasted a century, and none of those three hit the two-century mark.
In at least one case, after the Praetorian Guard killed the emperor they *auctioned off* the position to the highest bidder. They didn't even do this subtly, they just publicly announced that they were taking bids. Shockingly, the man who won the auction did not have much popular legitimacy and reigned for only a few months.
Maybe I'm just not getting this but uh...why wouldn't the leader of the Praetorian Guard just be the Emperor? Wouldn't that be easier than auctioning off the throne?
I don't really know, but my guess is he didn't think he had the political power to actually hold the throne once he had it. Also, it wasn't just the leader -- the winning bid was 25,000 sesterces to each member of the Guard. Maybe the leader of the Guard didn't have enough support from the other members of the guard, and he definitely wouldn't have had enough money to buy their support in the same way. Or maybe he just didn't want to be emperor.
It seems odd that they'd be loyal enough to stab the Emperor with him, but not loyal enough to make him Emperor afterwards. I mean, surely, I assume he would bribe them with noble titles and lands and whatever that might amount to more than 25,000 sesterces over the course of their lifetimes. Or at least positions in government that has a lot of leeway for corruption or something.
It's just interesting, because the founding Emperor of Song Dynasty used to be the leader of the Praetorian Guard for one of the kingdoms in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms era.
So I did some more looking into this, and according to Herodian it doesn't seem like the assassination was a planned thing or one ordered by anyone. It seems more like a bunch of Praetorians just lost their temper and killed him in anger:
"And so, with no warning, the praetorians rushed headlong from their camp one day at noon, when they were off duty. Wild with unreasoning anger, they burst into the palace with spears raised and swords drawn."
Afterwards they came to their senses and seem to have panicked themselves:
"After they had committed this savage crime, alarmed by what they had done and wishing to anticipate the fury of the people, who would, they knew, be enraged by the murder, the praetorians rushed back to the camp. Shutting all the gates and blocking the entrances, they placed sentries in the towers and remained inside the walls to defend themselves if the mob should attack the camp."
There were also some significant disadvantages to being Emperor at this point, in the form of reduced life expectancy, as this was during the Year of the Five Emperors.
There are also theories that the historical persistence of broadly Chinese culture across a large land mass is related to geographical features - with the yellow and Yangtse providing good internal comms, helping to unify regions with extensive arable surplus and shared culture. This is also related to the persistence of the Chinese state.
The geographic set up in Europe and the Mediterranean basin is arguably much less conducive to creating a single culture or central government.
I think the local flora and fauna to China is definitely absolutely crucial to how Chinese culture emerged to begin with, and I could probably write about that at some point in the future too. But I'm not sure that geographical features contribute that much to Chinese culture, because early China before Qin Shi Huang was almost exactly like Europe. It was a bunch of much smaller independent nations who all had their own languages and cultures and identities. People from Chu would be pretty insulted if you felt like they were the same as people from Zhao, or people from Song. They technically all acknowledged the authority of the Zhou Emperor, but compared to Emperors in actual Chinese Dynasties, he wasn't much more than a figurehead mascot, and didn't really command any authority at all during the Warring States period. The reason that Qin Shi Huang is consistently ranked number 1 in lists of Top Ten Best Emperors in Chinese history is exactly because people think it's an absolute miracle Qin was able to pull off uniting China. No one thought it was inevitable and natural. And even after he did, it took another 100 years before old Warring States influences were actually completely rooted out and China began to identify as one whole nation.
Actively inhibitory, really. Europe is split by a bunch of mountain ranges, which historically is one of the single best predictors for distinct languages and cultures. Rome was sort of necessarily more decentralized in how it governed. Frankly, the broad reach of Latin among the educated class lasting as long as it did was likely more the result of the power of the Catholic Church than Rome. I think you can find a lot of parallels between the idea "we are the true inheritors of the Han Dynasty" and "we are the true inheritors of the Great Work begun by the Apostles"
Yes! Christianity (and honestly all major religions that lasted that long) was able to last so long precisely because they know the power of giving people a shared identity through the same rites, rituals, holidays, and customs! That's why I think Confucianism often gets defined as a religion, even though it lacks all the other crucial aspects of religions like, you know, having a divine authority figure.
I chat once a week with a woman in Japan for language practice, and the question of "what is a religion" was a surprisingly difficult language barrier. I think in the West it's a fairly simple dichotomy of being either a Religion or a Philosophy, and she was adamant that Shinto is neither. The best English word she could think of for it was "custom", so there definitely seems to be a cultural divide between the east and west on this cultural category.
