By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers
During the course of
the Zhou Dynasty as compared with the case studies about Rome and early Europe,
it was shown how feudal states in China were more autonomous, had no
overlapping, cross-cutting authorities, and had strong territorial markers. And
that during the course of the Zhou Dynasty we see a shift from transbordersovereignty to absolute sovereignty with the
Warring States Period representing a
transitional phase to imperial China. From the age of Confucius onward, the
Chinese people in general and their political thinkers, in particular, began to
think about political matters in terms of the world.
Following an earlier part about the contact between Rome
and the Chinese Han empire we now proceed with comparing the two with in
the end an explanation why the Chinese empire recovered from its early setbacks
and the Roman empire not.
The indirect exchange
of goods on land along the Silk Road and sea routes included Chinese silk,
Roman glassware and high-quality cloth. Roman coins minted from the 1st century
AD onwards have been found in China, as well as a coin of Maximian
and medallions from the reigns of Antoninus Pius and
Marcus Aurelius in Jiaozhi in modern Vietnam, the
same region at which Chinese sources claim the Romans first landed. Roman
glassware and silverware have been discovered at Chinese archaeological sites
dated to the Han period.
As is known Han China
and Imperial Rome at the time were the largest and most prosperous empires in
the ancient world, but according to direct measurement, their territories were
more than 3,000 miles apart. The intervening lands were subject to extreme
conditions with some of the most inhospitable terrains on earth, including the
steppe-like Hexi corridor, the scorching Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin, and beyond that the snowbound Pamir Mountains
which merge into the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas. The arid, landlocked country
of Bactria was at the center of the ancient Silk Routes and offered routes
south to the Indus kingdoms or west towards the desert plains of eastern Iran. Travelers
crossing Iran had to journey through barren mountain passes as they ascended
the well-guarded Iranian Plateau. Even the journey from Babylonia to Syria was
not a simple venture but involved desert crossings through contested
territories. The actual distance from the Chinese border to Rome traversed more
than 5,000 miles as the route wound across Central Asia between impassable
deserts, steppes and mountain ranges.
Sections of these
Silk Routes were dominated by other significant empires, including the Xiongnu on the East Asian Steppe, the Kushan in
Afghanistan, and the Parthians in Iran. As a consequence, land-based Roman
traders could not reach Central Asia, and Chinese merchants were unable to
journey directly into Roman domains. Instead, Silk Routes operated in segments
with merchants from particular nations managing transport and trade operations
across vast territories. This international network-enabled Chinese silk to
reach Roman markets through a series of intermediaries that included urban
populations from the Tarim oasis territories of
Central Asia and Sogdians from Transoxiana. Roman merchants from Syria received
eastern silks from Parthian dealers in Babylonia, but silks also reached Rome
via the Indian Ocean and the Roman ships that visited city-ports in India and
returned to Egypt with oriental fabrics.
The value of this
international commerce is arguably more significant than its scale or cultural
impact. Strabo reports that 120 Roman ships sailed to India every year, and a
Roman legal document called the Muziris Papyrus records
that the cargo of one of these vessels was valued at just over 9 million
sesterces. This evidence suggests that the Roman Empire imported more than a
billion (1,000 million) sesterces worth of eastern goods per annum.¹ An
inscription from a second century
Palmyrene tomb-tower records how foreign products worth 360 million
sesterces were assessed for tax as they passed into Roman Syria.² This commerce
was highly significant because the Roman government imposed a quarter-value tax
called the tetarte on all goods crossing the imperial
frontiers. Consequently, international trade was a substantial contributor to
Roman revenues.
