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Rome fell on December 25, 1990, the date The Godfather III came out.
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Jan 13, 2019 20:11
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Tunicate posted:Rome fell on December 25, 1990, the date The Godfather III came out. But was revived on the 22nd August of 2000, when I, Emperor Libluini XIII, came of age.
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Jan 13, 2019 20:19
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Libluini posted:How cute, the Empire of My rear end It's where the Roman Empire meets the Mongol Empire.
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Jan 14, 2019 00:25
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Tunicate posted:Rome fell on December 25, 1990, the date The Godfather III came out. Rome fell in 2007 when they stopped making new episodes.
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Jan 14, 2019 00:42
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cheetah7071 posted:Rome fell in 1204. I will stand behind this. "Decius was the last Roman" -Gibbon, empirical fact
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Jan 14, 2019 01:00
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Lucius Tarquinius Superbus was the last roman.
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Jan 14, 2019 01:14
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cheetah7071 posted:Rome fell in 1204. I will stand behind this. Or 1921. Fight me.
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Jan 14, 2019 01:38
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Why not throw 1799 and 1849 into the mix?
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Jan 14, 2019 02:13
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Tunicate posted:Rome fell on December 25, 1990, the date The Godfather III came out. Fully deserving of a damnatio memoriae.
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Jan 14, 2019 02:21
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the kingdom of Rome, according to Google, fell in 509 BC. everything after that is Byzantines
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Jan 14, 2019 02:34
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Squalid posted:Levee en masse: Extremely expensive, before modern era only used by Qin China and maybe some other Warring States period Kingdoms? Good Equipment, power projection, massive numbers, excellent organization. Difficult to organize and risks strangling the normal functioning of society as labor is siphoned off into the enormous scale of military activity. It was the most effectively carried out in the Qin,* but universal conscription was implemented in every one of the Warring States throughout the final phase of the period. It definitely did not guarantee good equipment though. The soldiers of the terracotta army with full sets of armor and equipment that we all think of as representative of the period would have been the elite; all of the Warring States would have facilities to essentially mass produce weapons and so on, but what would get doled out to your average conscripted farmer would still be pretty minimal. Also I've been reading about this period for the past year for something and haven't actually gotten to the stuff about tactics of the period yet so I'm a bit shaky about this  but as far as I understand it, organization was also not so cut and dry; most strategies were developed explicitly to accommodate for how useless the conscripts would be at following orders properly, in fact. It was still miles above what'd come before though.*this was the Qin's most significant strength, too; in tactics and especially technology, they were actually if anything behind the curve compared to the other states. But they were ridiculously good at mobilization, and more bodies is what ended up being what mattered in this period. Also where would you fit in less-universal conscription? I dunno too much about Chinese military history outside of the Warring States, but as I understand it in different periods they basically alternated between the hereditary system you mention for the Tang, and back to conscription again (but less thorough than it was under the Warring States). For Joseon Korea it was definitely like that (along with a smaller professional class that existed at the same time); functionally sort of halfway between your top category and bottom one.
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Jan 14, 2019 02:41
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Koramei posted:It was the most effectively carried out in the Qin,* but universal conscription was implemented in every one of the Warring States throughout the final phase of the period. The story of the late Qing was the professional hereditary castes turning out to have atrophied to uselessness and getting replaced by the yong ying forces which fit somewhere on the spectrum between mercenaries and professional volunteers. Oh and an awful lot of soldiers who'd be more at home in the bandit category than anywhere else.
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Jan 14, 2019 02:48
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Roman didn't fall at all. My friend once went there and he assures me it's still mostly upright.
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Jan 14, 2019 02:55
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Will Durant posted:It is easier to explain Rome’s fall than to account for her long survival. This is the essential accomplishment of Rome—that having won the Mediterranean world she adopted its culture, gave it order, prosperity, and peace for 200 years, held back the tide of barbarism for two centuries more, and transmitted the classic heritage to the West before she died.