At least in China, the separation is quite distinct. Religions are called 教 (jiao), Buddhism is 道教, Daoism is 道教, Catholicism is 天主教. Philosophies are 家 (jia), Confucianism is 儒家, Legalism is 法家, Moism is 墨家. The difference is whether or not it involves supernatural divine figures. The difference is between "Daoist Gods can fly." "How?" "Magic, brah." and "Mozi can fly." "How?" "Here's the glider he built, and here's the maths that shows how it works."
That seems to line up with the way I've always thought of them pretty well. My language partner carves out a third space for 道(dou/tou), which seems to be something like "secular schools of thought that also have rites and customs you partake in." The hardest part for me to grasp is that this puts Confucianism and Shinto in the same category as Kendo.
Tbh, I have no idea what's going on in Japan, really, but in China, 道 is just Daoism, and is more specifically moral philosophy rather than political philosophy. Most of Chinese philosophy happened during chaotic period between Dynasties, like the Warring States era or the Northern Southern era, and so most of it consists of people with different ideas of how a country should be governed, because that's what Kings were looking for. As a result, people interested in moral philosophy and more ephemeral subjects than the philosophy of law would join Daoism, and then just live according to their internal convictions, and that was 道.
In China, there isn't much of rites and customs that isn't strictly Confucian, because that was sort of the point--maintaining the same culture and not having people all off doing their own weird thing. So from my Chinese POV, the difference between a philosophy (家) and 道 is that the former is a system of beliefs you're trying to proliferate, and the latter is just what you as an individual is living by.
On the subject of servants getting political power: I do know that it was common in European history for revolutionaries to *claim* that they were only opposed to the king's advisors. Since the king ruled by Divine Right, they would say that the king was just being misled by evil advisors, and they were in fact trying to restore the king to his rightful position. Early in the English Civil War this was the official position taken by the parliamentarians, who later ended up executing King Charles. And during the War of the Roses, the catatonic Henry VI was "rescued" (read: captured) by Yorkists on two separate occasions.
One other factor with the Roman empire is that people *tried* to re-create it, but no one successfully did, not like what happened with China.
The center of the Roman Empire was the fast transport offered by the Mediterranean Sea (meaning roughly "in the middle of the earth", which seems to echo "Middle Kingdom", although the Romans mostly called it Mare Nostrum, or simply "Our Sea"). But after the early Islamic caliphate conquered the southern half of the old territory of the Roman Empire, the center of mass shifted north. The Roman church and the Pope sort of took over as the central institution holding western Europe together, while the remnant of the eastern Roman Empire continued on from Constantinople, calling themselves "Roman", but called "Byzantine" by the west. At this point, my impression is that "Christendom" viewed itself as being under siege, barely holding on to the true faith, with infidels to the south, pagans to the east, and a growing split between Catholic and Orthodox in the middle.
When the Byzantines had their first Empress, Irene, the Pope took that opportunity to crown Charlemagne as "Emperor of the Romans", which eventually turned into the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted until Napoleon (who was also calling himself "Emperor") brought it down. The Crusades were an attempt to reclaim the land lost to Islam, but didn't make a lasting impact. The Byzantines called Constantinople the "Second Rome", and lasted until the 1450s when the Turks finally overran them. At which point the Russian Empire started calling Moscow the "Third Rome". (So if we stretch really hard, the clashes between the Russian Empire and the Qing might technically be described as Roman vs. Han, but only in the sense that both sides claim a 2000-year-old mantle.)
I suspect there was also some popular equivalence between apocalyptic Christianity and the re-establishment of the Roman Empire. That is, that there was some idea that the spiritual kingdom of God was reflected in the earthly empire of the Romans, just as the Emperor was on a level with the Pope, and both existed at the time of Christ, but then we lost both, but one day, if we're all very good and pious and faithful, both will be re-established. And from there, we get things like the religious imperative to colonialism, where the end goal is a single Christian empire controlling all the world. (But which country, and which flavor of Christianity?) But mostly I think of this as sour grapes, a post-hoc justification for why no one had yet re-established the Empire.
Anyway, that's the stuff that I can think of that wasn't covered by someone else (like the Praetorian Guard, and the differences in role between different types of Emperor, and the Merovingians).
Yeah, it's sort of like how the central plains between the Yellow River and the Yangtze River is the heart of Dynastic China. If you don't at least hold that territory, you can't really call yourself China. That's the birth of the Chinese identity, and it's the bread basket that Chinese culture is formed on. For this reason, a lot of people argue that Southern Song Dynasty doesn't count as a real dynasty, because they lost that central plains region.
Maybe China just consistently got lucky, in that the military efforts to re-unite it were successful, whereas it failed for Rome for long enough that realistically, it just wasn't going to happen anymore. Or maybe there's a deeper reason. I'm not really sure. Chinese historians at least seem to think there was a pretty major factor of luck at the beginning stages of China (when the identity wasn't as ironed out yet).
