70 replies to this topic

[moobie]

Disunity between whom, precisely?

Slaves and non-slaves, Romans and non-Romans (Egyptians, Jews, etc) predominantly.

[Jaak]

Slaves and non-slaves, Romans and non-Romans (Egyptians, Jews, etc) predominantly.

Slaves rarely succeeded in doing much against Rome. With the big exceptions of slave rebellions of Sicily and Spartacus.

Jews did rebel, but Egyptians did not. They had been exploited by Greeks and went on to be exploited by Romans.

[moobie]

But they presented a threat, and thus needed resources to tie them down (that is, keep them enslaved/maintained), limiting the resources of the Romans. Which again is odd, as Rome apparently had a massive GDP and the strongest army in the world, but got destroyed by the remnants of a weakened enemy chased across the world by the Han Dynasty.

To recap, elucidating posts have revealed that the Romans had a population of nearly 100,000,000, producing hundreds of thousands of tons of gold per year.

Tibet Libre describes it as essentially a sprawling, overpopulated slum rife with malnutrition, corruption, hyperinflation and slavery. The allegations of very high precious metal extraction for monetization is like Robert Mugabe printing more billion dollar bills. South Africa is also a very good allegory.

Very interesting.

Edited by moobie, 11 July 2010 - 08:25 PM.

[Jaak]

Which again is odd, as Rome apparently had a massive GDP and the strongest army in the world, but got destroyed by the remnants of a weakened enemy chased across the world by the Han Dynasty.

Roman army of Empire had the deliberate weakness of not having reserves. It was adjusted to the threats it ordinarily met, and was quite expensive at that level.

[Tibet Libre]

However upon further inspection...

Problem is your further analysis, rather a poupourri of largely unrelated topics, is very much open to debate.

1. Height and health historically do not correlated nearly as closely with an 'advanced civilizational state' as you suggest. In fact, population pressure on ressources meant that people in relatively densely populated empires like Rome or China were on average less tall than those who lived more scattered at their periphery on a mix of cultivation and animal husbandry. Thus, average height of Europeans actually rose in the early Middle Ages after the demographic decline when more land was available to less people.

2. Equating slavery with economic stagnation is simplistic and does not reflect actual history, since this premise cannot explain why the Greco-Roman world, and particularly its labour-saving technology (watermills, waterlifting devices, cranes etc.), expanded most at the same time slavery reached its peak (100 BC-100 AD).

3. While slavery was less frequent in Han China, coercive labour which had a very similar function was all the more. Ancient Chinese tradition has it that 7 out 10 workers died during the construction of the first Great Wall, and children from the age of 11 or 12 were pressed into construction work. Is (Chinese) coercive labour morally less repulsive than (Roman) slavery because it happens to be spelled differently?

4. As already been said, the billiard theory applies to the fall of Western Rome: both Huns (453 AD) and Avars (626 AD) were beaten decisively within 75 years upon their arrival at the Roman and Eastern Roman frontier respectively. It was not so much their military power which brought the collapse of the Roman defenses, but the bow wave of the much more numerous Germanic and Slav people which they pushed along.

This strategical problem China never faced, since it bordered directly on the steppe with no intermediate belt of sedentary, relatively thickly populated areas. Thus, the nomad conquerors, once they settled amidst the Chinese peasant population as ruling elite, had won the war but lost the peace in the same instance since the adoption of a sedentary life-style automatically meant their adoption of Chinese customs which were, for the lack of other high cultures in the Far East, the only model they could look on.

In Europe, by contrast, the Germanic and Slav people, both long themselves following a sedentary life-style, were much less obliged to follow the customs of the more advanced conquered territories and possessed more cultural pride to hold fast on their national traditions. This relative cultural and political resilience meant that the path of Europe changed permanently from empire to patchwork, and ultimately frustated all attempts at empire-building of which they there was no lack in European history.

[Borjigin Ayurbarwada]

This strategical problem China never faced, since it bordered directly on the steppe with no intermediate belt of sedentary, relatively thickly populated areas. Thus, the nomad conquerors, once they settled amidst the Chinese peasant population as ruling elite, had won the war but lost the peace in the same instance since the adoption of a sedentary life-style automatically meant their adoption of Chinese customs which were, for the lack of other high cultures in the Far East, the only model they could look on.

In Europe, by contrast, the Germanic and Slav people, both long themselves following a sedentary life-style, were much less obliged to follow the customs of the more advanced conquered territories and possessed more cultural pride to hold fast on their national traditions. This relative cultural and political resilience meant that the path of Europe changed permanently from empire to patchwork, and ultimately frustated all attempts at empire-building of which they there was no lack in European history.

The degree of cultural sophistication and pride has little to do with whether a state is sedentary or nomadic. Many sedentary people has organizations that are even less complex than those of the nomads, and were often poorer.
While China had lots of steppe people on its border, it is by no means the Celestial empire's only neighbours nor were nomads the only people who built empires in China. In fact, two of the five "barbarians", the Qiang and the Di, who settled in China during the Age of Fragmentation were sedentary, and they were also far more easily assimilated into the Chinese population than the nomadic Xiongnu and Xianbei. In fact the latter two were the people that had the strongest sense of identity and were often scornful towards the sedentary Han people.

