Political map of the Eastern Hemisphere in AD 200
Comparisons between the Roman and Han empires involve the comparative study of the roughly contemporaneous Roman Empire and the Han dynasty of early imperial China.
At their peaks, both states controlled a large portion of the world
population and produced political and cultural legacies that endure to
the modern era; comparative studies largely focus on their similar scale
at their pinnacles and on parallels in their rise and decline. The vast
majority of studies focus on one or the other;
however, the comparison of the two has attracted somewhat increased
interest in the 21st century, with several studies examining the
concepts of ethnicity, identity, and the views of foreigners.
History
Walter Scheidel reviewed the previous scholarship when he explained the purpose of Stanford University's
Ancient Chinese and Mediterranean Empires Comparative History Project
and the framework of its study in the early 21st century. Max Weber and Karl August Wittfogel
both wrote works comparing the ancient Mediterranean and China;
however, their studies have had little influence on later historians of
the ancient world. Scheidel gives this as a contributing cause to the
relative paucity of comparative studies between the two. The majority of
the research in the subject area has concentrated on looking at the
intellectual and philosophical history of each society. He also noted a
change in the direction of research in the 2000s, with a refocusing on
the "nature of moral, historical, and scientific thought" in Ancient Greece and China.
Several scholars have made comparative studies of the two
empires. As historian Samuel Adshead puts it, "Other comparisons could
be made ... None, however, offers so close a parallel with Han China as
the Roman empire".
These have tended to focus on the philosophical and intellectual
histories of China and the Greco-Roman world, and despite modern
interest, gaps remain in the scholarship comparing Rome and the Han
Empire. Scheidel notes that there are no comparative studies of high culture;
there is also a virtual absence of work on "political, social,
economic or legal history" of the Greco-Roman world and ancient China.
However, he does note that Adshead does briefly address the issue.
Wittfogel's work has come in for criticism by later historians, but his
studies have not fully been supplanted by up to date theses. In modern
studies of imperialism,
ancient China has generally been overlooked. In Scheidel's words,
"[compared to the study of Europe and China in the early modern period]
the comparative history of the largest agrarian empires of antiquity has
attracted no attention at all. This deficit is only explicable with
reference to academic specialization and language barriers".
The emergence of the United States of America as effectively the only superpower in the world after the fall of the Soviet Union
in the late 20th century led to a renewed interest in empires and their
study. For instance, the Roman Empire has occasionally been held up as a
model for American dominance. The United States' hegemony
is unprecedented in the modern system and thus the only illuminating
cases can be found in pre-modern systems: “One difficulty with analyzing
unipolarity is that we have mainly the current case, although examining
the Roman and ancient China could be illuminating.”
In general, with the rise of the American primacy the study of
historical empires, such as Han China and Rome, increased. In the field
of comparative studies between empires, not just Rome and China, Shmuel Eisenstadt's The Political System of Empires (1963) has been described as influential as it pioneered the comparative approach.
The act of comparing the Roman and Han empires is aided by the amount
of written evidence from both, as well as other artefactual sources.
In the words of Fritz-Heiner Mutschler and Achim Mittag, "Comparing the
Roman and Chinese empires contributes not only to understanding the
trajectories along which the two civilizations developed, but also to
heightening our awareness of possible analogies between the present and
the past, be it with regard to America or China."
Recent work by Ronald A. Edwards shows how such comparisons can be
helpful in understanding ancient Chinese and Roman political
institutions.
Society
Principles of sociological examination have been identified that can be applied to the study of China and Rome. They draw on analytical and illustrative comparisons.
Political structure
One
of the most appealing reasons for historians to begin comparing China
and Rome, is their ascent to political hegemony over the Mediterranean
and East Asia. However, political comparisons by Adshead have received
negative response from Chinese history experts; citing his lack of use
of Chinese sources, poor support of his arguments and an eagerness to
take poorly supported points as facts.
Nonetheless more recently, China scholars have been engaging in
comparative work on political institutions between China and Rome – see
work by Ronald A. Edwards – and between China the early modern Europe – see work by Victoria Tin-bor Hui.
Rationale
According to Adshead's book China in World History,
comparing Han China and the Roman Empire gives context and assists
understanding of China's interactions and relations with other
civilisations of Antiquity. In his China and the Roman Empire before Constantine, their "differences outweighed the similarities". In the opinion of Scheidel:
only comparisons with other civilizations make it possible to distinguish common features from culturally specific or unique characteristics and developments, help us identify variables that were critical to particular historical outcomes and allow us to assess the nature of any given ancient state or society within the wider context of premodern world history.
