为什么中国统一了，罗马却没有统一？
Why Didn't Rome Reunify, When China Did?
The Historian's Craft 2024年11月10日
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQlP1eFvwMI
历史上一个永恒的问题是，为什么罗马帝国从未统一，或者至少为什么罗马帝国的前地区从未统一成一个国家，而中国帝国似乎做到了。那么这是什么原因呢？我们能给出任何答案吗？嗯，有可能。
在历史研究中，一个永恒的问题就是，为什么在公元 6 世纪左右之后，罗马帝国从未统一过地中海，而这通常伴随着一个主要的观察，即尽管存在分裂和不统一时期，但中国似乎总是重新统一。在我们讨论这个问题之前，我只想提出一个简短的警告，这个问题不一定有一个特定的一刀切的答案，毕竟我们谈论的是欧亚大陆的对立面，时间线很容易覆盖大约 2000 年左右，部分原因是中国仍然存在，而罗马不存在，所以我想强调的是，这个视频是在研究一个特定的论点和一种特定的答案构建方式，你不必同意它，它不一定在每一个方面都是正确的，我们在这里简要探讨的论点主要来自斯坦福大学罗马历史教授沃尔特·希德尔的作品，他的研究重点是罗马经济和古代的比较研究帝国，尤其是罗马和中国，所以我试图将很多内容浓缩成一个短视频，这不是他的作品讨论的唯一内容，但这是其中很重要的一部分，所以在中国历史上，历史学的主要支柱之一是王朝循环，各个王朝的兴衰，尽管它被接受、质疑或拒绝，这取决于你正在阅读哪位学者的作品，但它是传统上看待中国历史的视角之一，罗马的历史，也许更广泛地说，欧洲或地中海的历史没有这个，曾经有人试图像罗马那样统一地中海，一个非详尽的清单会考虑到查士丁尼、阿拉伯哈里发和奥斯曼帝国的征服，当你把它与中国进行比较时，似乎有一次更成功的统一中国核心领土的行动，你可能会争辩说，这意味着罗马人要么做对了，要么真的很幸运，而其他人要么没有复制这种成功，要么他们尝试了，然后做错了，这就是我们在这个视频中探讨的论点，这更多地与中国不断统一的方式有关，然后是欧亚大陆东西两端的影响，当你概述成功控制了被认为是中国核心的后续王朝时，你正在看的是遵循这个特定论点的关键点，即在平定王朝之后，统一期间的军事力量发生了转变，简而言之，它开始来自这些王朝的过渡，而不是简单的从一个王朝到另一个王朝的统治，经常发生内战和帝国分裂，这是这里的规则，而不是竞争帝国的例外经常重叠，因此考虑到这一点，这不再是国家不断的兴衰，而更多的是华裔和非华裔国家之间的竞争，争夺长期的政治传统和领土和平，以及历史上声称的统治理由，蒙古王朝、明朝和清朝要么与欧亚阶梯有家族联系，要么来自欧亚阶梯本身，要么来自中国北部，这样做有点符合你在中世纪和近代欧亚历史上看到的这种模式，许多大帝国似乎都是从欧亚阶梯中崛起的，这在一定程度上与人类学家托马斯·巴菲尔德所说的影子帝国有关，本质上是一群我们称之为同等国家的政治单位，这些城市或小国刚好强大到足以相互竞争，但还不足以完全主宰该地区竞争区的边缘是一个政治单位，在某种程度上与这些同等国家有关，但由于它们处于边缘地位，它们能够或许被迫建立一个政治和军事组织体系，该体系能够慢慢地侵入，然后征服和整合衰弱的朝廷，古代历史上有这样的例子，它们并非来自欧亚大陆，罗马城和意大利或马其顿王国就是两个例子，但这个特定论点试图说明的一点是，在古典时期之后，统一中国的力量来自欧亚大陆和其他大领土国家,往往沿着台阶散布，但这并不真正延伸到欧洲，那里有帕诺尼亚盆地，但那片草原的范围不是很大，可能不足以完全支持明清过渡时期的马努军队，所以你最终会得出这样的论点：本质上，正是沿着宽阔的边境地带靠近欧亚台阶，使得以台阶为基础的政治单位能够对至少中国北部一半地区施加威胁，然后最终对南部一半地区施加威胁，地中海没有这种边界，这并不是说中国只是对台阶持开放态度，当然有很多地理障碍，但在罗马之后，地中海再也无法受到一个大国的霸权，尽管这并不是因为缺乏特里昂，但在查尔看来，这可能是一件好事，因为随后在欧洲国家
由于普遍缺乏一个不断争夺的领土核心
促进了这些国家的增长，随后的冲突最终导致了中世纪晚期和近代早期的国家建设项目，其结果就是欧洲，并最终形成了我们今天所理解的世界.
Why Didn't Rome Reunify, When China Did?