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Jan 14, 2019 03:05
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Also I went to Reggio Emilia once and all the public buildings had SPQR on them which means Reggio Emilia is Rome.
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Jan 14, 2019 03:12
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Koramei posted:It was the most effectively carried out in the Qin,* but universal conscription was implemented in every one of the Warring States throughout the final phase of the period. My knowledge of Warring States period China is extremely sparse. Battles descriptions always seem to have absurd troop counts and I have no idea how close they really were to reality vs Herodotus esque exaggeration. I seem to remember battles often involve a lot of building walls? as to conscription, how is it handled in Korea when it wasn't a hereditary obligation? I guess there's a lot of ways you could slice up society to dump all the burdens of national defense on one group or another. You can also put the obligation on criminals, debtors, slaves. Actually foreign slaves is a pretty common source of soldiers, it was common in the Islamic world and Siam. I believe I was thinking more in terms of theoretically universal, as in requiring 12 months of training/service for all able bodied peasants and then registering them as reserves, obviously normally only a small proportion would be called up. I'm not sure exactly what I was thinking as for some reason I often have trouble remembering what inspired posts made late on weekends 
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Jan 14, 2019 05:37
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The numbers of troops in battles in East Asia are generally thought to be even more inflated than in the west. There are various traditional numbers that get used to mean "a lot", 10,000 in particular is essentially always a fake number. The logistics to supply vast armies are in some ways harder in much of Asia since it tends to be quite mountainous, plus you're lacking that convenient Mediterranean to move things around in. If you're fighting battles in central China you might have one river to access if you're really lucky but for the most part you're just hosed in a bunch of lovely mountains and supply lines are a nightmare. They weren't fielding armies of 500,000 in that.
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Jan 14, 2019 05:49
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At times they undoubtedly were exaggerated, but the Warring States might be an exception to an extent. Honestly I dunno, it’s something I’ve been trying to find out myself. The conventional wisdom like you say is “obviously” and I’ve read as much in a few books, but I have also read from pretty reputable scholars (Li Feng in Early China: A Social and Cultural History is coming to mind immediately and I think I read this somewhere else too) that the revisions downward were too reactionary and there really is evidence that Qin at least was outlandishly effective at tracking down every last peasant. It’s debated I guess. If I ever do find out I’ll let you guys know because I do want to know too. E: to clarify, I don’t think any of the arguments are taking the numbers at completely face value; battles probably weren’t 500,000 on either side in a single day. But maybe over campaigns of connected battles they were, stuff like that, and the late Warring States may have genuinely had armies that large even if they were never in the same place at once—there’s evidence of the Qin literally depopulating the adult male population of an entire commandery to mobilize them for instance. As for Korea, on reflection I’m realizing I’m not as familiar with Joseon corvee/drafting as I should be so I might look that up more too, but as I recall there were (theoretically—it varied a bit but it was often not well enforced at all) universal obligations for service to the state, but not always military. Often it would be corvee labor, or manning signal towers etc, I think for 3 months every year. It was supposed to be universal though, and there were censuses every 3 years to try and account for everybody, although 1. Corruption to get out of it was virtually ubiquitous—modern population estimates often run like 5x the official recorded census figures, and 2. The highest class and the lowest classes were exempted, which would obviously make up a huge chunk of the society. Related random maybe apocryphal fact in terms of their equipment—mostly the conscripts wouldn’t have armor, but there was a relatively standard uniform, and this was facilitated because one of the kings decreed that women, when outside, had to at all times have on them a jacket (which they’d wear as a cloak/veil) that could be taken by the men to wear as a military suit, so that they could be called up to arms at a moment’s notice in case of attack. Even into the 20th century, well after its purpose stopped being relevant (if it ever was), women kept wearing these cloaks, entirely vestigial sleeves (later on there weren’t even holes for the arms) and all.
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Jan 14, 2019 06:30
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extra stout posted:"Decius was the last Roman" -Gibbon, empirical fact At least the last true Roman. 