Economy and Revenues
Its legions
maintained the Roman Empire, and this military structure was paid for by
revenues that included land and poll taxes. For tax purposes the Roman regime
periodically conducted a census to ascertain the population size and the
distribution of wealth in its subject regions. A well-known reference to this
practice occurred in the Christian New Testament when Emperor Augustus issued
orders that a census should be taken of all Roman-controlled territories
expressed as ‘a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be
taxed’.³ Provincial population details were available to imperial governors,
and Pliny offers his readers select information on a census that was conducted
in Hispania Tarraconensis while he was in office (AD
72–74).⁴ Hardly any of these population figures have been preserved in the
surviving classical sources, and modern scholars, therefore, have to estimate
the size of the Roman population using other evidence, including guideline
figures from much later historical periods. Most current estimates for the
population of the Roman Empire, therefore, range from 45 to 60 million
people.⁵
The surviving Chinese
texts provide more precise information about population sizes in the Far East.
A Chinese census report assembled in 2 BC records that the Han Empire had a population of 59.6 million
people, living in 12.4 million households and cultivating 827 million mou of land (over 147,000 square miles).⁶ The confirmation
comes from a collection of ancient documents written on bamboo strips that were
found at Yinwan in the coastal Shandong province of
northeast China.
These documents
include administration and tax records for the Donghai
Commandery and dated to 15 BC. They record that the commandery (province) had
a population of about 1.4 million people
living in 266,000 households with over
5,500 square miles of land under cultivation.⁷ Donghai
Commandery, therefore, represented about one twenty-seventh of the cultivated
land and one-fortieth of the population
ruled by the entire Han Empire.⁸
Most Chinese subjects
paid more direct tax to the central government than their Roman counterparts.
Adult males between the ages of 15 and 56 spent an annual poll tax of 120 cash
to the Han government (a sum that could be earned in about four or five days of
well-paid work).⁹ Han authorities also collected a land tax of one-thirtieth on
agricultural harvests, and this was often paid in grain. Every year about
500,000 men reached an age when they became eligible for military service, but
the Han Empire needed only a fraction of this workforce for its regular
army.¹⁰
The government,
therefore, allowed potential conscripts to purchase their freedom by paying an
annual commutation rate along with their standard poll tax.¹¹ Merchants also
had to pay higher-rate poll taxes, but the Han government did not impose
expensive custom taxes on goods crossing their imperial frontiers.
A further source of
Han state income was an annual gold offering made by five holders who had been
granted titles and land by the imperial government, along with the right to
collect taxes from subject rural communities.¹² The Han Empire also maintained
monopolies on vital industries, including the production of salt, which was an
essential element for the preservation of foodstuffs. Also, in specific periods
the early Han Empire managed the iron production required for the manufacture
of most weapons, tools and agricultural implements.¹³ These monopolies allowed
the government to regulate prices and generate substantial revenues from market requirements.¹⁴
The Yinwan documents provide further information about
provincial revenues in the Han Empire. The materials record that the annual
revenue collected by Donghai Commandery was 266.6
million cash and 506,600 shi (16,474 tons) of
grain.
From this figure,
145.8 million cash and 412,600 shi had already been
spent in the commandery with the remainder to be stored, or forwarded to other
administrative centers .¹⁵ This meant that, after provincial costs were met,
just under half of the cash and about one-fifth of the grain gathered in the
region would be transferred to central government.
In the first century
AD, a Chinese courtier and philosopher named Huan Tan wrote a study called the Xinlun, which records the revenues of the Han Empire.
Huan Tan suggests
that the Han government collected taxes worth more than 4 Billion cash, with
about half of this figure, spent on paying the salaries of civil servants and
the remainder stored in the treasury for ongoing state initiatives. According
to Huan Tan, the Han Emperor also maintained his imperial treasury which
received an income of about 8.3 billion cash per annum.¹⁶ This suggests that
the total annual revenues of the Han Empire were about 12.3 billion in
cash.
At a basic level,
money could be viewed as a medium used to secure resources and human effort.
Chinese revenue figures can, therefore, be converted into Roman equivalents by
comparing the essential cost of hiring a soldier or laborer. In the early Roman
Empire, one silver denarius was worth four large brass sesterces and this sum
could buy a day’s labor from an adult male.¹⁷ Each sesterce contained
about 28 grams of a bright
golden-colored brass called orichalcum. Orichalcum consisted of about 80
percent copper and 20 percent zinc. In Han China, the main currency was a small
bronze coin called the wushu, and about twenty of these coins could secure a
day’s labor.¹⁸ Each wushu contained 3.2 grams of bronze formed from 90 percent
copper and 10 percent tin. This means that, as a rough calculation, Han
revenues worth 12.3 billion in Chinese currency would be equivalent to about
2.5 billion Roman sesterces.
