10 replies to this topic

[AmateurHistorian]

Starting with Augustus Caesar and at its height under Trajan, a large part of Western Europe and Anatolia was mostly unified under the Roman Empire based on Latin culture. Around the same time, a large part of Eastern Asia was unified under the Han Dynasty Empire based on Chinese culture.

The Roman Empire would eventually decay and fall apart. Under Byzantine Emperor Justinian, a short-lived attempt to re-constitute the Roman Empire was briefly successful but that was the last time. From that point forward Europe would be fragmented except for very brief periods of a single dominant political entity such as the Carolingian Empire but this would be the exception.

Roughly around the same time that the Roman Empire was falling apart, the Han Dynasty Empire also started to fall apart. But in Eastern Asia, it seems that while there were periods of disunity (such as three kingdoms, etc), there were the exception and for the most part, Eastern Asia was mostly unified under as one large political entity based on Chinese culture.

Someone would eventually unify the Chinese peoples into mainly one political entity. But when the Roman Empire fell, no one was able to do it. Why is it that Europe was mostly fragemented while China was mostly unified?

Some possible reasons:
1) Geography - Chinese geography was simply more conducive to unity than European geography. This is a very plausible possibility. Note that I include in geography also "political geography" in the sense of the situation of the Romans vis-a-vis neighboring cultures that were never part of the Roman Empire (such as Germanic peoples, Arabs/Muslims, Ottomans, etc). Perhaps the "barbarians" surrounding the Roman peoples were just more powerful than the Chinese "barbarians" surrounding the Chinese peoples and the situation made unifying Europe much more difficult?

2) Culture - Chinese culture (including language, religion, etc) was simply more conducive to unity than Latin culture. This is possibly but I don't see how. The core Latin culture was about as unified as the core Chinese culture, I think. Perhaps aspects of Latin culture, especially Christianity, made disunity more likely?

3) Luck - Its just the luck of the draw. Changes in certain key moments in history could have led to very different outcomes. If we could replay history from 1CE forward a thousand times, we would see that many times China would have fragmented like real-life Europe while Europe might have more or less consistently reunified itself like real-life China.

What do some experts here think?

Edited by AmateurHistorian, 14 September 2010 - 08:53 PM.

[Mei Houwang]

Perhaps the "barbarians" surrounding the Roman peoples were just more powerful than the Chinese "barbarians" surrounding the Chinese peoples and the situation made unifying Europe much more difficult?

I'm sure that powerful and threatening external forces would serve as an incentive for unity, not the other way around.

Jared Diamond believed geography to be a key factor. To me, it might also have to do with psychology/culture. If you believe something would happen, it might actually help such a thing in happening. The ancient Chinese believed that it's fate for periods of unity to follow periods of disunity, so many rulers would strive to attain just that. On the other side of the map, when people such as Napoleon decided to create an empire which encompassed Europe, everyone else actively resisted against him. Even Justinian's attempt to restore Rome's former glory met heavy resistance, mostly because by this time Europe was filled with other ethnic groups that weren't prone to such concepts.

[Gan]

I'm not an expert but I want to say something that regarding Latin Culture and to the extent Chinese culture;

This is partially based on Martin Jacques book , when China rules the world. However, some of the ideas inside that book have been talked about for quite sometime by many people.

One of the reasons/theories why Chinese identity has been secured for so long was that the State, the authorities, were seen as guardians of it. Or at least, it was projected to be that way. So, even after the fall of the short-lived Qin and Han, people would still hold on to that line of authority (mandate of Heaven or something equivalent) that's lasted for at least two millenia. Especially with the addition of Confucianism and other similar beliefs, incorporated into the system of the state. People vying for positions of power all needed to learn the same things, and declare the same line of thinking. That's kind of why after the Warring states, there wasn't a whole lot of new ideas, in terms of intellectual growth. There was, but a lot less than before and not at an accelerated pace.

Roman culture was kind of similar, where the State was kind of a guardian of people's identity. The main exception was probably that the practice of maintaining Roman (and eventually European) unity was that they didn't work hard enough or emphasize enough on permeating their ideas into all the lands. Essentially, the conquering/mobile culture overwhelm the sedentary/stable culture. The phrase of "one can conquer the world on horseback but not rule from it" could be apply to the situation of the Romans. I'm making up those terms, but what I'm really saying is that although the Romans wanted to rule everyone, they just wanted the superficial gratitude of peoples submitting to their power. They took the best or most glamorous aspects of other cultures (notably the Greek, but from others as well) and tried to synchretize them. In some aspects, the US is like this, but only in some aspects.

Overall speaking, both European and Chinese social experiments were more similar than different. Both had periods of unity and disunity. In the Western example, while the Romans faded away, their legacy lives on. In a way, Europe is just as united as the Chinese identity. In the eastern example, Chinese identity may appear to have stayed the same, but it's history has went through just as much upheaval and struggles as any other region. The many civil wars, were technically wars between different states. The cultures and mini-kingdoms throughout the land would be considered as de facto nations. China was just as disunited as Europe.

[mariusj]

I believe it is b/c of an Confucian idea of 大一统.

[Tibet Libre]

Geography (China's circular shape as opposed to the frayed shape of Europe), contingent historical factors but particularly the utter lack of other, rivalling high cultures are among the prime reasons for China's relative unity.