What infrastructure specifically? Like, I know they were well known for the aqueducts, but that's definitely something China also had. China had really excellent hydrological engineering that lead the world pretty much up until the 20th century, as far as I can tell.
I know Rome built a lot of roads? Which yeah, that's not a secret technology or anything. It's just a matter of whether or not you have money to build roads with. Other than those two that particularly stands out, I just get overwhelmed with way too much information about Roman life and city planning and can't separate out what impressive infrastructure they've got going on, versus what was just luxury for the nobility.
The advantage of infrastructure isn't just having the buildings, it's also in building the buildings -- they were essentially public works projects. Whenever the Romans took over an area they tried to win the loyalty of, if not all the locals, then at least some faction of them. This is one way of funneling funds to win the loyalty of the populace. That's why Augustus was so obsessed with covering the Empire with monuments.
The roads were a big part of it -- fast transport and fast transportation are very useful in running a large empire -- but what made them impressive wasn't the technology but the fact that they prioritized them so highly that they were willing to throw so much money at them.
Interestingly, my impression is that western historians tend to point to Rome not interfering with local customs as a good thing, an example of Roman pragmatism in not picking fights and making it easier to integrate different peoples into the empire.
Yeah, on that front, Han basically had the same policy Rome did. For the most part, from what I can tell, after the days of Qin Shi Huang himself, there usually wasn't that much, well, actual forced used to enforcing Han culture in new territory gained. If you wanted to circle out a mountain and be your own tribe and not abide by Han laws or customs, the government doesn't really have the time or energy to do anything about it. But then, you don't get the farming subsidies, or government backed low interest loans, or the protection of the police force. It's up to you whether your culture is worth not actually having citizenship or not.
could you do one on religion in china? I know vaguely about taoism vs. buddhism vs. confucianism having friction sometimes, and in korea there were massacres of christians. How did china manage minority religions?
It always surprised me how little China changed between Han and Qing dynasties.
TLDR China was never invaded by germans.
A main difference with China is that the roman empire included areas with old and sophisticated cultures, notably the eastern Mediterranean was dominated by greek culture that even the romans valued and copied. Most educated romans were fluent in greek.
Another issue is that Rome never conquered the entirety of Europe and eventually german tribes became a serious rival that by 500 AD conquered the western half of the empire. As agriculturalists germans had a culture that was pretty similar to that of Rome and so they assimilated slower than nomad pastoralists would have had.
Roman emperors didn't had harems so they had little need for eunuchs which they regarded with disgust anyway. Classical antiquity had a passion for the beauty of the body.
Roman emperors had praetorian prefects which commanded the imperial guards and got really powerful on occasion. In truth the emperors were military dictators who often led their armies on campaign so they were hard to control. The threats were from a pretender gaining the loyalty of some legions or from a palace conspiracy having him assassinated. In the last century of the West emperors were often puppets of army commanders, usually tough men with some barbarian descent which prevented them from taking the purple for themselves.
The roman political system during the imperial period was unstable and prone to dangerous crises because there was no real legitimacy other than the support of the soldiers. The antiquity version of "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" None of the successor germanic states was interested in emulating that mess so they kept their own institutions like germanic kingship.
Oh no, Qing Dynasty is drastically different from Han. That's why I say that Han culture can only really strictly be said to have survived through to the end of Ming Dynasty.
My question is more like, I mean, Roman Emperors still had household servants, right? You're too busy as Emperor to wash your own dishes and launder your own clothes. And once you do, you've got to have some kind of butler figure to manage those servants. And that butler figure is gonna end up hanging around you all the time and it's hard to avoid building some kind of friendship and bond in that situation. And almost all corruption is powered by friendship, the idea of, "Ah, but it's Alfred! He's different!" And before you know it, the butler has way too much sway over the Emperor's decisions under the guise of friendly advice when the Emperor is dealing with a particularly nasty headache.
It's also honestly kind of fascinating to me that Rome never did end up taking over Germany, when it had such overwhelming population and economy and, well, like you said, an emphasis on military might. Is there a reason why Rome never completely conquered Germany? Even if it wasn't through war, why did they wage enough economic warfare against Germany that they were able to absorb the territory?
What you describe happened to the Frankish kings from the Merovingian dynasty who were overthrown by their majordomos, literally mayors of the palate, which after being the power behind the throne and turning the Merovingians into do-nothing kings eventually took the crown themselves as the Carolingian dynasty of Charles Martel and Charlemagne.
I have no idea if palace butlers were important during the principate but the office was very important later at the court in Constantinople.
Rome never completely conquered Germany because historically germans were rather good at war.