The Historian's Craft 2024年11月10日
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQlP1eFvwMI
One of the perennial questions of history is why the Roman Empire never reunified, or at least why the former region of the Roman Empire never reunified into one state, when the Chinese Empire seemingly did. So what's the reason for this? Can we offer any sort of answer? Well, possibly.
one of the perennial questions that comes up in the study of history is why
after the 6th Century or so the Roman
Empire never reunified the Mediterranean and this is often paired
with an observation mainly being that
despite the fragmentations and the
period of disunity China always seems to reunite
before we get into this I just want to
issue a brief caveat this is a question
that does not necessarily have a specific onesize fits all answer after
all we're talking about opposite sides
of Eurasia and timelines easily covering
about 2,000 years or so in part because
China still exists and Rome does not so
I want to stress that this video is
looking at a particular argument and a
particular way of framing an answer you
do not have to agree with it and it is
not necessarily in each and every aspect
correct the argument that we're briefly
exploring here largely comes to us from
the work of Walter shidel a professor of
Roman history at Stanford University
whose research focuses on the Roman
economy and the comparative study of
ancient empires notably Rome and China
so I'm trying to condense a whole lot
into a short video it's not the only
thing his work discusses but it is an
important part of it so with that said in Chinese history one
of the Main Stays of the historiography
is the dynastic cycle the rise and fall
of various dynasties and although it's
accepted questioned or rejected
depending on what scholar you're
currently reading it's one of the lenses
through which Chinese history has
traditionally been viewed the history of Rome and perhaps
more broadly the history of Europe or
the Mediterranean does not have this
there have been attempts to reunify the
Mediterranean as Rome did and a
non-exhaustive list would take into
account the conquests of Justinian the
Arab caliphates and the Ottomans when
you compare this to China it seems that
there was a more successful run of
reunifying the core territory of China
which you could then possibly argue
means that the Romans either did
something correct or got really lucky
and then everybody else either did not
replicate that success or they tried and
then they did something wrong and this
is where we get into the argument being
explored in this video this has more to
do with the manner in which China was
continually reunified and then the
consequences for the eastern and the
Western extremities of Eurasia when you
outline the succeeding dynasties that
successfully controlled what would be
considered the core quote unquote of
China what you're looking at is the
following the key Point here in this
particular line of argument is that
after the sway Dynasty there was a shift
in where the military power during the
unification comes from in short it
begins to come from the step these
dynasties are not simple shift and
rulership from one to the next very
often Civil War and Imperial
fragmentation is the rule here not the
exception with competing Empires often
overlapping so with that in mind this is
less of a continuous rise and fall of
states and more of a competition of
States both ethnically Chinese and
non-chinese over a long-standing
political tradition and peace of
territory with historically claimed
justifications to rulership the tongue
Dynasty the Mongols the Ming and then
the Ching all either have familial
connections to the Eurasian step come
from the step itself or otherwise come
from the north of China in doing so it
sort of fits into this pattern you see
in medieval and early modern Eurasian
history where many of the large Empires
seem like they emerg from the Eurasian
step in part this has to do with what
the Anthropologist Thomas Barfield calls
Shadow Empires essentially there are
groups of political units that we call
peer States and these are cities or
small states that are just powerful
enough to compete with each other but
which aren't strong enough to fully
dominate the region on the outskirts of
that zone of competition is a political
unit that is to a degree related to
these peer States but due to their
position at the edge they are able to or
perhaps forced to establish a system of
political and military organization
which is slowly able to intrude upon and
then conquer and integrate the weakened
Court there are examples of this from
ancient history that do not come from
the Eurasian step the city of Rome and
Italy or the kingdom of Macedon would be
two examples but the point that this
particular argument is trying to make is
that after the Classical period the
unifying forces for China emerge from
the step and other large territorial
States tend to be dotted along step but
this doesn't really extend into Europe
all that much there is the panonian
Basin but the extent of that grassland
is not overly large and it's probably
not enough to fully support numbers
along the lines of say the Manu armies
during the mingqing transition period so
you end up with the argument that
essentially it's the proximity to the
Eurasian step along a wide Frontier Zone
that enables step-based political units
to impose eminy on at least the northern
half of China and then eventually the
southern half as well the Mediterranean
does not have this sort of Frontier this
isn't to say that China is simply open
to the step there are certainly plenty
of geographical barriers in place but
after Rome the Mediterranean is never
again able to come under the hegemony of
one power although it's not for lack of
Trion this is probably in chael's view a
good thing because the ensuing
competition among the European States
due to the general lack of a territorial
core that is continuously fought over
encouraged the growth of those
individual states and the ensuing
conflict eventually result in the very
late medieval and the early modern State
building projects with the result of
that being Europe and eventually the
world as we understand it today
1,34评论
Hongde Li
添加评论…
@howareyou4400
2周前
One obvious reason: Classical China since 221BC uses a unified written system which records the meaning of the language rather than its pronunciations. Over time different parts in China may have their spoken language evolving independently but they all corresponds to the same writing symbols. Therefore in a sense they all use the same language and thus are the "same people". Roman uses multiple languages and these languages continue to evolve and split, hence different regions in Europe soon have "different people".
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@chillin5703
3周前
I think the better question is, why didnt a successor state successfully conquer the former lands of the Roman empire? Because when "China" reunifies, its not like its the exact same state each time. It's different provinces and peoples claiming the legacy of China, its institutions, its legitimacy, and culture (however you define that). Europe, the Middle East, and even North Africa had plenty of states/peoples claiming to adhere to the Roman legacy. If one had managed to conquer its former territories, we might view it the same way we view China--the capital simply moving from Rome to somewhere else.
1354
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@speedwagon6-e1b
2周前
Speaking of Chinese history, I recommend anyone seeing this comment to dive into Chinese history. Every dynasty has something interesting and unique aspects to offer. I love Roman history too, but I personally don’t think anything comes even close to Chinese history when it comes to how interesting it can be.