Classical evidence
suggests that by the late first century AD the Roman regime had an income of
about 1.1 billion sesterces per annum.¹⁹ These calculations, therefore, indicate
that the Han government was receiving revenues from their empire, which were
almost double the income of the Roman regime. But each empire had different
costs and levels of responsibility for regional administration. For example,
the Han government-appointed administrators to manage tax collection and public
spending in provincial cities. By contrast, the Romans often left civil
administration to the local elite in their subject provinces. These people
would be responsible for taxing their populations and, after extracting
collection costs and profits, they would forward the agreed amount of tribute
to the Roman government.
The Han government
probably received sizable funds from most of its forty central provinces, as
many of these regions had been part of well-administered Chinese kingdoms for
centuries. For example, the Han administration in Donghai
Commandery collected the equivalent of 53 million sesterces of tax from its
population. Cash equivalent to 29 million sesterces was spent locally with funds
worth 24 million sesterces forwarded to Louyang.²⁰
The early Roman
regime had to operate under different conditions as large parts of its empire
consisted of newly conquered tribal territories with little preestablished
urban infrastructure. There were about fifty provinces in the Roman Empire, but ancient accounts suggest that once local
expenses were met, most of these regions sent less than 4 million sesterces to
Rome.²¹ Celtic and German territories in
northwest Europe had no long-term history of civic administration in monetised economies,
so early revenues from these regions appear to have been comparatively low.²²
Furthermore, the Romans extracted only moderate revenues from most of the territories they captured in the
eastern Mediterranean. Suetonius suggests that the Roman treasury received only
about 5 million sesterces per annum from the small subject kingdom of Commagene in Asia Minor.²³ This is about a quarter of the funds that the Han government
in Louyang could receive from a single Chinese
province.
The Romans imposed
tribute on subject peoples as a symbol of submission and they punished revolt
by increasing their demands for money and materials. Tribute amounts were fixed
by longstanding agreements, so this meant that the imperial regime did not
necessarily derive greater revenues from a country that became more prosperous
under Roman rule. The Roman regime imposed low-rate taxes of about one fortieth (2.5 per cent) on goods
crossing provincial boundaries and this
meant that internal trade did not raise large amounts of revenue.²⁴ For
example, the provinces that comprised
Gaul needed to export goods worth 40 million
sesterces in order to raise 1 million sesterces for the Roman regime.
The ancient evidence suggests
that the Romans demanded only a moderate amount of tribute from most of its
subject territories. This meant that only a small amount of central government
tax was taken from ordinary individuals. The New Testament suggests that the Roman poll tax (tributum capitis) paid by adult males was only 1 denarius per annum (worth 4
sesterces or a single day’s labour).²⁵ This meant that 1 million men might raise only 4
million sesterces in poll tax revenue
and population increases would need to be very large to significantly
increase Roman revenues.
Property taxes also
seem to have been comparatively low in most Roman provinces. Appian reports
that Roman subjects in Syria had to pay an annual land tax (tributum
solis) set at only 1 per cent of their assessed
wealth.²⁶ Roman land taxes would have
been collected as coin value or as an equivalent quantity of agricultural product that could then be transferred to
nearby garrisons, or sold on the open
market. Tacitus mentions grain taxes in Roman Britain and Josephus
describes how rebels in Judea seized grain from ‘imperial granaries’ during the
Jewish revolt of AD 66.²⁷
Tribute levels were
set by historic agreement and this meant that an increase in regional
population or property wealth did not necessarily increase Roman revenues.
Instead, an increase in regional agricultural prosperity or population meant
that smaller contributions were required from each individual. Census reports
revealed these demographic changes to central government, who then responded by
reducing or removing some of the tax burden imposed on certain
communities.