When one looks at the Colosseum and longhouses they might conclude that there was a major technological difference between romans and germans in all aspects but this was not the case on the battlefield were both sides used similar weapons and armor. Romans had the advantage of a large, disciplined and well equipped army while germans had evolved a society and culture geared for war partially under roman pressure and influence. Romans usually won their wars but never decisively but when the germanic tribes invaded the Western Empire in early 5th century there was no comeback for Rome.
Things were even worse for romans in their wars with the sarmatians from the steppes of Eastern Europe whose cavalry armor romans eventually had to copy.
The military importance of a german culture that placed enormous value on bravery and loyalty was understood by many roman emperors who often employed germanic mercenaries not only in their armies but even as their personal bodyguards because they trusted them more than they trusted fellow romans.
Wow. So evil Butlers really have been a thing since forever in everywhere. Neat. I guess that's one threat that washing machines and roombas have liberated us from.
It's just mindblowing to me that it's possible to consistently hold ground against a superpower with 25% of World GDP, just with a culture of bravery. Naively, it seems like if Rome really wanted to, they could defeat Germany just with economic warfare if nothing else.
The Eastern Roman Empire did have eunuchs as court officials and some did achieve considerable political power, e.g. Eutropius. EDIT: the reason for the eunuchs is that there was always the worry that these people would usurp/replace the emperor. Eunuchs were ineligible to be emperor and thus it was believed that they would be more trustworthy.
Interesting quote I just came across on the subject of eunuchs in the Eastern Roman Empire:
Court eunuchs also frequently appeared in important positions normally held by males in the army and the navy. The most famous of these, of course, was Narses, Justinian's great general. Procopius believed that the removal of the testicles destroyed the seat of a man's natural powers, yet he was lavish in his praise of Narses. He marveled that a eunuch raised in the women's quarters and accustomed to a soft life could overcome his inherent traits and command so successfully. Agathias chuckles at the naivete of the Goths, who assumed that Narses was just a feeble caricature of a man who had set his masculinity aside and thus were unprepared for his military prowess. Both of these authors stress the intelligence and skill of Narses, citing his planning and execution of a large operation. Neither, however, attributes his success to traditional, courageous, manliness. In a different military context, Leo the Deacon notes that the Scyths assumed that the eunuch Peter the Patrician was a "little woman raised in the shade". Leo then tell us how Peter surpassed everyone's expectations by killing a Scythian general in hand-to-hand conbat. Despite that example of manliness, however, eunuchs were normally assumed to be successful commanders because they were clever, they were good at organizing campaigns and they understood strategy
-Living in the Shadows: Eunuchs and Gender in Byzantium, Kathryn M Ringrose
The place I saw this quote had someone say "in the modern era of long-distance and logistics-heavy war, we no longer need a man's courage, we need a eunuch's cleverness. the united states MUST create positions exclusively for eunuchs before a eunuch gap forms"
I thought the United States had already been creating positions for eunuchs? I mean, like, I assume modern day commanders don't get their job by punching people in the face personally with their martial prowess. Most of their schooling is in a classroom, right?
The Roman Empire also hated merchants. In fact up until a few hundred years ago pretty much every culture hated merchants, it's a strangely common thing. EDIT: see https://acoup.blog/2020/08/21/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-iv-markets-and-non-farmers/ for a good rundown on this
In re house servants getting political power: There was definitely a thing where the Praetorian Guard (the personal bodyguards of the emperor) had a lot of political power. This is less because they could subtly influence the emperor and more because they had a huge if unofficial role in determining who the next emperor would be. ETA: Also, they could literally have the emperor killed if they wanted, and in some cases did so. That probably also made the emperor inclined to listen to them. This sort of thing is why the Byzantine Empire eventually decided to have the emperor's bodyguards consist entirely of foreign mercenaries, since they would have no connections to any domestic political faction.
In re Confucius being a musclebro: Plato was also famously like this, that's why he was called Plato ("broad", as in having a broad chest). He was a skilled wrestler.
In re Confucius getting more and more impressive titles: The same has happened to George Washington. Every time the military structure of the US is changed the government retroactively promotes Washington so he still outranks everyone, because who's going to vote against promoting George Washingtion?
It's interesting to me that different countries base their national identities on different things. America defines itself politically, France defines itself culturally, Britain defines itself geographically, Japan defines itself ethnically, et cetera.
I once read a historical fiction novel set during the Ming Dynasty in which one of the main characters was a young man preparing for the Imperial Examination, and one of the ways this is reflected in his internal monologue is that he always has a Confucius quote that's relevant to the situation. With one exception: When he's hanging out with his girlfriend, instead of Confucian quotes about the importance of proper behavior and a rationally-ordered universe his monologue is filled with quotes from Daoist philosophers about naturalness and spontaneity and freedom.