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@sanneoi6323
2周前
As a Chinese person I would say it's because we have, at our core, a contiguous landmass of nearly culturally and ethnolinguistically identical peoples, the natural state of which is unification. Every time China was divided it was simply political, not along regional cultural or ethnolinguistic lines. The Mediterranean does not have same culture all over it, was only united cause conquest, and Rome lived on as some sort of cultural heritage for parts of Europe.
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@biocapsule7311
3周前（修改过）
Simply put, Han Chinese identity is invested in the people and the cultural identity. Dynasties comes and goes, Chinese people have always understood that, even non-han rulers to integrate. Roman identity is invested in Rome, not the rest of the Empire, everything is about Rome. Most of the empire are not even citizens, and have no real attachment to Rome or the Empire. So when it falls apart, no one is really that attached. How can you be attached to a city you have never seen in your life. Take the Holy Roman Empire, they claim the inheritors of Roman but Rome isn't even in their Territory.
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@chaomingli6428
9天前
I think one of the key factors is the Chinese writing system is not a spelling system, which made it possible to spread and maintain a similar culture and beliefs across time and space. That makes the Chinese civilisation unique.
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@卓-g6k
3天前
As a Chinese i can tell you with confidence, china is a culture more than a country, we have the agreement that we were we are and we will always a unity, we are together, we share the same language same system and all the same.
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@dewinmoonl
9天前
There are 3 kinds of civilizations. Sea merchants, farmers, and herdsman.
If you look at Rome, it's sea merchants. Put it more harshly, pirates. You wage war and take loots as a mean to enrich the country. To keep the empire growing, it must expands outwards.
China builds on farmers, you work the land and development infrastructures, dams, bridges, roads. It doesn't need to expand outwards, thus more stable to run for long time.
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@LP18888
5天前
I would give credit to Qin Shi Huang Di, the first emperor. He was the one that instilled the everlasting message of unification of China.
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@onlyfacts4999
3周前
After Franks conquered Gaul, the local Roman people quickly became assimilated as Franks. This pattern holds for the Arabs conquests in Middle East and North Africa, Slavic conquest of the Balkans, the Turkic conquest of Anatolia, the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain etc. Even in Italy, the Lombards created a lasting legacy in the form of Lombardy.
Meanwhile the rulers of former Roman lands were eager to identify their legacies as Roman, such as the Holy Roman Empire and the Sultana of Rum. It seems that Rome did not leave behind strong cultural identity for common people to hold on to, so only the aristocracy and powerful are interested in a Roman revival.
425
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@lobstereleven4610
3周前
I recently listened to a podcast called "China Talk" where they interviewed Yasheng Huang, an econ professor fro MIT regarding his book "The Rise and Fall of the East" where he made a point that the imperial exam system established during the Sui Dynasty contributed a lot to the unification of multiple Chinese Dynasties in funneling competent people into an intellegenica class that was directly under the imperial system. It was a really interesting listen. I would highly recommended it.
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@basileus_angelos_v
2周前
"Because China still exists, and Rome does not"
I cried hard
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@zzhao2127
7天前
This coming from the steppe argument is really absurd, as most of the Chinese dynasties did not emerge from the steppe... The only real exception is the mongols.
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@jayreed9370
3周前
The Chinese proverb goes 'The empire, once divided, must unite. The empire, once united, must divide.' Have you read your Romance of the Three Kingdoms?
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@daveweiss5647
3周前
It crosses my mind that the city of Rome was always kind of "on the frontier" of classical age Mediterranean civilization... besides Carthage there was no other real large city until Rome created its colonies in the west... the core of Mediteranian Civilization was the east... so essentially when Rome and Carthage fell to the Barbarians the core of the civilization did survive until 1453...
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@lianghao7128
4天前
According to my humble point of view, I think the biggest reason is only one, because Emperor Qin Shihuang not only unified China, but more importantly, he unified language, currency, weights and measures, driveway, vehicle specifications and so on. This has created people's cultural and economic mutual recognition. Rome can't be unified because a Frenchman will never consider himself an Englishman, because their language, culture and economy are completely different.
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@WSOJ3
4天前
Roman didn’t reunite because Latin didn’t work out, but Chinese characters did. Because everyone shared the same readable pictogram in an era without telecommunications, China was able to build a unified culture; Rome couldn’t.
This was the unique advantage of a pictographic writing system vs a phonetic writing system in the era prior to telecommunications. With modern telecommunications, phonetic systems reigne supreme, and China modernized its language to adapt the telecommunication era via a combination of the Mandarin pronunciations, the Pinyin system, and the simplification of the pictographics.
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@stephenkellett7836
2周前
I think one of the main infouences would also be that Rome and China are only similar in the political sense that both are empires which dominated a large region for a long time, but the similarities breakdown after that. It's like the assumption that sweet potatoes must be related to potatoes, because both are high-calorie tubers. However, they're just superficially similar.
The geography, culture, and historical context of Rome and the Han dynasty are just fundamentally different. It'd be easier to identify all of the similarities between the two than the differences.
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@Leo_ofRedKeep
3周前
Grain produced in North Africa used to be the reason for its being conquered by Rome. After that production stopped, it seems that half of the empire was no longer worth warring over.