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Jan 14, 2019 06:32
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I love East Asian history and how theoretically “advanced” it was is irrelevant to that, but the more I’ve been learning about it in this period the less convinced I’ve been getting by the “Asia was always light years ahead” take that comes up so much. But Warring States/Qin population administration and mobilization is an exception. poo poo was actually absurd, it’s practically some Napoleonic stuff 2000 years early.
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Jan 14, 2019 06:36
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The idea of Asia historically being way ahead of the rest of the world has definitely taken a beating with better archaeology and study of the sources. Not to say it was lovely but the popular image is at the least exaggerated, both in how great Asia was and how lovely Europe was. Asia benefited a lot from having a disproportionate variety of trade goods people further west were willing to pay serious cash for. It's sort of anticlimactic but not so surprising that the answer to the old "how did Europe become so dominant while Asia?" question is probably a lot that Europe actually wasn't so behind and we were wrong to think it was such an imbalance. I blame the Renaissance for always being so down on the medieval world. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Jan 14, 2019 |
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Jan 14, 2019 06:43
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I mean I think attributing it all to rolling silk is a bit unfair; on the flip side, where western civilization got to draw from a whole bunch of influences, China's had to be mostly indigenous (not as much as is often assumed but still mostly) and they still produced an incredibly advanced civilization. Also I've never actually looked for this, but how much wealth came proportionally from the silk road for China? I know it was considerable but I think it would still have been absolutely dwarfed by domestic/East Asian trade. Also, the Middle Ages are the exception but European historiography is definitely not where to look for something that hasn't been chronically over-inflated in advancement/relevance.
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Jan 14, 2019 15:59
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I wasn't talking about China or just silk, silk is just one of the many Asian goods that sold very well on the trade routes. I would imagine spices were the majority of the trade to the west by volume, I don't know of any studies about it though. I don't buy that China developed without significant influence either, I think that's an artifact of every Asian country's deep need to pretend like they're special snowflakes that exist in a completely unique environment untouched by The Foreign. Even in that there's too much evidence for even the most nationalist ones to ignore that China was greatly influential on all of its East Asian neighborhood, and no relationship is purely one way.
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Jan 14, 2019 17:42
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Tea was a huge export commodity for China that isn't recorded too well in the west because it never made it that far on the trade routes. The big importers of tea were in central asia and east asia.
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Jan 14, 2019 17:56
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I'm curious.. How much stuff were they buying form european countries? While listening to the History of Rome, i vaguely recall that one emperor (or someone important) complained that too much gold was sent abroad purchasing goods. I'm sure trade was not just one way, but I have no idea how reciprocal it was.
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Jan 14, 2019 18:02
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Dalael posted:I'm curious.. How much stuff were they buying form european countries? While listening to the History of Rome, i vaguely recall that one emperor (or someone important) complained that too much gold was sent abroad purchasing goods. I'm sure trade was not just one way, but I have no idea how reciprocal it was. So just go a conquering when funds low jeez don’t they learn from previous emperors?
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Jan 14, 2019 18:04
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More than is normally thought. Roman glassware and Mediterranean corals were big luxury exports to the east, as well as amber from the Baltic. That said it does seem to be the case that the west was buying more than they were exporting, you remember correctly that Roman leaders had issues with how much gold and silver was leaving the empire to buy Asian trade goods. Whether or not that was actually a problem is hard to say, but the fact that it was brought up tells us that it was a thing that existed and was large enough scale to concern the government. Given the evidence for how massive the trade was, it doesn't seem like it was just a fake issue somebody pulled out of his worm-addled brain. The ERE gained an enormous source of wealth when they managed to steal sereculture technology and start producing silk domestically. Nobody ever figured out how to grow all those spices in the west though.
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Jan 14, 2019 18:11
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China imported a tremendous amount of silver in exchange for goods, which was needed to stave off deflation and be embezzled by eunuchs.
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Jan 14, 2019 18:14
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I wonder.. what were the consequence of the fall of the ERE in asia? Did they see a drop in trade? Were there things they could no longer have access to?