[Borjigin Ayurbarwada]

I may have a misunderstanding with the concept that says that technology must outpace population growth to be of any benefit because it doesn't seem to fit for the past ages. I can see how it works for present day because when you have something like a very crowded city and total water supply becomes an absolute shortage in the end water just gets pumped wastefully for city life and therefore prices for goods as simple as food will increase. The concept fits here because technology would have to discover a way to produce more water than can possibly be produced naturally. But people in the past that were forced to work on beneficial projects such as canals and diverting rivers to irrigate crop fields as in ancient China must have took plenty of slave or conscripted labor and in the end the benefit was being able to produce more food output. But a technology such as building canals and diverting rivers took massive amounts of human labor and it wasn't as though an exponentially growing Chinese population couldn't have just implemented more of the same human effort involved in traditional construction of their large scale projects. So unless readily available water was scarce and had to be pumped from location to location using high powered pumps I have a hard time accepting that technological limitations was a factor prohibiting ancient populations' prosperity and growth.

When I meant technological progress, I was using a very basic measurement; the increased productivity rate of the same patch of field. New agricultural methods and tools enable one to increase production in the same acre of field, and allows it to feed a larger population. The expansion could also be horizontal, new technology or exploration could also enable states to move into previously untilled lands and increase the amount of land owned by each individual. Either of these will increase the productivity per capita for a short time, until population growth caught up with the increased productivity, eventually resulting in overpopulation and a decline of food productivity per individual.
Sometimes, the population growth rate was faster than increased food productivity from the begining, meaning that the increased productivity from technological advancements actually resulted in a decline of GDP per capita. This tends to be a hotly debated topic for the late Ming and Qing.

Edited by Borjigin Ayurbarwada, 14 July 2010 - 11:28 AM.

[Jaak]

3. While slavery was less frequent in Han China, coercive labour which had a very similar function was all the more. Ancient Chinese tradition has it that 7 out 10 workers died during the construction of the first Great Wall, and children from the age of 11 or 12 were pressed into construction work. Is (Chinese) coercive labour morally less repulsive than (Roman) slavery because it happens to be spelled differently?

Chinese coercive labour was arranged and coerced by the state. While the state no doubt had foremen, officers and guards organizing the coercive labour, they were state employees. It did not create a numerous relatively independent middle class.

Whereas Roman slaves were exploited by private owners. While some like Crassus Dives owned huge numbers of slaves, Rome also had a big middle class of people who owned just a few slaves each.

[moobie]

Problem is your further analysis, rather a poupourri of largely unrelated topics, is very much open to debate.

*potpourri

1. Height and health historically do not correlated nearly as closely with an 'advanced civilizational state' as you suggest. In fact, population pressure on ressources meant that people in relatively densely populated empires like Rome or China were on average less tall than those who lived more scattered at their periphery on a mix of cultivation and animal husbandry. Thus, average height of Europeans actually rose in the early Middle Ages after the demographic decline when more land was available to less people.

As a clarification, I'm not suggesting anything about advanced civilizational states. Rather, just the general health and well-being of the sample populations; including non-nutritional factors such as disease, stress, hygiene. Height very strongly correlates.

2. Equating slavery with economic stagnation is simplistic and does not reflect actual history, since this premise cannot explain why the Greco-Roman world, and particularly its labour-saving technology (watermills, waterlifting devices, cranes etc.), expanded most at the same time slavery reached its peak (100 BC-100 AD).

I'm taking slavery alone, to examine cross-section of Roman society.

3. While slavery was less frequent in Han China, coercive labour which had a very similar function was all the more. Ancient Chinese tradition has it that 7 out 10 workers died during the construction of the first Great Wall, and children from the age of 11 or 12 were pressed into construction work. Is (Chinese) coercive labour morally less repulsive than (Roman) slavery because it happens to be spelled differently?

True enough but many of them were members of invading forces, or criminals if I'm not mistaken- genetic analysis of remains has shown that a majority of those buried near or at the wall were essentially from hostile regions.

4. As already been said, the billiard theory applies to the fall of Western Rome: both Huns (453 AD) and Avars (626 AD) were beaten decisively within 75 years upon their arrival at the Roman and Eastern Roman frontier respectively. It was not so much their military power which brought the collapse of the Roman defenses, but the bow wave of the much more numerous Germanic and Slav people which they pushed along.

True and I wanted to acknowledge this clearly- but it can't be denied that they caused an ethnic knock-on effect with profound consequences for the Greco-Bactrians, Northern India, Germans, Slavs, Romans, etc.

As to the rest BA answered very well.

[Borjigin Ayurbarwada]

While slavery was less frequent in Han China, coercive labour which had a very similar function was all the more. Ancient Chinese tradition has it that 7 out 10 workers died during the construction of the first Great Wall, and children from the age of 11 or 12 were pressed into construction work. Is (Chinese) coercive labour morally less repulsive than (Roman) slavery because it happens to be spelled differently?