Sometimes entire
cities were offered exemption from these taxes as a special reward or
privilege. In AD 70, Vespasian granted the inhabitants of Caesaria
Martima exemption from tributum
capitis, while his successor Titus removed their obligation to pay tributum solis.²⁸
In the early imperial
period, Roman citizens did not have to pay tributum
capitis and soldiers who received their pay from the state were also exempt from
this tax.
This was significant
because most of Hispania, Gaul and Britain had no towns or cities before the
Romans conquered these regions. Northern Europe was urbanised
by Roman occupation and many of the earliest towns and cities developed around
forts and veteran colonies. Rome regarded tribute as money extracted from
subject people for the benefit of Roman citizens. Consequently these new urban centres were not considered to be tax-producing assets by
central government, even if they developed into cities.
The Roman economy
also contained large-scale imbalances concerning food production. The Crimea
produced over 84,000 tons of grain per annum which was enough to feed over 200,000 people.²⁹ Much of
this grain was exported to large Greek
cities in the eastern Mediterranean that could not otherwise have
maintained their population size and
density with locally grown produce. The city of Rome had a population close to a million, but this was
sustained by a government-issued grain
dole offered to select male citizens.³⁰ About 200,000 citizens were eligible
for a dole that provided more than their basic needs and consisted of enough
grain to feed 400,000 people in the capital.³¹ The annual dole included 88,000
tons of grain shipped from farms on costal
North Africa and the Nile Valley in Egypt.³² According to Josephus, almost a
third of this grain, 29,000 tons, was Egyptian
produced.³³ As Tacitus observed, ‘It is not a barren soil which causes
distress in Italy. We prefer to
cultivate Africa and Egypt, and trust the life of the Roman people to ships
with all their risks.’³⁴
The first
interruption to this system occurred in the third century AD when a Germanic
people known as the Goths migrated from forested lands on the Baltic coast of
northern Europe to the upper Black Sea region. They occupied the Pontic steppe
and settled near the Danube River, where they introduced agriculture and
adopted cavalry practices from the mounted Scythians. In the mid-third century
AD the Goths launched ships to raid
Roman ports on the Black Sea coast while their armies overran the Crimea and
conquered the Kingdom of Chersonesos.³⁵ As a
consequence, the food resources and population potential of the Crimea
were transferred from Roman to Gothic
control. Between AD 322 and AD 336 the Ememperor
Constantine conducted campaigns against the Goths and Sarmatians to force these
nations to submit to Rome.³⁶ As a result of the new Gothic realms eventually
became allies of the Empire, but they remained beyond direct Roman administration.
Learning from Roman Revenues
The best evidence for
Rome’s provincial revenues comes from the Late Republic. Plutarch records that
the Roman state received a total income worth 340 million sesterces after Pompey annexed Syria and most
of Asia Minor (60 BC).³⁷ This figure increased when Caesar imposed tribute
payments worth 40 million sesterces on
newly conquered Gaul (50 BC).³⁸ But ancient evidence suggests that the
tribute received by Rome was moderate
and did not greatly increase over time. As an example, Philostratus
describes how the Romans extracted tribute worth 28 million sesterces from
their province in western Asia Minor.³⁹ This is almost the same amount of tribute that the Persian Empire
demanded from this region when they had ruled the territory six centuries
earlier.⁴⁰
The province of Egypt
was an exception because it was treated as though it were an imperial estate.
