The parallel lives of Ancient Rome and Ancient China
Added 2023-12-02 18:41:13 +0000 UTCRome and Han-dynasty China were at their most powerful during the same period, the first two centuries AD/CE. Some historians have drawn parallels between the two empires, noting apparent similarities between the stages of their history. In this video I review the stages as laid out by the historian Walter Scheidel and give my thoughts.
Comments
live book reaction
nina bennardo
2024-05-17 03:40:22 +0000 UTCI really like your emphasis on the sort of probabilistic nature of history. I think many fields get talked about in the public consciousness as if there is a clear cause-effect relationship for every little thing and there are clear answers to all questions of interest, and history is no exception. And it really does apply to modern times, people reference the "Fall of the Roman Empire" all the time when referencing modern US politics, and I find it really refreshing that you emphasize things that we don't know or can't know, and how people in the past really were that - people! They had autonomy and reasoning and their own lives and the construction of a historical narrative shouldn't minimize that fact.
Dan
2024-04-03 19:43:37 +0000 UTCalmost every time you said "and people often think..(something foolish)" you caught me
Mahmoud
2024-01-31 11:09:41 +0000 UTCReally great video!! Thank you very much
Mahmoud
2024-01-30 14:32:42 +0000 UTCThanks! It has several spellings, like Ecumene or Oikoumene, some variation of that.
Premodernist
2024-01-19 23:37:38 +0000 UTCGreat video- how do you spell βe-que-miniβ? A new word for meπ
Bad Biscuitz
2024-01-19 21:53:45 +0000 UTCNext youtube video: top 10 reasons china and rome are the same empire. Number 4 will shock you!!!!!
Thomas Pellino
2023-12-31 01:59:10 +0000 UTCYour videos are fantastic. Thank you and keep up the great work!
Alexis Flower
2023-12-29 16:35:43 +0000 UTCMe, looking at the eastern extent of the Roman Empire and the western extent of the Chinese Empire: "Now, kiss."
Author Michelle Franklin
2023-12-20 00:01:22 +0000 UTCSure, I can do that, if you don't mind me just sourcing them from Wikimedia Commons. We can draw conclusions from history, we just have to be careful how we construct our questions and set realistic expectations for ourselves. We can try to explain why particular things happened in Rome and China. We'll get partial answers, but they can still be partially true. We can also create a category like "empire" and make a definition for it and assign historical polities like Rome and Han China to it. The trouble comes when we treat the descriptive category we invented (e.g. "empire") as if it were a self-existing phenomenon in history itself rather than recognizing it as a mental construct we created. A lot of what affects whether an empire lasts a long time is the individual personalities of the people in charge at any given time, and how well suited their personalities are to the particular circumstances they find themselves in. If a different person were in charge, they'd make different decisions and the course of the empire's history could be changed. For example, the emperor Augustus had a couple of serious illnesses in the early years of his principate. If he had died, who knows what different course the Roman empire might have taken. Conceivably there might not have been two centuries of Pax Romana.
Premodernist
2023-12-06 18:20:57 +0000 UTCAs an American with a fairly German name, I empathize with poor Walter.
Karl Voelker
2023-12-06 07:12:38 +0000 UTCWe as humans are always trying to see patterns in everything, but can we draw any conclusions from history then, or will there always be just too many factors to do this? For example, can we look at other centralized empires and if we notice that they had a tendency to last longer, can we make a hypothesis and then try to make a theory about that? Or will there always be the moment of uniqueness in terms of time period, geography, weather conditions, etc which will make this impossible? Thanks for the video! PS I know you said you want to do minimal editing for these videos, but if they are longer like this one, can you maybe just sprinkle it with a couple more maps (or any image that isn't a hassle to add) I think it really helps with binding information in our brains.
Ana HrieΕ‘ik Ε½ivanΔev
2023-12-05 20:56:23 +0000 UTCThanks! The history field in general does okay, but individual historians sure can get things wrong sometimes. But I'd have to tread really carefully not to seem like I was picking on them.
Premodernist
2023-12-04 22:16:02 +0000 UTCAs a layperson that grew up being taught history like "x clearly happened directly because of y and z", I like your emphasis against that, I've always felt that history is way more chaotic than we like to think, like go back a couple thousand years and have a couple rulers make just slightly different decisions and maybe we're living in an entirely different world. This is a bit disconcerting, it's nice to feel like we have everything figured out. I'd love more opinion-based stuff from you, your nuanced takes are what really stand out to me. Maybe a video of top x biggest things you think the history field in general gets wrong. I think you're eloquent enough to do that without it just sounding like complaining/ranting.
Patrick Spencer
2023-12-04 07:48:24 +0000 UTC
