Of course it was. But my point is, the real action at this time wasn't in China..it was in the area around the med and northern India.





Yeah ... because the capital was Luoyang at the time.

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I suppose you think having lots of Romans stacked on top of each other like vermin, emptying their bedpans into the streets outside their windows, somehow demonstrates ideal living conditions. Lets not talk about the shit and garbage-filled alleyways of Rome. The key point here is that Rome and Han China had roughly the same populations - it's just that China's accomplished far more and were more evenly distributed around the territory.

The reason for Rome's name was due to China's diplomatic manner, as well as a lack of first-hand experience.

 

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Uh-huh..suuuure.


What was that name again? Tell us what the name was and explain the significance of that name, especially in regards to the Sinocentric world view.

 

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Lets not. You can explain to the resident retards here, but I'm not a babysitter. Offer a new argument, I just tossed all the others out the window.

I'll just say it's hilarious that you can even use the Sinocentrism canard and then allude to the well-established notion that China did not indeed see all foreigners as savages. Kinda shooting yourself in the foot.

 

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Not that often that we get someone with that kind of stubborn butthurt incompetence.. It's just plain fun.

 

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So fun that you're raging hard at everything I post. Do I need to remind you of the little meltdown you had when we were talking about your plans to exterminate every Muslim man, woman and child on the planet?

Look Mammo, and Tych this is for you as well, saying "you're mad" 100 times is what we call "overcompensating".

 

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Okay, since you wont explain it, i will.


The name the Han gave the Roman empire was Da Qin, which translated means Great Qin, or Great China.


The Sinocentric worldview and the concept of Tianxia (All under heaven) basically stated that only the Chinese Emperor was sovereign, and the rest of the world was divided into China, semi-civilized sinified tributary states (places like Korea) and Barbarians. All the rulers of the earth were said to derive their authority from the Emperor and were subordinate to him.


In all the world the only other power the Chinese would grudgingly acknowledge might be their equals was Rome, and thus they were called Da Qin.

 

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But that's the major difference between the trajectories of the Chinese and Roman empires. The Roman empire was built on plunder. China's was not. Rome started to decline as soon as it stopped expanding because it relied on periodic infusions of cash from conquests.

After the transition from west to east and rome to byzantium the roman state became much more like the chinese state - essentially built on trade and production rather than military conquest. The han state might have been built on plunder at some stage in its history but it moved past that stage quite early in Chinese history.

You started out okay. What you're not acknowledging is that the Chinese concept of Rome was fuzzy at best (as was the Roman conflation of "Seres" and "Sinae", and they had tremendous, not "grudging", respect for not only Rome but for India and Parthia as well.

How this all relates to relative wealth and power as far as China and Rome are concerned is a mystery to me, because as demonstrated above the Chinese and Roman opinions of each other are not exactly grounded in empirical evidence. In fact if we were to go by contemporary Roman accounts, we'd blame China for emptying their coffers, with "victory" defaulting to the Chinese - albeit indirectly.

You also overstate the case for a rigid "Sinocentric" worldview exemplified by crude maps. The Chinese conception of the other is far more fluid than you give credit for.

 

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