Its large population was intensively managed and the region produced high
levels of transferable revenue. Strabo confirms that Ptolemaic Egypt produced revenues worth 300 million sesterces
for its kings and even higher sums were
extracted by Rome.⁴¹ Josephus suggests that by the mid-first century AD,
with the full development of Indian
Ocean commerce, Egypt provided the Roman state
with over 570 million sesterces of revenue per annum.⁴²
Tribute could remain
low in most provinces because the Roman government met its costs by minting
coins from newly mined bullion. Strabo describes how state-owned mines in southern Spain provided
the Roman Republic with more than 39
tons of silver per annum (worth 36 million sesterces).⁴³ Pliny records
that by AD 73, Roman gold mines in
Hispania were producing more than 7 tons of gold per annum (worth 80 million sesterces).⁴⁴
This suggests that the Roman state
received more than 120 million sesterces worth of bullion from its
mines. This bullion could produce enough precious metal coinage to pay the
costs of ten Roman legions or about a third of the entire imperial army.⁴⁵
Roman tribute levels
could also remain low because the state received enormous profits from taxing
international commerce. Maritime Indian imports worth more than a billion
sesterces must have raised at least 250 million sesterces in Egypt as part of
the tetarte tax. Goods brought through Palmyra worth
360 million sesterces would have generated revenues worth 90 million sesterces
for Roman tax collectors at Antioch and other Syrian cities.⁴⁶ Added to these
figures would be the tax value of Roman
goods and bullion exported to Parthia, Arabia and India.
Learning by omparing
expenses
There were other
major differences in the state-systems that China and Rome developed to manage
their empires. The Han regime paid salaries to a large bureaucratic staff to
work for the central government in Louyang and serve
in the provinces to collect tax and
manage the administration of cities and rural communities. This civilian
bureaucracy included more than 120,000 staff; as a comparison, the Roman army
numbered 300,000.⁴⁷ This method of administration cost the Chinese government the equivalent of more
than 400 million sesterces in wages per
annum.⁴⁸
In the Roman system,
the Emperor’s interests were managed by a large house-hold-based network of
citizen freedmen and administrative slaves. The Roman Empire also retained a senate consisting of
about 600 ex-magistrates, each of whom
met the required property qualification for office which was set at 1
million sesterces.⁴⁹ Outside Italy the
Roman administration was primarily a military-based system with governors commanding the imperial
forces in their designated territories. There were about 160 senior positions
in the Roman provinces which were filled
by senators and members of the lesser nobility known as equites, who had a property qualification of 400,000
sesterces.⁵⁰ These administrators were well-paid for their services, but they often used local
military officials, or staff from their own households, to manage provincial
affairs. Consequently, modern scholars calculate that the early Roman
government could have spent as little at 75 million sesterces per annum on its
‘civilian’ employees.⁵¹
Scholars have
estimated that the early Roman Empire spent at least 640 million sesterces per
annum on its military.⁵² This was the cost of about 300,000 career soldiers, including legionaries,
auxiliaries, the Praetorian Guard in Rome, and the imperial navy. In total,
there were about thirty legions in the Roman army, which, when at full
strength, would have each consisted of about 5,000 legionaries and 5,000
auxiliary soldiers. Each legion cost about 11 million sesterces per annum to
maintain. Still, a significant part of this cost was due to the generous
discharge bonus paid to soldiers who had completed their twenty-five-years service contract.
In the early imperial
period, the highest concentration of Roman soldiers was on the Rhine frontier,
which was maintained by eight legions at the cost of perhaps 88 million
sesterces per annum. This is similar to the amount that the Chinese paid to the
largest of the steppe nations as an incentive not to attack their northern
frontiers.