Actually, now that I think about it, I don't recall China ever having a problem with the Praetorian Guard getting too influential. They only successfully usurped the Emperor entirely on their own once. I wonder why that is? Naively, I would assume it's because despite them being responsible for the Emperor's safety, they didn't actually talk to him on a day-to-day basis the way his personal eunuch would. They managed the safety of the Forbidden City, but it's not just an imperial palace. It's practically the size of a real goddamn city. The Han palace covered over 6 square kilometres, and the guards would only be allowed on the outer perimeters of it. They weren't allowed inside the proper palace, because of um. Dick related reason. I think that helps a lot. The Emperor obviously would still talk to them whenever things needed done, but they weren't around all the time for dinnertime conversation, so it's harder to build a proper bond of friendship.
Ming Dynasty Confucianism is the worst Confucianism. Bleh.
I think part of it may be just that civil wars and other violent means of practicing politics were fairly common in Rome and thus the Guard killing the emperor didn't provoke the same kind of outrage that you might expect. There wasn't a single dynasty of the Western Roman Empire that lasted as long as a century; of the twelve dynasties of the Eastern Roman Empire only three lasted a century, and none of those three hit the two-century mark.
In at least one case, after the Praetorian Guard killed the emperor they *auctioned off* the position to the highest bidder. They didn't even do this subtly, they just publicly announced that they were taking bids. Shockingly, the man who won the auction did not have much popular legitimacy and reigned for only a few months.
Maybe I'm just not getting this but uh...why wouldn't the leader of the Praetorian Guard just be the Emperor? Wouldn't that be easier than auctioning off the throne?
I don't really know, but my guess is he didn't think he had the political power to actually hold the throne once he had it. Also, it wasn't just the leader -- the winning bid was 25,000 sesterces to each member of the Guard. Maybe the leader of the Guard didn't have enough support from the other members of the guard, and he definitely wouldn't have had enough money to buy their support in the same way. Or maybe he just didn't want to be emperor.
It seems odd that they'd be loyal enough to stab the Emperor with him, but not loyal enough to make him Emperor afterwards. I mean, surely, I assume he would bribe them with noble titles and lands and whatever that might amount to more than 25,000 sesterces over the course of their lifetimes. Or at least positions in government that has a lot of leeway for corruption or something.
It's just interesting, because the founding Emperor of Song Dynasty used to be the leader of the Praetorian Guard for one of the kingdoms in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms era.
So I did some more looking into this, and according to Herodian it doesn't seem like the assassination was a planned thing or one ordered by anyone. It seems more like a bunch of Praetorians just lost their temper and killed him in anger:
"And so, with no warning, the praetorians rushed headlong from their camp one day at noon, when they were off duty. Wild with unreasoning anger, they burst into the palace with spears raised and swords drawn."
Afterwards they came to their senses and seem to have panicked themselves:
"After they had committed this savage crime, alarmed by what they had done and wishing to anticipate the fury of the people, who would, they knew, be enraged by the murder, the praetorians rushed back to the camp. Shutting all the gates and blocking the entrances, they placed sentries in the towers and remained inside the walls to defend themselves if the mob should attack the camp."
There were also some significant disadvantages to being Emperor at this point, in the form of reduced life expectancy, as this was during the Year of the Five Emperors.
There are also theories that the historical persistence of broadly Chinese culture across a large land mass is related to geographical features - with the yellow and Yangtse providing good internal comms, helping to unify regions with extensive arable surplus and shared culture. This is also related to the persistence of the Chinese state.
The geographic set up in Europe and the Mediterranean basin is arguably much less conducive to creating a single culture or central government.
I think the local flora and fauna to China is definitely absolutely crucial to how Chinese culture emerged to begin with, and I could probably write about that at some point in the future too. But I'm not sure that geographical features contribute that much to Chinese culture, because early China before Qin Shi Huang was almost exactly like Europe. It was a bunch of much smaller independent nations who all had their own languages and cultures and identities. People from Chu would be pretty insulted if you felt like they were the same as people from Zhao, or people from Song. They technically all acknowledged the authority of the Zhou Emperor, but compared to Emperors in actual Chinese Dynasties, he wasn't much more than a figurehead mascot, and didn't really command any authority at all during the Warring States period. The reason that Qin Shi Huang is consistently ranked number 1 in lists of Top Ten Best Emperors in Chinese history is exactly because people think it's an absolute miracle Qin was able to pull off uniting China. No one thought it was inevitable and natural. And even after he did, it took another 100 years before old Warring States influences were actually completely rooted out and China began to identify as one whole nation.