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@chenmacro
1天前
It is because of the core Chinese culture - Confucianism. Confucianism is not only the ideology but also the main stream education system since Han dynasty. Successful Confucianism scholars then run the country government, especially after Sui Dynasty when the Imperial examination was introduced to select the scholars every year to be the officials.
In the history, China falls few times due to the internal collapse and the invasion from northern nomadic groups, similar as Germanic barbarians invades the Roman empire. When the nomadic groups entered into China, they needed the Confucianism scholars to help manage the massive agriculture civilization. Sooner or later, they converted themselves to be Chinese or fully adapted the Chinese culture.
Confucianism focus more on the collectivism vs. the western culture focus more on the individualism. Chinese knows how important it is to unite together to form the power. Some times China split into many pieces, but they always reunite again and rise up. The unity of the nation is hard-coded in Chinese mindset, that's the reason China can't let go Taiwan.
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@hwasiaqhan8923
2周前（修改过）
Roman was entirely a citizenry idea while China and Chinese is a cultural and ethnic one, unified China was also founded on the combination of many Chinese states, these people share similar culture and language. Rome is much more diverse demographically.
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@TurkishDebater
2周前（修改过）
Short answer: because the Turks, Germans, the Slavs, and the Arabs didn't allow it to happen. Long Answer: Rome was destroyed by the Huns and conquered by the Germanic tribes. After this, the idea of unifying Rome became impossible because no one actually wanted to unify it, but they just used it as a justification for conquering former Roman territory.
202
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@hannibalyin8853
2天前
Chinese don't differentiate people for its skin color and faces, if you speaks the same language, writes the same words as I am, you are my homies, it's that simple.
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@korakys
3周前
I'd say a full Mediterranean empire can only hold together when the capital is in the west, but that inevitably the capital will move to the east because that is where the wealth and greatest danger was. The geography of the huge internal sea made it very hard to unify all shores of it and it could only really be done if you started in the west.
Once the North European Plain became civilised and wealthy it was even harder to unify the Med due to too many nearby competing powers.
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@slizzysluzzer
2周前
Maybe the real question we should be asking is, 'how did Rome manage to unify the Mediterranean basin at all?'
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@TempAcct-e6k
3周前
I would argue against this viewpoint, pretty vehemently. China has a cultural unifying force, the Tang, Song, and Ming all followed the Sui and stand in very stark contrast to his argument.
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@linshitaolst4936
13天前
Qin Shi Huang unified China and established the first feudal monarchy in China. Although this dynasty only existed for 15 years before splitting, his greatest contribution was to create a concept for various ethnic groups and regions in later China that China must be unified and inherit the mandate of the previous dynasty
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@pixelfiend7292
2周前
Because China was mostly centralized around a flat land (north Chinese plain). This allowed it to easily unify, unlike Rome which had many mountains and rivers that divided its territory. Additionally Chinese people had a unified social structure, and related languages. The only “Latin” parts of the empire were France, Spain, and Italy, and these weren’t united because of mountain ranges. Most people in the Roman Empire had no desire to be a part it, a German living in Gaul and a Jew living in philistine had no cultural or historic connection to each other. Most people outside of Italy weren’t even citizens, one can make a good argument that Rome itself was really just Italy and a bunch of territory controlled by Italy. If you look at it through that lense, then Rome did unify, it just didn’t take back its controlled territory and client states.
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@berendboer8459
3周前
I've been thinking about this question from time to time ever since reading Viktor Lieberman's "Strange Parallels", and what I keep coming back to is the territorial aspect of the Mandate of Heaven. Since the mandate appointed control of the “Tianxia” to a single emperor, it was not only legitimate but also legitimizing to try and reconquer a broken apart empire. Simply put, if you manage to do it, that’s proof that you’ve got the right to rule. Since no radically different justification of rule was introduced until modern times (rulers from the steppe often found it more convenient to adopt the Chinese one), we keep seeing people trying to rebuild China.
In contrast, the rulers of successor states of the Roman empire justified their rule mostly on the basis of being good Christians or Muslims, and were not bothered to specifically recreate the empire’s territory. Hence why the realm of Charlemagne, the HRE and later Russia are all claimed to be new Roman Empires despite being progressively further away from the territory of the original. The only ones who seem to place importance in the territorial aspect are the Byzantines, but after the Caliphate takes their lands in Africa they are never again able to even get close to reconquering the whole thing.
Obviously we can’t point to a singular cause for such a broad question, but since I don’t see a very strong geographical reason why reconquering China should be easier than reconquering the Roman empire, I place a lot of importance on the ideologies of those doing the reconquering. And if in one region that ideology comes with a strong territorial aspect, while in the other that is lacking, it doesn’t surprise me that we see only one of those empires reconstituted time and again.
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@nsmt48
1天前
It was the Mongols who wanted to unite humanity: they unified China, united all of Central Asia, and ended the wars between the Eastern Slavs. It was on the remnants of the Mongol state that modern China, the Russian Empire/Soviet Union emerged.
As for Europe: the Mongols did not conquer Europe, as we know. But if they had, Europe would be united now.
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@isimerias
3周前
Any Mediterranean power always has to contend with proximity to Persia, which is much more similar to China in its enduring nature.
The more fragmented geography, contrary to China, made it far more difficult for a Roman “core” to continuously exert dominance over the Mediterranean.