One must separate what is legend from what is factual. The Shiji mentioned around 300,000-400,000 people sent north for the Great Wall, and during Han times, around 100,000 were sent to Shuo Fang and we still hear of the same amount of people been conscripted into the army later so the casualty rates are virtually negligible, far from 70% of the workers, nor were working conditions necessarily unbearable. Furthermore, conscriptions during the Qin only calls people from age 15 and up, so where did you get the information of age 11 or 12 from? Lastly, these state employees were only temporary and makes up a very small amount of the total population count; they do not make a up a large class like the slaves in Rome do.

[Tibet Libre]

Lastly, these state employees were only temporary and makes up a very small amount of the total population count...

I wouldn't call them comfortably "state employees"; they didn't wear a cravat when being pressed into construction work at the Great Wall, and workers who arrived too late at construction site were executed en masse. The Qin dynasty was finally toppled by mutineering workers send to work there, so the burden on the Chinese population must have been immense, immense enough to risk your life in your rebellion against the authorities.

[Borjigin Ayurbarwada]

I wouldn't call them comfortably "state employees"; they didn't wear a cravat when being pressed into construction work at the Great Wall, and workers who arrived too late at construction site were executed en masse. The Qin dynasty was finally toppled by mutineering workers send to work there, so the burden on the Chinese population must have been immense, immense enough to risk your life in your rebellion against the authorities.

There are multiple explanations given for the collapse of the Qin, and the traditional explanation was one painted by Confucian historians of later times who were hostile to the first dynsty, which isn't necessarily a reflection of what was actually going on during the time. One needs to remember that Cheng Sheng and Wu Guang did not rebel because they were abused physically as slave labors, but because they broke the law. The Qin empire did not have the time to consolidate the various nations within it, therefore, a rebellion naturally appealed to the people of the states vanquished by the Qin. This is further buttressed by the fact that the native people of Qin, were governed under these same laws for over a century and had no problem with it. Harsh as the written code was at the time, the matter was a legal and national issue and not one of abusive labor.

The Qin construction works were not limited to the Great wall, but also to its army, which did indeed put a burden on agricultural production, but all of these are reflections of social and economical problems, and less one of moral.

Secondly, the Qin was a very short period in Chinese history, and one shouldn't use it as a standard of comparison, especially since the Han lessened much of the policies.

[Jaak]

I wouldn't call them comfortably "state employees"; they didn't wear a cravat when being pressed into construction work at the Great Wall, and workers who arrived too late at construction site were executed en masse. The Qin dynasty was finally toppled by mutineering workers send to work there, so the burden on the Chinese population must have been immense, immense enough to risk your life in your rebellion against the authorities.

When the builders of Great Wall mutinied, few took up arms to suppress them, except for the existing Qin soldiers. As far as the commoners back at home were concerned, the danger of Xiongnu was not so immediate and overthrowing the Qin would release them from the threat of being sent to Great Wall or executed.

Rome had a large number of slaves. But huge numbers of free citizens felt that they were benefiting from slavery in some way - continuing existence of slavery did not threaten free citizens of Italy with enslavement, but successful slave rebellion threatened their own life, freedom and property. This is why the free citizens enlisted with Crassus to suppress Spartacus rather than join the slaves in overthrowing the senatorial oligarchy.

[Borjigin Ayurbarwada]

When the builders of Great Wall mutinied, few took up arms to suppress them, except for the existing Qin soldiers. As far as the commoners back at home were concerned, the danger of Xiongnu was not so immediate and overthrowing the Qin would release them from the threat of being sent to Great Wall or executed.

Rome had a large number of slaves. But huge numbers of free citizens felt that they were benefiting from slavery in some way - continuing existence of slavery did not threaten free citizens of Italy with enslavement, but successful slave rebellion threatened their own life, freedom and property. This is why the free citizens enlisted with Crassus to suppress Spartacus rather than join the slaves in overthrowing the senatorial oligarchy.

There are no evidence that the builders of Great Wall ever rebelled, Cheng Sheng and Wu Guang were not Great Wall builders or construction workers of any large state project. They rebelled simply because they broke the law(even though unintentionally) and didn't want to get executed because of it.

[Bao Pu]

There are multiple explanations given for the collapse of the Qin, and the traditional explanation was one painted by Confucian historians of later times who were hostile to the first dynsty, which isn't necessarily a reflection of what was actually going on during the time. One needs to remember that Cheng Sheng and Wu Guang did not rebel because they were abused physically as slave labors, but because they broke the law. The Qin empire did not have the time to consolidate the various nations within it, therefore, a rebellion naturally appealed to the people of the states vanquished by the Qin. This is further buttressed by the fact that the native people of Qin, were governed under these same laws for over a century and had no problem with it. Harsh as the written code was at the time, the matter was a legal and national issue and not one of abusive labor.

You are quite right that the labour issue was not what caused Cheng Sheng and Wu Guang to rebel. But I'd like to add that other factors played a part, such as the weak Second Emperor and court intrigues. I'm not confident in asserting that the Qin people had no problem with the harsh Qin laws. We don't have much testimony. I have a difficult time believing alot of people would be happy living according to Shang Yang's system (though I'm not saying the Qin Empire was run strictly according to Shang Yang's system).