Actively inhibitory, really. Europe is split by a bunch of mountain ranges, which historically is one of the single best predictors for distinct languages and cultures. Rome was sort of necessarily more decentralized in how it governed. Frankly, the broad reach of Latin among the educated class lasting as long as it did was likely more the result of the power of the Catholic Church than Rome. I think you can find a lot of parallels between the idea "we are the true inheritors of the Han Dynasty" and "we are the true inheritors of the Great Work begun by the Apostles"
Yes! Christianity (and honestly all major religions that lasted that long) was able to last so long precisely because they know the power of giving people a shared identity through the same rites, rituals, holidays, and customs! That's why I think Confucianism often gets defined as a religion, even though it lacks all the other crucial aspects of religions like, you know, having a divine authority figure.
I chat once a week with a woman in Japan for language practice, and the question of "what is a religion" was a surprisingly difficult language barrier. I think in the West it's a fairly simple dichotomy of being either a Religion or a Philosophy, and she was adamant that Shinto is neither. The best English word she could think of for it was "custom", so there definitely seems to be a cultural divide between the east and west on this cultural category.
At least in China, the separation is quite distinct. Religions are called 教 (jiao), Buddhism is 道教, Daoism is 道教, Catholicism is 天主教. Philosophies are 家 (jia), Confucianism is 儒家, Legalism is 法家, Moism is 墨家. The difference is whether or not it involves supernatural divine figures. The difference is between "Daoist Gods can fly." "How?" "Magic, brah." and "Mozi can fly." "How?" "Here's the glider he built, and here's the maths that shows how it works."
What if there's not a belief in God/gods, but there is a belief in other supernatural things like an afterlife?
That seems to line up with the way I've always thought of them pretty well. My language partner carves out a third space for 道(dou/tou), which seems to be something like "secular schools of thought that also have rites and customs you partake in." The hardest part for me to grasp is that this puts Confucianism and Shinto in the same category as Kendo.
Tbh, I have no idea what's going on in Japan, really, but in China, 道 is just Daoism, and is more specifically moral philosophy rather than political philosophy. Most of Chinese philosophy happened during chaotic period between Dynasties, like the Warring States era or the Northern Southern era, and so most of it consists of people with different ideas of how a country should be governed, because that's what Kings were looking for. As a result, people interested in moral philosophy and more ephemeral subjects than the philosophy of law would join Daoism, and then just live according to their internal convictions, and that was 道.
In China, there isn't much of rites and customs that isn't strictly Confucian, because that was sort of the point--maintaining the same culture and not having people all off doing their own weird thing. So from my Chinese POV, the difference between a philosophy (家) and 道 is that the former is a system of beliefs you're trying to proliferate, and the latter is just what you as an individual is living by.
On the subject of servants getting political power: I do know that it was common in European history for revolutionaries to *claim* that they were only opposed to the king's advisors. Since the king ruled by Divine Right, they would say that the king was just being misled by evil advisors, and they were in fact trying to restore the king to his rightful position. Early in the English Civil War this was the official position taken by the parliamentarians, who later ended up executing King Charles. And during the War of the Roses, the catatonic Henry VI was "rescued" (read: captured) by Yorkists on two separate occasions.
One other factor with the Roman empire is that people *tried* to re-create it, but no one successfully did, not like what happened with China.
The center of the Roman Empire was the fast transport offered by the Mediterranean Sea (meaning roughly "in the middle of the earth", which seems to echo "Middle Kingdom", although the Romans mostly called it Mare Nostrum, or simply "Our Sea"). But after the early Islamic caliphate conquered the southern half of the old territory of the Roman Empire, the center of mass shifted north. The Roman church and the Pope sort of took over as the central institution holding western Europe together, while the remnant of the eastern Roman Empire continued on from Constantinople, calling themselves "Roman", but called "Byzantine" by the west. At this point, my impression is that "Christendom" viewed itself as being under siege, barely holding on to the true faith, with infidels to the south, pagans to the east, and a growing split between Catholic and Orthodox in the middle.
When the Byzantines had their first Empress, Irene, the Pope took that opportunity to crown Charlemagne as "Emperor of the Romans", which eventually turned into the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted until Napoleon (who was also calling himself "Emperor") brought it down. The Crusades were an attempt to reclaim the land lost to Islam, but didn't make a lasting impact. The Byzantines called Constantinople the "Second Rome", and lasted until the 1450s when the Turks finally overran them. At which point the Russian Empire started calling Moscow the "Third Rome". (So if we stretch really hard, the clashes between the Russian Empire and the Qing might technically be described as Roman vs. Han, but only in the sense that both sides claim a 2000-year-old mantle.)