I would even argue that if not for the continuous rivalry with Persia, Rome would have probably been able to handle barbarian incursions with ease and probably only have to deal with it’s own constant civil wars lol
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@Vermilion2049
4天前
Simple answer. The Roman’s did not assimilate the population under one culture with one language enough for the people to identify themselves as one people.
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@alexcheng1560
3周前
the empire, long divided, must unite
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@jamesmasters2386
3周前
I really appreciate the nuanced caveats that front load this interesting topic and analysis. Very refreshing to hear that humility and makes the analysis very easy to take for what it is. Personally, I find the suppositions taken to be convincing and useful, as one lense to apply, to the comparison of the evolution of civilizations in the East and West.
Not that it makes me an authority by any means, but, I was fortunate to have lived in China briefly in the early 2000s. I find the contrast and similarities both fascinating. The history that my contemporary experiences are built on, will always be both fascinating and informative in the present.
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@bordaz1
2周前
That the Roman Republic ever unified the Mediterranean was the anomaly, and it probably had to do with a period of tranquility throughout Eurasia. Because once the forces of migration pushed the Goths, Franks, and Vandals onto the Rhine-Danube frontier, then it became almost impossible for one emperor in Rome to defend that frontier, leading to the East-West split.
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@jingshen5679
12天前
Language is likely a factor here, if not the most important one. The Chinese language, however the pronuonciation might change, remain the same written form and same characters. Whereas for Indo-european alphabetical language, the spelling changes alone with the pronuonciation shifts, and thereby quicklt splits into many languages in over a couple of generations, creating many "ethinc groups" out of natural evolution of language and regional dialogues. There are many many european languages whose difference is minor comparing with the differences between Cantonese and Mandrian, but the written form of the two is still the same. In fact, you can write chinese to communicate with a Japanese because of the partially shared written Kanji
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@carstengrooten3686
3周前
I think an impirtant factor is that the Roman Empire was based around a giant sea. This means that any power that wants to reunite it must have naval superiority over the entire Mediterranean. And the Romans were the only ones to be so dominant over both land and sea at the same time. Furthermore, the invaders in China were a uniting force, whereas for Rome the Germanic invasions would only further disintegrate the Empire, but this could be considered an extension of the steppe conquerer hypothesis. But I think the possibility of reunification died after the muslim conquest of north Africa and the Middle-East. The Arabs were semi-nomadic, but in contrast with the Manchus ir Mongols, they would assimilate conquered territories into their culture instead of being assimilated themselves. But again, due to the geographical position of being centered on a sea, the Arabs could not easilly conquer north of the Pyrenees. Combined with their dominant culture this created a strong disparity between core territories of the former empire. They now had very different languages and conflicting religions that could not coexist within one empire. If these cores were to reunite, they would at least have had to be converted to the same religion. But as no power was able to reach naval dominance like the Romans had before 1000 AD, they grew culturally so far apart that they themselves probably lost interest in conquering they other cores. China on the other hand stayed much more linguistically, religiously and culturally similar after the cores broke up, which allowed for outside powers to unite them. The Roman territories lacked this presence of steppe neighbours of sufficient strength (although the Huns and Bulgars did attack the Byzantines), but even if they had such a neighbour, maybe if the Sahara was steppe instead of desert, the conquerers would struggle to cross the seas into the northern half and if they would eventually conquer all of the former Roman empire, they would not be able to hold it together for long due to the strong cultural and religious differences that had grown between the different places.
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@ender7278
3周前
That's a very long way of saying Europe has a less centralizing geography, which is bloody obvious to any historian.
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@walking_luggage8105
4天前（修改过）
It's actually not about the geography and how easy it was to conquer the lands. The key factor behind China's re-unification - the culture and the "middle kindgom" identity. And because of the middle kingdom identity, a recurring theme in Chinese history is one where whenever the central government became weak and people were dissatisifed, someone would organize the people and overthrew the old dynasty. But in the process, during dynastic transitions China often ended up with multiple warlords and factions fighting to be the sole emperor of the middle kingdom. And this sort of dynastic transitions used to last for a few decades until one faction defeats all other factions and became the ruling family for China for the couple of hundred years. Then the cycle repeated. The Mongols and the Manchus realized this and this is why they adapted a policy where they self-assmilated into the mainstream middle kingdom culture. The Manchus was more sinosized than the Mongols and they were able to maintain governance over China much longer than the Mongols did.
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@baselius662
2周前
The pattern of Chinese history is that of a abroudly Chinese heartland with shifting borderlands. The Roman heartland, the Mediterranean, became divided primarily after the muslim conquest. Without the Mare nostrum, the centre of power collapsed and remained divided between local power centres. The Byzantine Empire shifted to the mountains of Anatolia, the muslims kept Egypt and Syria, while power in Europe shifted from Italy to the north of the alps.
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@Ivan-pr7ku
2周前
Geography plays a major role in retaining a succession chain of a civilization. The Mediterranean basin is far more complex and challenging than the conditions the various Chinese states and dynasties had to go through. Most of Europe is cross rigged with mountain ranges and protruding peninsulas, in fact the total shoreline of Europe is twice as long as that of Africa alone. All this doesn't make for an easy accommodation to any unifying force. The fact that Rome managed to hold the Mediterranean Sea as its own for so long is a historical aberration, worthy of respect. The first and the only state to achieve this so far.
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@overworlder
3周前
The difference between land and sea. Seas are not population or political units.
One of the typical factors in periods of contraction of Roman and East Roman power was neglect of the fleets.