The Han Empire spent
less on its military institutions than its Roman counterpart. The Later Han
Empire was divided into two main military forces known as the Southern and
Northern Armies. The Southern Army was partly composed of Chinese peasants who
were conscripted into short-term service. By contrast the Northern Army was structured around regiments
of career soldiers who depended on conscript units for pre-planned offensive
campaigns.⁵³ The Later Han also made extensive use of cavalry regiments formed
from warrior-based steppe populations that had surrendered to Chinese authority
and been permitted to settle on the frontiers.⁵⁴
The Northern Army
units that guarded Louyang included about 3,500
soldiers, compared with the nine cohorts
of Praetorians stationed near Rome (4,500
troops).⁵⁵ Military bases on the Chinese frontiers could accommodate
several hundred career soldiers, and with the assistance of cavalry units,
these troops were able to guard vast stretches of the Han frontiers. Ancient
documents found on the frontiers suggest
that a force of 3,250 front-line career soldiers maintained the 620 miles between Dunhuang and Shuofang.⁵⁶ The northern border of China covered over 3,000
miles, so based on that density of troops, the Northern Army would have
required 16,000 soldiers to protect this key frontier of the Han Empire. Later,
Han also established several large military bases to monitor subject steppe
populations settled close to the Chinese borders. The evidence suggests that
each of these outposts included several thousand permanent soldiers.⁵⁷
Infantry soldiers in
Chinese frontier garrisons were paid about 600 cash per month.⁵⁸ Officers
received considerably more, and cavalrymen needed higher pay to maintain their
horses. Some of these military wages might have been supplied as food or
equipment, but the Chinese state still had to meet these expenses from
resources raised by taxation or other means. A standing army of 25,000 career
infantry would have cost at least 180 million cash per annum. This would be
equivalent to 36 million sesterces in Roman currency, which represented the
cost of almost three legions (30,000 men).⁵⁹
When fully mobilized
for war, a Chinese army, including 200,000 conscripts, would require pay and
supplies worth over 1,440 million cash per annum (288 million sesterces). The
cost of aggressive warfare was higher in the Far East because Chinese armies
had to enter steppe lands or other remote territories to engage hostile nations
who often fought as highly mobile mounted opponents. These campaigns involved
the challenge of long-range supply issues and the huge costs involved in moving
men and resources into marginal lands far from the productive core of the
Empire. In the second century AD, the Han declared war against the Western Qiang who
occupied lands on their Burma-Tibetan frontiers.⁶⁰ The total cost of this
twelve-year war is attested as 24 billion cash or about 2 billion per annum.⁶¹
This figure per annum is equivalent to about 400 sesterces in Roman currency,
or about a third of the annual revenues that Rome received from its Empire.
Later sources suggest
that Emperor Diocletian significantly increased the size of the Roman army (AD
284–305). The Byzantine scholar John Lydus reviewed
official figures from the fourth century AD, and he reports that in this period
the Romans had 389,704 soldiers and 45,562 troops serving in the fleet.⁶² A
list of Roman units contained in work called the Notitia Dignitatum
(List of Offices) suggests that the later Roman army might have had up to
500,000 soldiers if all its recorded units were active and at full military
strength (AD 395–420).⁶³ By this period, the
Roman army was divided into static frontier troops based at garrison
points and mobile field-armies able to conduct immediate campaigns.
As we have seen sofar the Roman and Chinese had much similarities but also
many differences. Their economies were both agrarian and monetized, but adopted
different models of production organization. Their societies were both
patriarchic, conservative and stratified. Each person had specific social roles
and had moral duty to be contended with them. Both societies valued the family,
the nursery of authoritarianism, but the Roman made a clear legal separation
between the state and the family, the Chinese did not. Their political power
was mostly held by aristocrats, but the Roman senatorial aristocracy and the
Chinese feudal aristocracy differed in characters. Initially, their states were
all city-sized, but the western city-state and Chinese feudal states had
different political structures.
Dominating the Steppe
The steppe nations
were a serious threat to Chinese authority and frontier security. At its political height, the Xiongnu (‘Hun-nu’) regime incorporated several leading
steppe nations and was organized into twenty-four territorial divisions that
could each provide up to 10,000 mounted warriors.⁶⁴ In times of war, this
manpower could be assembled into armies including several hundred thousand
mounted warriors.
During two centuries
of intermittent fighting, the Han weakened the Xiongnu
by conducting long-distance campaigns on the steppe to kill and capture the men
and livestock that provided the regime with its military strength. Over time
this diminished the system allowing some of its more important subject nations
on the outlying steppe to achieve independence. But the Han were not able to
fully dominate the Xiongnu until the mid-first
century AD when the country was divided by civil war, and the southern faction
requested Chinese aid. The Southern Xiongnu were
accepted into Han service, and eight of their clans, including up to 50,000
warriors, were allocated frontier territory in the Chinese Empire. The southern
Chanyu Bei was ordered to establish his court under
Han supervision in Xihe Commandery (Luliang, Shanxi).