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Jan 14, 2019 18:35
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Dalael posted:I wonder.. what were the consequence of the fall of the ERE in asia? Did they see a drop in trade? Were there things they could no longer have access to? Probably favorable if any, I don’t know much about Ottoman economic policy but you would expect it to be even more focused on Asian trade than the Byzantines.
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Jan 14, 2019 18:40
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The Ottomans would've been a bigger trade partner than the ERE had been in centuries and western Europeans on ships start showing up with sacks of silver not long after. I don't think the ERE would've even been noticeable, the Mongols had reshaped Asia dramatically starting about the time Constantinople fell to the crusaders and the Romans were permanently broken as a major power. The last known contact between the Roman and Chinese courts is in the 1300s if I remember right and it was just a courtesy "congratulations on your ascent" letter to a new emperor.
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Jan 14, 2019 18:42
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Grand Fromage posted:I wasn't talking about China or just silk, silk is just one of the many Asian goods that sold very well on the trade routes. I would imagine spices were the majority of the trade to the west by volume, I don't know of any studies about it though. I don't buy that China developed without significant influence either, I think that's an artifact of every Asian country's deep need to pretend like they're special snowflakes that exist in a completely unique environment untouched by The Foreign. Even in that there's too much evidence for even the most nationalist ones to ignore that China was greatly influential on all of its East Asian neighborhood, and no relationship is purely one way. Outside of parts of Southeast Asia (which is a region that's unfortunately usually omitted from the "Asia was so far ahead" statements anyway) I'm skeptical that trade in any of these things was noteworthy as a significant factor in their development almost anywhere in Asia, especially as a contrast to trade in the west. Proportions of wealth from trade and stuff seems like exactly the kind of thing someone would've studied though so I might try to look into this later. External influence was definitely a more important thing than is traditionally credited for most of China's history, but for the development of its civilization itself I'd like to see more than your hunch. The big shift in scholarship has been to move away from the Yellow River civilization as the source of everything and acknowledge how important south China was, not to shift it to western influence. Things like metallurgy (probably bronze and definitely ironworking) are pretty well established to have come to the region from the west via the steppe, but that was meeting an already established civilization, and all signs point towards that having been an indigenous development (at least indigenous to the region that constitutes China today). Most of the more remarkable parts of Chinese civilization like its bureaucracy and its irrigation technology are too. Once you go past ancient history I totally agree foreign influences were hugely important and especially way more than generally acknowledged, but until at least the Han Dynasty (and Chinese civilization was pretty well established by then) this is a pretty bold claim. If you have books to back up your stance then I'd be curious, because this is basically what I've been reading about for the past year. I'm not saying it's not possible (metallurgy came from beyond, perhaps other things did too) but I don't think there's much in the way of evidence for it. For other East Asian countries though yeah the claims are ridiculous. I dunno how universal the assumption that it was is (maybe I base things off my own frame of reference too much) but the extent of how little of Japan's civilization is actually indigenous has been one of the most eye opening things to me as I've learned East Asian history. Until the Edo period, it seems like practically every "Japanese" thing came from either China or Korea (exaggerating a bit but not much). I remember I used to think of it as basically entirely distinct from China, and for obvious places where it wasn't I was just as likely to assume China took it from Japan, but until the 20th century that was almost literally never the case. There are a few things in early Korean history that were influenced by Japan (although as I've talked about before, Japan wasn't so distinct from Korea in this period anyway) but not nearly as much as the other way around, and I...am not sure I have read even a single thing that China took from Japan. If someone does know one (I mean, I'm sure there is some stuff) I'd be kinda curious to know. For Korea's actual academia I will say this is one of the things that they're actually way better about than either of their neighbors; they spent the first 50 years of the 20th century getting beaten over the head about their reliance on China and so outside of the occasional nutjob it's something that's basically impossible to not account for. In popular history, less so, but I think it's still way better than Japan or China for it. Where Japan and China have been afforded positions where they get to pretend foreign influences were negligible, Korea had the opposite problem. e: incidentally, Korean (and Manchurian) early civilization (as in, pre-state) actually was probably hugely influenced by the west; how much it was vs influenced by China is pretty shaky I think (definitely a lot of both), but there's clear signs that a lot of it came via the Eurasian steppe (metallurgy and early artistic styles for instance were all distinct from Chinese but had a lot in common with Eurasian stuff). Koramei fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Jan 14, 2019 |