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@deiansalazar140
3周前
Honestly I just think it's because of the huge wide inland sea and vast outside areas where it's easy to invade with little strategic depth in land in comparison to tall China. China has layers of defenses, while Rome has sparse wide areas of defense with less depth that once one is broken, it's easy to conquer wide areas, but in China it's just a single valley like the Wei river valley that's easy to contain unlike in Europe. I recommend Gates of Kilikien for good videos on this.
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@pchaneyo
4天前
The main point is not the political reunification or not. Main question is : why has roman civilization disappeared and why has Chinese civilization not disappeared after invasions by Mongols and Mandchous.
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@Bamboo-fk5dm
2周前
Because it's extremely difficult to (re-)conquer some places across the sea... Even the existence of the Roman Empire was a miracle...
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@maxis2k
3周前
What I was taught in the past is that various groups would rise to conquer China. But once they did, they saw there were systems in place that were so good at controlling the population and government, and for generating wealth, that they would adopt these systems. And effectively become "Chinese" in culture and language, even if they weren't ethnically. Rome did the same thing for a long time. They just did it in reverse, conquering the territory themselves and then instituting Roman systems in that conquered territory. If this is correct, it would explain why reunification and adoption stopped in the late Empire period. Because the empire itself was contracting. So the lands they lost or never conquered didn't have Roman political or cultural systems. And a lot of the states that rose up in this way didn't want to emulate the empire that was either their brutal oppressors of the past and/or seen as a dying empire. But most everyone in East Asia seemed to want a connection to Chinese culture in some way. Even if they didn't want to be a part of them politically (Korea, Japan, Khmer, Siam, etc).
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@JoySeekingDisciple
4天前
China is not yet unified without Taiwan.
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@1ycan-eu9ji
4天前
Rome was an empire, constituting of many provinces which were just captured territories, while China was a civilization
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@zhanibek_kk
8天前
It’s way simpler than that. The military power after Sui didn’t “come from the steppe”. Tang, Song and Ming were all Han. China just had ultra low taxes compared to every other country before 1911. Whenever the empire collapse life got much worse, and when it got back together, life got better. The opposite was true of Rome as taxes increased endlessly and ruined the people. Life got better everywhere but Britain when the empire collapsed, so there was no desire from the common people to see it reunify.
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@anotherelvis
3周前
Charlemagne did his best.
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@thomasantn
3天前（修改过）
Mongols, Xiongnu/Huns and the current China's three northeastern provinces in ancient time (kingdom of Khitan, Jin and Manchu) were like European's Germanic tribes and Norwegians to Han Chineses living in the Central Plain, i.e. the Middle Kingdom. They were considered the barbarians from north. Several times they managed to break through the Great Wall and either occupied the northern portion of the Middle Kingdom (Khitan and Jin) or completely occupied the MK (Mongol's - 92 years, Manchu - 243 years). But in the end, Han Chinese always beat them back, overthrew them and kicked them out (Xiongnu and Mongols) or completely absorbed them (Khitan, Jin and Manchu).
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@Tom_Quixote
3周前（修改过）
I found this video to be a bit unfinished. Shadow empires? And why exactly was the steppe so important for China's centre of power? It's like the video should have been 4 minutes longer where you wrapped up the loose ends.
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@Daniel-jm7ts
2周前
If you think about the Mediterranean is by nature a dividing factore, especially the north is divided between mountainous peninsulars (iberia, italy, balkans, anatolia) and historically only the roman empire was able to conqure them all despite numberous other attempts by others. So shouldnt the question be how rome, as a historically exception, was even able to unite this massive geographical region in the first place rather than why noone else was able to?
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@notoriousbigmoai1125
3周前
Why did Zoroastrianism decline to the point of near extinction, but Hinduism is still one of the largest religions today despite both Persia and India being conquered by Islam?
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@dgvsscf
1天前
可以从以下几个角度观察
1，地理，中国是一个的巨大半岛，天然拥有封闭性和统一性
2，制度，秦始皇后中国统一了语言和度量衡的统一。
3文化，汉朝使用儒家学说统一了思想（同时期罗马使用基督教，但是儒家学说更加世俗，更加符合帝国思想）
4科举，这个制度最大的作用就是告诉帝国的各族人民，不论你是什么种族什么地位，只要你学儒家学说，考试成功就能成为帝国统治者的一员，调动了底层积极性，这也是伊斯兰教在中国也儒家化的原因，你信仰什么宗教不重要，但是你想要权利与地位，那么就学习儒家就行了。
5就是中国是农业国，大型的水利设施建设离不开一个统一帝国的调度。
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@r0ky_M
2周前
As Prof. Mary Beard of Cambridge said citing another scholar:
"We should be amazed that Rome held it together for so long
in the first place"
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@chumleyk
2周前
Simply put, there was just too much equal competition in Europe for it to reunify.
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@YeOldeBoBSMITH
2周前
I think the geography is crucial here. Northern China is much flatter and easier to unify than the rugged south. This is especially true for mobile cavalry based armies. Any force that is able to control the North China plain (The traditional center of power in china) has the resources and centralization of power to conquer the rest of china, even if it takes decades. Before the Southern Song, the north had all the economic advantages (Silk Road, Grand Canal, The Yellow River, Population, Production, etc.). The periods of division can be seen as result of the mountainous and jungle terrain of the south delaying full unification even against overwhelming odds.