The newly subject Xiongnu offered military service in
return for the guarantee of large-scale economic subsidies from the Han
government including food, clothing and coined money.⁶⁵
The Northern Xiongnu faction was destroyed in subsequent military action
as Chinese commanders led further expeditions into the outer steppe. The
decisive engagement, known as the Battle of Ikh
Bayan, was fought in AD 89 near the Altai Mountains. In this battle, a Chinese
force of 46,000 cavalries, including 30,000 Southern Xiongnu
allies, defeated the northern Chanyu and forced his
surrender.⁶⁶
Further campaigns in
the following years caused the remaining northern Xiongnu to flee westward into parts of the Central Asian
steppe that were beyond the reach and knowledge of the Chinese Empire.⁶⁷
After the collapse of
the Xiongnu Empire, a steppe nation called the Xianbei became the leading regime in Mongolia. The Xianbei were former subjects of the Xiongnu
who lived on the Manchurian prairies on the eastern edge of the Asian steppe.
But as the Xiongnu Empire fragmented, they gained
independence and began to extend their range and influence across Mongolia. The
Hou Hanshu records that ‘ever since the northern Xiongnu fled, the Xianbei have
become powerful and populous, seizing all the lands previously held by the Xiongnu and claiming to have 100,000 warriors.’ It was said
that the Xianbei had better-bladed steel and superior
horse breeds and consequently, ‘their weapons are sharper, and their horses are
faster than those of the Xiongnu.’⁶⁸
Another steppe nation called the Wuhuan
had a prominent place in Chinese strategies to protect its frontiers. The Wuhuan also originated in Manchuria, and the Hou Hanshu claims that ‘the language and culture of the Xianbei are the same as the Wuhuan.’
Wuhuan gained independence from the Xiongnu in 121 BC, and, allying with the Chinese, they were
permitted to settle along the Han frontiers. Their chieftains were given
economic subsidies in return for longterm military
service to help protect the Chinese boundaries from other steppe nations.
1. Muziris Papyrus: P. Vindob. G.
40822 (Papyri Vindobonensis Graecus);
Merchant fleet 120 ships (The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924, 2.5.12).
2.
https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/palmyrene-funerary-sculptures-at-penn/
3. New Testament,
Luke, 2:1.
4. Pliny, 3.3.
5. Frier,
‘Population’ in Cambridge Ancient History, volume 11, The High Empire (1996),
812–14.
6. The Book of the
Later Han, also known as the History of the Later Han and by its Chinese name
Hou Hanshu, 28b.1640. Cambridge History of China:
Volume I: the Ch’in and Han Empires (1986), 596.
7. Loewe, The Men who
Governed Han China (2004), 60.
8. Scheidel, ‘State Revenue and Expenditure in the Han and
Roman Empires’ (2012) 3.
9. Xu and Dull, Han
Agriculture (1980), 76–7.
10. Scheidel, ‘State Revenue and Expenditure in the Han and
Roman Empires’ (2012), 5.
11. Chang, The Rise
of the Chinese Empire (2007), 78.
12. Loewe, The Men
who Governed Han China (2004), 284–6.
13. Yan Tie Lun (Discourse on Salt and Iron).
14. Chang, The Rise
of the Chinese Empire (2007), 82–5.
15. Loewe, The Men
who Governed Han China (2004), 60.
16. Ch’uan Hou-Han Wen, 14.2b; Yu, Trade and Expansion in Han
China (1967), 62.
17. New Testament,
Luke, 2:1.
18. Shule Document, 509.
19. Walter Scheidel, State Power in Ancient China and Rome, 2015, p.
159
20. Loewe, The Men
who Governed Han China (2004), 60.
21. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, De Consolatione
ad Helviam Matrem, 10.4.
22. C. Suetonius Tranquillus, Divus Julius, 25 .
23. Suetonius, Caligula,
16.