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Jan 14, 2019 22:02
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I think we're talking over each other and about different stuff without defining ourselves. I don't know of any evidence of any European influence in China until the post-Alexander period, but the Han were just one civilization among many, especially before they conquered their neighbors and started taking over a decent portion of what we call China, and I don't buy that the Han developed everything themselves. You are right that I don't have a book to cite, I'm going on my knowledge of how cultures work here and I don't believe the Han are somehow different than everyone else. But I think we may both be talking about how the idea that China is the Yellow River culture is clearly, at best, a vast oversimplification. Sichuan for example had its own independent civilization for 1500 years that was not Han yet was incorporated into China. If your point is China didn't have significant influence from anything beyond the steppes or India then sure, there's really not much until the Europeans start showing up in force. It is interesting about Japan. The Kofun period is weird and I don't know of anything in Asia like it, then yeah it's like... all foreign. Even things like modern food culture. The only reason sushi became popular was US occupation forces food policy, plus sushi comes from Southeast Asia anyway. Ramen also became a thing because of the US and is from China originally. Shinto, I guess? I don't know enough about Korean shamanism to say if they're distinct or not. There are a fair number of Japanese loanwords in modern Chinese, that's all that's coming to mind for things taken from them (mainlanders deny there are any Japanese loanwords). I do need to get to my ever growing stack of China books, I'm still plowing through a pile of ERE/Japan/Pre-Columbian Americas stuff. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Jan 15, 2019 |
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Jan 15, 2019 02:19
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Wasn't Nestorian Christianity relatively prominent in China at several points? While it is the Church of the East, I wonder how much of an impact that had on Chinese Culture.
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Jan 15, 2019 02:33
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Grand Fromage posted:I think we're talking over each other and about different stuff without defining ourselves. I don't know of any evidence of any European influence in China until the post-Alexander period, but the Han were just one civilization among many, especially before they conquered their neighbors and started taking over a decent portion of what we call China, and I don't buy that the Han developed everything themselves. You are right that I don't have a book to cite, I'm going on my knowledge of how cultures work here and I don't believe the Han are somehow different than everyone else. But I think we may both be talking about how the idea that China is the Yellow River culture is clearly, at best, a vast oversimplification. Sichuan for example had its own independent civilization for 1500 years that was not Han yet was incorporated into China. If your point is China didn't have significant influence from anything beyond the steppes or India then sure, there's really not much until the Europeans start showing up in force. By western I mean civilization that sources back to the ancient near east/Egypt, not just European. I must be being kinda confusing though yeah, this: quote:the Han were just one civilization among many, especially before they conquered their neighbors and started taking over a decent portion of what we call China, and I don't buy that the Han developed everything themselves. quote:The big shift in scholarship has been to move away from the Yellow River civilization as the source of everything and acknowledge how important south China was Grand Fromage posted:There are a fair number of Japanese loanwords in modern Chinese, that's all that's coming to mind for things taken from them (mainlanders deny there are any Japanese loanwords). Are any of these pre-20th century? I think Japanese influence since the Meiji period is basically irrefutable, but I'd be curious to know what shows up beforehand. quote:It is interesting about Japan. The Kofun period is weird and I don't know of anything in Asia like it, then yeah it's like... all foreign. Even things like modern food culture. The only reason sushi became popular was US occupation forces food policy, plus sushi comes from Southeast Asia anyway. Ramen also became a thing because of the US and is from China originally. Shinto, I guess? I don't know enough about Korean shamanism to say if they're distinct or not. There are almost certainly still things that are common elements, and definitely were 2000 years ago, but Shinto is pretty distinct from Korean shamanism. I've read that ritual practices are one of the Jomon things that half stuck/blended with the Yayoi migrants' 2500 years ago rather than getting overwhelmed so that doesn't seem to be a new thing either, although it's kinda complicated to sort through the two after Shinto's reconstruction/mythmaking and Korean shamanism's suppression in the 20th century. Also the Kofun period is just the evolution of the Yayoi period that was, other than a few things like the aforementioned spirituality, almost entirely a continental transplant. There was still an absolute assload of migration going on throughout it too. I guess it's a bit unfair to say it's foreign too when the descendants of the Yayoi immigrants would mostly have been there for centuries at that point, but it still adds a whole different layer to it.