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@Anhilare
3周前（修改过）
there's also the importance of written language. in china, there was only ever one written language, chinese, which everyone used: to be literate meant to write in classical chinese. meanwhile, over in rome, there was latin, greek, egyptian, and aramaic in use in writing for centuries already, with latin just being the newest of many. this allowed everyone to keep their ethnic identity intact, and their descendants have preserved it to this day. after the collapse of rome, this didn't end, with armenian, german, arabic, and more arising as additional widely-used identity-preserving literary languages.
contrast this with china, where every conquered ethnicity, lacking a written language (until MUCH later), was basically doomed to have their language (and therefore their identity) erased, with this process ongoing today (take the hmong peoples as an example). the hieroglyphic system chinese uses also prevents the literary language from splitting into many pieces, unlike what ultimately happened to latin after rome failed to reunite after 1000 years (and what's currently happening to arabic).
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@rainmcmey
3周前
The geography of the Mediterranean basin doesn’t lend itself to political unity in the way the core of China does, is something that has to be taken into account.
The North China Plain and Yangtze Delta are extremely flat, and MASSIVE. For one of the most habitable and populous regions on earth to have that much of pull towards unity, it’s difficult to see how it would not be a large, centralised power most of the time. It’s simultaneously flat, lush, and easily defined in its boundaries.
There is no comparable feature in Europe. Perhaps if there were a significant north-south mountain range somewhere east of the Rhine, France could be a decent analogue, but as it is, France has always been squabbling over its eastern border with German states. Honestly the best IRL analogue to China’s situation might be Britain, especially the south-east (which has, incidentally, been fairly continuously unified), but Britain’s core does not logically lead to Mediterranean-centric expansion. The best comparatives on the Mediterranean are the Po Valley, the Nile Delta, Tunisia, the south-western valleys of the Iberian peninsula, and the Thracian plains - all of which have formed the core regions of separate powers, and none of which are more than a tenth the size of China’s core.
Rome pulled off something semi-miraculous which, realistically, has probably been been unachievable since. Europe is a mess of peninsulas, mountains, and valleys that could only be conquered in totality through overwhelming advantages in numbers, sociocultural tech, and military/political organisation. It probably couldn’t have been done before Rome, and there’s probably never been a point since Rome when it could have been done again.
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@wyattw9727
3周前
I feel like the simplest explanation is just ethnic groups and the power they wielded, along with the disunity of the core ethnic groups as well. Italians are, demonstrably from history at least, a bag of cats that only seem to get along when somebody is threatening them, or one of the cats is big enough to krump the others in line. Virtually as soon as Roman domination collapsed in the West, the Italic mountain tribes just buzz off to be independents paying lip service as most to lowlander power. The North, center, and south relatively split into their own areas, and some fragment even further into fiercely sovereign republics/petty kingdoms. It takes nearly a thousand years to cobble Italy back into a somewhat integral border, and further time than that to wholly reunify it.
And this is without the further issues of Germans being incredibly distinct from Italic peoples, Germans internally being incredibly independent, France being a demographic mess for centuries and taking forever to restore its OWN integrity after the collapse of the Merovingian and Carolingian state (which possibly in a sense is a new 'roman dynasty' in the sense of being another large geographic area unifying lots of territory under the same faith no less while comparing things to ancient and medieval China).
Meanwhile, from at least my more limited comprehension of Chinese history, every Chinese dynasty is either the Yellow River using its immense agricultural, and thus industrial output to suppress and rule everything in its surroundings - or a steppe group which manages to usurp this power in addition to northernly domination by their respective host.
Also also more musing, but Europe has huge population clusters around rivers or coasts scattered all over the place, along with the 'center' of the Roman Empire truly being an ocean which acted as a highway. Meanwhile the Chinese are locked in place by mountains and deserts which are semi impassable by large forces. It's a continental empire with continuous land borders rather than an oceanic empire with discontinuous borders.
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@mrpocock
2周前
The Europe and North Africa empires seem to flip between empires of roads and empires of boats. You can't hold the shores of the med if you don't control the sea. And you can't trade efficiently if you can't secure the shipping. You can have a road empire of Northern Europe or Eurasia, but not of the Mediterranean.
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@TaoYuanHuang
3天前
1. China has been united, not reunited. 2. China dynasty passes from one to another. 3. ROME is only one of the dynasty. The comparison is very strange.
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@alicelund147
2周前
It is something about the Northern invaders of China getting assimilated in to China. They took over and ruled instead of creating new political and cultural entities. Yes in West Rome the Germanic Kingdoms adopted local dialects of Latin and part of their culture but it was completely new nations with different economies, military organization, way of rule and administration etc. Rome was replaced by something new. Germanic peoples, Slavic Peoples, Arabs and Turkic Peoples didn't just take over the rule of Rome, they created new nations with new cultures. Rome was gone for good, there was no Rome left to reunite.
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@PrimeChaosVC
5天前
European tends to lean towards this, "disunity equates to development of individual states and competition advance them faster one way or the other". This statement is made because for the past 200 years, European colonial powers dominated the rest of the world, but ignored the fact that China was ahead in technology, economy and social develop for most part of the past 2000 years. European raise to colonization and eventual dominance was an exception, just like the Mongol's conquest. I am glad I live to see the west crumbling in almost breakneck speed today. Reverting back to their original state of condition. While the rest of the world, especially East Asia and Southeast Asia, rises in overall GDP, Trade value and development.