I suspect there was also some popular equivalence between apocalyptic Christianity and the re-establishment of the Roman Empire. That is, that there was some idea that the spiritual kingdom of God was reflected in the earthly empire of the Romans, just as the Emperor was on a level with the Pope, and both existed at the time of Christ, but then we lost both, but one day, if we're all very good and pious and faithful, both will be re-established. And from there, we get things like the religious imperative to colonialism, where the end goal is a single Christian empire controlling all the world. (But which country, and which flavor of Christianity?) But mostly I think of this as sour grapes, a post-hoc justification for why no one had yet re-established the Empire.
Anyway, that's the stuff that I can think of that wasn't covered by someone else (like the Praetorian Guard, and the differences in role between different types of Emperor, and the Merovingians).
Yeah, it's sort of like how the central plains between the Yellow River and the Yangtze River is the heart of Dynastic China. If you don't at least hold that territory, you can't really call yourself China. That's the birth of the Chinese identity, and it's the bread basket that Chinese culture is formed on. For this reason, a lot of people argue that Southern Song Dynasty doesn't count as a real dynasty, because they lost that central plains region.
Maybe China just consistently got lucky, in that the military efforts to re-unite it were successful, whereas it failed for Rome for long enough that realistically, it just wasn't going to happen anymore. Or maybe there's a deeper reason. I'm not really sure. Chinese historians at least seem to think there was a pretty major factor of luck at the beginning stages of China (when the identity wasn't as ironed out yet).
The classic example that people always point to as something the Romans did really well is infrastructure building.
What infrastructure specifically? Like, I know they were well known for the aqueducts, but that's definitely something China also had. China had really excellent hydrological engineering that lead the world pretty much up until the 20th century, as far as I can tell.
I know Rome built a lot of roads? Which yeah, that's not a secret technology or anything. It's just a matter of whether or not you have money to build roads with. Other than those two that particularly stands out, I just get overwhelmed with way too much information about Roman life and city planning and can't separate out what impressive infrastructure they've got going on, versus what was just luxury for the nobility.
The advantage of infrastructure isn't just having the buildings, it's also in building the buildings -- they were essentially public works projects. Whenever the Romans took over an area they tried to win the loyalty of, if not all the locals, then at least some faction of them. This is one way of funneling funds to win the loyalty of the populace. That's why Augustus was so obsessed with covering the Empire with monuments.
The roads were a big part of it -- fast transport and fast transportation are very useful in running a large empire -- but what made them impressive wasn't the technology but the fact that they prioritized them so highly that they were willing to throw so much money at them.
Interestingly, my impression is that western historians tend to point to Rome not interfering with local customs as a good thing, an example of Roman pragmatism in not picking fights and making it easier to integrate different peoples into the empire.
Yeah, on that front, Han basically had the same policy Rome did. For the most part, from what I can tell, after the days of Qin Shi Huang himself, there usually wasn't that much, well, actual forced used to enforcing Han culture in new territory gained. If you wanted to circle out a mountain and be your own tribe and not abide by Han laws or customs, the government doesn't really have the time or energy to do anything about it. But then, you don't get the farming subsidies, or government backed low interest loans, or the protection of the police force. It's up to you whether your culture is worth not actually having citizenship or not.
could you do one on religion in china? I know vaguely about taoism vs. buddhism vs. confucianism having friction sometimes, and in korea there were massacres of christians. How did china manage minority religions?
I will! It's a super interesting topic and there's a lot I want to say on it. I shall throw it into the next poll. It'll be exciting~
It always surprised me how little China changed between Han and Qing dynasties.
TLDR China was never invaded by germans.
A main difference with China is that the roman empire included areas with old and sophisticated cultures, notably the eastern Mediterranean was dominated by greek culture that even the romans valued and copied. Most educated romans were fluent in greek.
Another issue is that Rome never conquered the entirety of Europe and eventually german tribes became a serious rival that by 500 AD conquered the western half of the empire. As agriculturalists germans had a culture that was pretty similar to that of Rome and so they assimilated slower than nomad pastoralists would have had.
Roman emperors didn't had harems so they had little need for eunuchs which they regarded with disgust anyway. Classical antiquity had a passion for the beauty of the body.
Roman emperors had praetorian prefects which commanded the imperial guards and got really powerful on occasion. In truth the emperors were military dictators who often led their armies on campaign so they were hard to control. The threats were from a pretender gaining the loyalty of some legions or from a palace conspiracy having him assassinated. In the last century of the West emperors were often puppets of army commanders, usually tough men with some barbarian descent which prevented them from taking the purple for themselves.
The roman political system during the imperial period was unstable and prone to dangerous crises because there was no real legitimacy other than the support of the soldiers. The antiquity version of "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" None of the successor germanic states was interested in emulating that mess so they kept their own institutions like germanic kingship.