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Jan 15, 2019 02:55
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I do need to read more too, my knowledge of pre-Qin is not great.Koramei posted:Are any of these pre-20th century? I think Japanese influence since the Meiji period is basically irrefutable, but I'd be curious to know what shows up beforehand. I don't know when they show up. Some of them like kawaii are clearly recent imports but others like typhoon may be older. The Japanese simplification of kanji came before the CCP's simplification, and some of those simplified kanji were imported to China. But then almost all the simplifications are chosen from among various traditional simplifications people did in handwriting and it's all complicated. Koramei posted:Also the Kofun period is just the evolution of the Yayoi period that was, other than a few things like the aforementioned spirituality, almost entirely a continental transplant. There was still an absolute assload of migration going on throughout it too. I guess it's a bit unfair to say it's foreign too when the descendants of the Yayoi immigrants would mostly have been there for centuries at that point, but it still adds a whole different layer to it. What I read seemed like there was so much movement between Korea and Japan at the time it's hard to even define anything as migration. The kofun type of monuments themselves don't show up anywhere outside of Japan that I know of, but with the Imperial Household Agency preventing any kofun archaeology it's hard to get any information. E: And then of course we're completely ignoring the Ainu here. If anything they're the native Japanese culture without all the foreign influence. Jack2142 posted:Wasn't Nestorian Christianity relatively prominent in China at several points? While it is the Church of the East, I wonder how much of an impact that had on Chinese Culture. I don't know of any lasting consequences of Nestorianism. It was prominent among some of the Mongol leadership. It didn't really spread though, it's more of a curiosity like the Kaifeng Jews.
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Jan 15, 2019 03:48
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Nestorian Christianity was a small minority and not particularly influential, but it was present during the Tang dynasty. I don't know whether it retained its influence under the Mongols or whether it survive the Ming backlash against foreign things.
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Jan 15, 2019 04:51
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Arglebargle III posted:Nestorian Christianity was a small minority and not particularly influential, but it was present during the Tang dynasty. I don't know whether it retained its influence under the Mongols or whether it survive the Ming backlash against foreign things. From what I remember it was pretty much already gone well before that.
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Jan 15, 2019 05:05
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P-Mack posted:From what I remember it was pretty much already gone well before that. Yeah, they were pretty much gone by the 14th century and never really came to much prominence. Outside of Islam, since it was introduced to China, and Protestantism, today, most foreign religions, outside of Buddhism, don't really get much prominence in Chinese society. The wars, natural disasters, and purges by rulers looking for scapegoats usually kept their numbers down or decimated the communities. The decline of the Church in the East in Persia, the rise of Islam, and Roman Catholicism coming into China didn't help Chinese Nestorianism either. The Mongols and Han didn't seem to differentiate between Christians so usually when the Catholics caused problems, half the time from infighting, everyone reaped the consequences.
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Jan 15, 2019 05:28
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Grand Fromage posted:What I read seemed like there was so much movement between Korea and Japan at the time it's hard to even define anything as migration. The kofun type of monuments themselves don't show up anywhere outside of Japan that I know of, but with the Imperial Household Agency preventing any kofun archaeology it's hard to get any information. There's some in Korea, and there have been (by Koreans) some arguments that they (or some of them) predate the Japanese ones, but I think the general consensus is that they were a Japanese import.
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Jan 15, 2019 06:03
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