We have to thank the European/West for their ability to create 2 devasting wars, WWI and WWII to "compete" against themself, and the current rapid decline of US hegemony for ignoring internal issues while profiting from wars like the true colonial powers of the Traditional West.
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@fobusas
3周前
I think it's more complicated than it's mostly down to proximity to Eurasian steppe.
First, Europe was kind of united many times. Besides the examples already mentioned, Holy Roman Empire, Habsburg dynasty, Napoleon, Hitler, Soviet Union, they all had sizes similar to Rome. And currently, European Union.
But most importantly, geography. Europe as way too many defensible places: lots of large islands, peninsulas, continental seas, mountains and big rivers. Its why Europe had so many small but powerful nations, because worst come pass, they can barricade behind.
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@CaocaoXI
13天前（修改过）
Yes.
This is one of the best questions.
One of the biggest differences is in China, the is a very obvious division between the agricultural land and nomadic land, about where the Great Wall is built. So Chinese empires were all based on agriculture. It’s always inherited the agricultural civilization. No matter where the rulers were from or what they did for living, once they conquered China, they would become Chinese and followed the same system.
In the west, The Roman empire was based on trading power around the Mediterranean Sea. So was the Arabic empire trading between the west and the east. So with in the territory, ways of living was a lot more diverse . So when the central power is weaker, it is harder to reunite.
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@alexzero3736
2周前
What the main difference between Europe and China?
Why Empire was holding together under Odoacer and Theodoric? And Justinian reconqured it. Because there was local support for empire, for Rome. Belisarius told his troops that locals are citizens of Rome just like them. And local people helped to reconquer Northern Africa and Italy, they rised against Goths and participate in repairs of Rome walls.
But after that, European mentality chaged to seeking self-determination and individual liberties. Italy became land of city-states and republics. They resisted French and Spanish (Aragon) influence... ( see Italian wars). Republic of Venice or the Pope alwas stepped in if someone breaked balance in Italy, to put that country down.
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@404dino
4天前
Geography matters and as a Chinese I would add cultural factors: around 200 BC the 1st empire unified official writing and grammar so different ethnic groups speak their own languages in life but writes the same text for business and government matters. Then in 100 BC, the 2nd empire set Confucianism as official ideology and official teaching in schools. After that no matter how empires fall and rise, people in this land can always relate themselves to people from the past. Even today, middle school students can read text from 2000 year old tomb stone directly and understand its meaning. With this common sentiment, after the collapse of an empire, it's only natural for a rising regional warlord to reunify China and inherit the Chinese culture.
Image Roman empire made Latin its official language and Christianity official ideology from day 1, and requires them in business, government and schooling matters, and for a good 200 years, Roman might still be around today
@Ktotwf
3周前
Mountains, Rivers, Jesus
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@linphilip6389
1小时前
Reason is simple. The Chinese had many many wars in the past 5000 years fighting for land and resources. Later they came to realize that the only way to avoid war is to have one big country where we all can live and share and help each other. Slowly people migrate from north to south and east to west. This has now become the philosophy of chinese: we want to know one and other in order to get along, we work together to make a bigger pie that would feed all.
@NineNoRouge
3周前
This is a question i have never thought of but need answered now. I suppose part of the answer will be geography.
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@ninersnation3298
19小时前
it is so fascinating that the chinese empire still intact. the romans, the persians, the ottomans, the kenghis khans, they're all shattered into many smaller countries.
@LittleMushroomGuy
3周前
Completely misses Translatio Imperii. The Goths started seeing themselves as Romans, The Franks and Germans saw themselves as the successors to Rome, Germans and Austrians saw themselves as the successors to the Holy Roman Empire etc. And now with the EU we have another "Rome"
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@FrostsGamingHub
9天前
Throughout Chinese history, there have been many instances of ethnic integration and wars, but the concept of the "Central Plains" (Zhongyuan) has never changed. Our ancestors believed that the concept of the nation is subordinate to culture and ethnicity.
@stevens1041
3周前
I have mixed feelings about this topic. The Qing, which ruled China from the 1600s to 1911, were not Han people. So that's quite a long amount of time where China isn't quite you know, the China of the Tang or the Ming. When China threw off the Qing in 1911, the country still was not reunited at all, but continued as a concept, and the country was stuck in the War Lords era and Civil War Era. Always left out of the conversation for some reason, is that the Americans and the Soviets saved China and helped bring it into being in modern times. A unified China wouldn't exist without America and the Soviet Union, despite the differences each of those sides had about what the future of China should look like, politically. In summary: China isn't an inevitable concept. There are a lot of times in the modern period (1600-onwards) where it looked like China might have disappeared.
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@bb9a
2周前（修改过）
An empire thats bacically a coast around a sea has a massive perimeter to defend for its land area. There are the iberia-magreb regions, celtic region, greco- balkan-italian region, levantine arab region and the African Egyptian region. There's like 4 main separate groups brought together by the med
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@safi164
3周前（修改过）
Mediterranean if we look at it was never unified.. Even during the hey day of the Roman Empire it was basically Latin speaking west mean while Greek speaking East.. Later on by medieval era it got divided into three parts with Latin Speaking West, Greek Speaking East and Arabic speaking South and South East.. Compared to that Ancient China was always culturally and linguistically united in some way...