[Phoenix]

Written Chinese, though cumbersome to learn, did/does not depend on the phonetic sound of a language. It could be understood by people who spoke very differently from each other in daily life. Only the educated literati had to learn the language of the court.

Chinese geography is often cited as the reason China "stayed together;" but similar to Europe, Northern China was vulnerable to invasion by nomadic peoples from the north. After the fall of the Han, it was by no means clear that China would re-materialize as a unified political entity. It could have easily went the way of Europe, where the spirit and idea of Rome would remain important intellectually, but have less bearing on political reality. India also should have benefited from geography but it remained politically fragmented for much of its pre-modern history, though its culture remained intact.

Perhaps it was simply an accident of history that China under the Sui and Tang would re-emerge after hundreds of years of disunity.

Edited by Phoenix, 23 September 2010 - 02:37 AM.

[Tibet Libre]

Written Chinese, though cumbersome to learn, did/does not depend on the phonetic sound of a language. It could be understood by people who spoke very differently from each other in daily life. Only the educated literati had to learn the language of the court.

Given that somewhere between 95 and 99% of the Chinese were illiterate, the role of the characters was utterly insignificant for preserving unity. I once read the notable world historian Eric Hobsbawn making that point, that the Chinese people could not have cared less whether their ruling class wrote in unintelligible Chinese characters or unintelligible Latin alphabet and it is true.

[mohistManiac]

Given that somewhere between 95 and 99% of the Chinese were illiterate, the role of the characters was utterly insignificant for preserving unity. I once read the notable world historian Eric Hobsbawn making that point, that the Chinese people could not have cared less whether their ruling class wrote in unintelligible Chinese characters or unintelligible Latin alphabet and it is true.

The Shi who were participating in the examinations ranged somewhere from 300 000 test takers to 400 000 meaning that indeed there were few registered to work in administrative affairs in relation to everything else. However it is that tiny 1-5 percent or even less than 1 percent which makes the difference in shifting the state managed resources of the economy in a somewhat top down data informed network and therefore it matters to what they were reading and writing. If they were educated in characteristically different things then one person would have understood that a castle was to be built when in fact the original intended project was termed under village.

[Tibet Libre]

Yes, but we talking here about if and how the Chinese characters were conducive to shape the 'national' consciousness of the people to foster Chinese unity, and in this sense the existence of the characters was utterly unimportant, since they were as unintelligible gibberish to the illiterate masses peoples as any other script would have been.

For forming a sense of unity among the literate bureaucracy, the characters were no more useful than Latin and Arabic - both of which actually also crossed for centuries and millennia even larger language barriers - were for European or Middle Eastern elites.

Edited by Tibet Libre, 23 September 2010 - 11:18 AM.

[mohistManiac]

Yes, but we talking here about if and how the Chinese characters were conducive to shape the 'national' consciousness of the people to foster Chinese unity, and in this sense the existence of the characters was utterly unimportant, since they were as unintelligible gibberish to the illiterate masses peoples as any other script would have been.

For forming a sense of unity among the literate bureaucracy, the characters were no more useful than Latin and Arabic - both of which actually also crossed for centuries and millennia even larger language barriers - were for European or Middle Eastern elites.

It's arguable. The characters are useful because they're like logos. They are attached to concepts of importance on a basis that is more grounded than the way alphabetized systems transcribe the phonetic properties of language which could change the instant developments are made separately. The Chinese empire was substantially developed with different variations in language but all of them had access to the system of ideas present in the national language of written characters which don't change unless the government wants it to. For example the logo of Superman is somewhat an S but we all refer to that S as Superman and his super strength concept and not as The Suckman which could possibly be endangered without the logo if a new competing language pops up deeming that super needs to sound like suck in order to sound proper.

Edited by mohistManiac, 23 September 2010 - 01:08 PM.

[special pig]

You are correct. Geography and culture are important factors of Chinese unity. Without any one, we would see totally different China today. But I think the culture contribute more than geography. Compare India with china, there is better geographic reason in India to unify nation than china. Actually only after UK ruled India, the Indian developed their opinion of Indian nation. Before this, India was a geographic concept.
But in china, during early stage of her culture, Chinese believed only one true ruler govern the world. So during the shang dynasty and zhou dynasty there were many kingdoms. but all of these kings of kingdoms accepted the idea that shang or zhou was the only ruler of the world. sometimes these kings showed their respect to shang or zhou. Of course everyone knew their respect was stratagem to fight their enemy or rival. 春秋五霸 was sample. Ordinary people also accepted 黄帝炎帝 were their common ancestor. This showed there was a fundamental common viewpoint: We are same people.
Chinese writing system reinforce this opinion. many excellent people leave their mother kingdom and served other kingdom, even the enemy kingdom. But they were not guilty. I think these thing never happened in Europe or India.
I think that Spring/Autumn Period and warring state period was the preparative period for chinese unity. The qin dynasty and han dynasty were result of the unique chinese culture. Before qin dynasty, the people in china have shared same culture for hundreds, even thousands years. But roman empire unified several cultures into one nation by force. It is not difficult to understand disunity of Europe, when central government fall.
Regarding luck, I do not think it contribute any anything to chinese unity.