24. The Cambridge
Ancient History Volume
11. The High Empire, AD 70–192 2nd Edition, 738.
25. New Testament,
Luke, 2:1.
26. Appian, Syrian
War, 50.
27. Cornelius
Tacitus, The Life of Cnæus Julius Agricola, 19; Titus
Flavius Josephus, Life, 13.
28. Digest Roman
Law,Pandects (Latin: Digesta seu Pandectae), 50.15.3; 50.8.7.
29. Demosthenes,
20.32–3.
30. The Cambridge
Ancient History, Volume 11: The High Empire, 813.
31. Augustus, Res Gestae Divi Augusti, 15; Aldrete, G.S. and D.J. Mattingly. 1999.
“Feeding the city: The organisation, operation, and
scale of the supply system for Rome.” In Life, Death, and Entertainment in the
Roman Empire. (1999), 178.
32. Keith Hopkins,
Models, Ships and Staples; Type: Book chapter; Language: English; Published in:
Sociological Studies in Roman History, 2017, 86.
33. Josephus, Jewish
War, 2.16.4.
34. Tacitus, Annals,
12.43.
35. The Cambridge
Ancient History, Vol. 12: The Crisis of Empire, AD 193-337 by Alan Bowman, Averil Cameron, et al., 2005 (2005), 37–55.
36. Herwig Wolfram,
History of the Goths (1979), 59–63.
37. Plutarch, Pompey,
45.
38. Suetonius, Julius
Caesar, 25.
39. Philostratus: Lives of the Sophists (Flavii
Philostrati Vitae Sophistarum),
548.
40. Herodotus, 3.90.
41. Strabo, 17.1.13.
42. Josephus, Jewish
War, 2.16.4; Antiquities, 19.8.2.
43. Pliny, 33.21.
44. Strabo, 3.2.10.
45. Pliny, 33.21
46. Carol B. Wilson,For I Was Hungry and You Gave Me Food: Pragmatics of
Food Access in the Gospel of Matthew, 2014, 156.
47. Hardy, The
Establishment of the Han Empire and Imperial China (2005), 43.
48. Ch’uan Hou-Han wen, 14.2b (2 billion cash).
49. Di Cosmo, N.
Ancient China and its Enemies (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 56.41;
Augustus, Res Gestae, 8.
50. Keith Hopkins, Death and Renewal: Volume 2:
Sociological Studies in Roman History (Vol 2), 1983,186.
51. Duncan-Jones,
Money and Government (1994), 33–45.
52. Appendix A.
53. Loewe, The
Government of the Qin and Han Empires (2006), 63.
54. Yu, Trade and
Expansion in Han China (1967), 83–4.
55. Standard cohort:
480 soldiers. The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 10: The Augustan Empire
(1996), 385. Alternative figures: Scheidel, ‘State
Revenue and Expenditure in the Han and Roman Empires’ (2012), 23.
56. Loewe, Records of
Han Administration (1967), 90–1.
57. Hou Hanshu, 1.110–11.
58. Mu Ch'ien (Author), Siying Zhang
(Translator), Merits and Demerits of Political Systems in Dynastic China,
2019.
59. Michael Loewe,
The Men Who Governed Han China: Companion to a Biographical Dictionary of the
Qin, Former Han and Xin Periods, 2004, 60.
60. Ying-shih Yu,
Trade and Expansion in Han China: a Study in the Structure of Sino-Barbarian
Economic Relations (1967), 61.
61. Hou Hanshu, 117.9a; 11b.
62. John Lydus, De Mensibus, 1.27.
63. The Cambridge
History of Greek and Roman Warfare, Volume 2 (2007), 271.
64. Mark Edward
Lewis, The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han (2007), 132.
65. Hou Hanshu, 119.
66. Zizhi Tongjian (Chinese:
資治通鑑; literally: 'Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of
Governance') 47.1636; Hou Hanshu, 89.
67. Wu, ‘Debates and
Decision Making: Battle of the Altai Mountains’ (2013), 63–71.
68. Hou Hanshu, 120.5b.
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