Oh no, Qing Dynasty is drastically different from Han. That's why I say that Han culture can only really strictly be said to have survived through to the end of Ming Dynasty.
My question is more like, I mean, Roman Emperors still had household servants, right? You're too busy as Emperor to wash your own dishes and launder your own clothes. And once you do, you've got to have some kind of butler figure to manage those servants. And that butler figure is gonna end up hanging around you all the time and it's hard to avoid building some kind of friendship and bond in that situation. And almost all corruption is powered by friendship, the idea of, "Ah, but it's Alfred! He's different!" And before you know it, the butler has way too much sway over the Emperor's decisions under the guise of friendly advice when the Emperor is dealing with a particularly nasty headache.
It's also honestly kind of fascinating to me that Rome never did end up taking over Germany, when it had such overwhelming population and economy and, well, like you said, an emphasis on military might. Is there a reason why Rome never completely conquered Germany? Even if it wasn't through war, why did they wage enough economic warfare against Germany that they were able to absorb the territory?
What you describe happened to the Frankish kings from the Merovingian dynasty who were overthrown by their majordomos, literally mayors of the palate, which after being the power behind the throne and turning the Merovingians into do-nothing kings eventually took the crown themselves as the Carolingian dynasty of Charles Martel and Charlemagne.
I have no idea if palace butlers were important during the principate but the office was very important later at the court in Constantinople.
Rome never completely conquered Germany because historically germans were rather good at war.
When one looks at the Colosseum and longhouses they might conclude that there was a major technological difference between romans and germans in all aspects but this was not the case on the battlefield were both sides used similar weapons and armor. Romans had the advantage of a large, disciplined and well equipped army while germans had evolved a society and culture geared for war partially under roman pressure and influence. Romans usually won their wars but never decisively but when the germanic tribes invaded the Western Empire in early 5th century there was no comeback for Rome.
Things were even worse for romans in their wars with the sarmatians from the steppes of Eastern Europe whose cavalry armor romans eventually had to copy.
The military importance of a german culture that placed enormous value on bravery and loyalty was understood by many roman emperors who often employed germanic mercenaries not only in their armies but even as their personal bodyguards because they trusted them more than they trusted fellow romans.
Wow. So evil Butlers really have been a thing since forever in everywhere. Neat. I guess that's one threat that washing machines and roombas have liberated us from.
It's just mindblowing to me that it's possible to consistently hold ground against a superpower with 25% of World GDP, just with a culture of bravery. Naively, it seems like if Rome really wanted to, they could defeat Germany just with economic warfare if nothing else.
The Eastern Roman Empire did have eunuchs as court officials and some did achieve considerable political power, e.g. Eutropius. EDIT: the reason for the eunuchs is that there was always the worry that these people would usurp/replace the emperor. Eunuchs were ineligible to be emperor and thus it was believed that they would be more trustworthy.
I did not know that! That's fascinating.
Interesting quote I just came across on the subject of eunuchs in the Eastern Roman Empire:
Court eunuchs also frequently appeared in important positions normally held by males in the army and the navy. The most famous of these, of course, was Narses, Justinian's great general. Procopius believed that the removal of the testicles destroyed the seat of a man's natural powers, yet he was lavish in his praise of Narses. He marveled that a eunuch raised in the women's quarters and accustomed to a soft life could overcome his inherent traits and command so successfully. Agathias chuckles at the naivete of the Goths, who assumed that Narses was just a feeble caricature of a man who had set his masculinity aside and thus were unprepared for his military prowess. Both of these authors stress the intelligence and skill of Narses, citing his planning and execution of a large operation. Neither, however, attributes his success to traditional, courageous, manliness. In a different military context, Leo the Deacon notes that the Scyths assumed that the eunuch Peter the Patrician was a "little woman raised in the shade". Leo then tell us how Peter surpassed everyone's expectations by killing a Scythian general in hand-to-hand conbat. Despite that example of manliness, however, eunuchs were normally assumed to be successful commanders because they were clever, they were good at organizing campaigns and they understood strategy
-Living in the Shadows: Eunuchs and Gender in Byzantium, Kathryn M Ringrose
The place I saw this quote had someone say "in the modern era of long-distance and logistics-heavy war, we no longer need a man's courage, we need a eunuch's cleverness. the united states MUST create positions exclusively for eunuchs before a eunuch gap forms"
I thought the United States had already been creating positions for eunuchs? I mean, like, I assume modern day commanders don't get their job by punching people in the face personally with their martial prowess. Most of their schooling is in a classroom, right?
You're missing the joke. The commenter was talking about literal eunuchs.
Right. And Narses. I was thinking mostly about the emperors of the principate. Attitudes towards the body changed with the rise of Christianity.