What if Rome was China?

[Tufto]

Oh and why the Ottoman Empire was not a continuation of the Empire ? Perhaps because they never pretended to be in the first place, hmm ? I know that Mehmet claimed the Imperium but his successor discontinued and prefered to focus on their Caliphate heritage than proclaim to be Rome.

Nah, they still called themselves Kaysar-e Rum and conceptualised a lot of the lands they ruled as being Rum. And as for the Caliphal thing- while they did occasionally claim the title of Caliph, it wasn't done with much regularity/greater meaning until the 18th century, when they came up with a story about the last Abbasid handing the title over.

Then again, you are right in that Roman identity wasn't their pre-eminent form of legitimacy. I'm not really sure what was, actually, I should look that up at some point.

 

[Warial]

Latin continued to be used as a lingua franca by European elites well into the 19th Century while the spoken language of the Tang and Song (let alone that of the Han or Qin) was replaced by Mandarin at some point during the early Ming Dynasty;

Replaced? Mandarin is an evolution from Middle Chinese and Old Chinese. It's natural that languages change. Latin likewise didn't stay the same for centuries.

Mandarin is to it as French is to Latin, while the ancestor language of Middle Chinese is patronisingly relegated to dialect status by a majority of Chinese, including by some of those who speak it.

Middle Chinese is a dead language, it doesn't exist anymore. Don't confuse other Sinitic languages with the actual Middle Chinese. Cantonese, Wu, Gan, Xiang represent other paths of language evolution just as Mandarin does.

 

[icedt729]

We, in the west call chinese for "Han Chinese", is this very wrong, by that they are more of "Ming Chinese" or "Qing Chinese" (Chinese comes from Qing does it not? O.O )

"Han" is now the official name of China's dominant ethnic group, but the same group has several other names still in use (Huaren or Tangren) and historical or literary ones (Zhonghua or Huaxia). Han people speak Chinese languages (more on that later), bear certain surnames, and have a set of traditions that set them apart from China's other ethnic groups.

Use of the term "Han ethnicity" picked up over the course of the 19th century, partly under exposure to Western nationalist ideas and partly due to the declining fortunes of the Manchu-ruled Qing dynasty. The Han dynasty was an appropriate namesake for their purposes because it was the first stable, united Chinese empire and a formative era for Chinese culture (for parts of China that were not Sinicized yet during Han times, the Tang dynasty has a similar cultural stature).

"China" most likely comes from Qin (秦), the northwestern state that unified China in the late 3rd century BC, entering European languages by way of Persian. Qing (清) was the last dynasty of China, coming well after Westerners had gotten used to the name "China."

I didn't know when Mandarin Chinese came into practice, but it makes sense it did under the Ming.
I at least FEEL like we in the west consider all modern chinese for "Han Chinese" and most speak "Mandarin". But what is the truth? When or what did they call eachother in their respective periods? Mings? Qins? What would be the correct term to use? (Honestly, it's very confusing)

The overwhelming majority of modern China's population are registered as Han, and Mandarin Chinese is the official language, spoken by most people. Mandarin is spoken natively throughout northern and southwestern China, and as a second language in southeastern China (alongside other Chinese languages like Yue, Min Nan or Wu) or by speakers of minority languages like Tibetan or Uighur. Han people make up such a large majority over such a vast area because of many centuries of intermarriage and assimilation, the same way Gaul and Spain came to be full of Latin-speaking Roman citizens.

The reign of dynasties was separate from ethnic identity- in fact, the whole point of setting up a dynasty at all was to show you were part of Chinese tradition. Ancient Han people would have identified by the dynasty they lived under ("man of Tang" or "man of Ming") but also by the same old terms for China itself (zhongguo, tianxia, shenzhou) or Chinese civilization (huaxia, zhonghua).

 

[LordTempest]

All of your other points are very good and I can't make any counterargument, but I do have a few questions:
We, in the west call chinese for "Han Chinese", is this very wrong, by that they are more of "Ming Chinese" or "Qing Chinese" (Chinese comes from Qing does it not? O.O )
I didn't know when Mandarin Chinese came into practice, but it makes sense it did under the Ming.
I at least FEEL like we in the west consider all modern chinese for "Han Chinese" and most speak "Mandarin". But what is the truth? When or what did they call eachother in their respective periods? Mings? Qins? What would be the correct term to use?

1. Provided that you are in fact referring to someone from the Han ethnic group, it would be correct to refer to them as Han Chinese. Like the term "Gallic" or "Persian" for something pertaining to France or Iran, Han is one of those historical idiosyncrasies which managed to retain linguistic currency long after the Han polity itself ceased to be.

2. The English word "China" derives from Qin, rather than Qing, most likely by way of Middle Persian. It was used in Europe long before the Qing Dynasty was a thing.

3. Mandarin is a product of the Jin and Mongol invasions: it gets its name because it originated from the royal court (which was dominated by foreign nobles and Han Chinese officials, or "mandarins") and permeated outwards. Before the invasions most Chinese would have spoke Middle Chinese, which was the lingua franca of the Tang and Song dynasties. After the Jin invaded in 1127, the Song were forced to retreat southwards where they continued to govern a rump state ("Southern Song") until they were annexed by Kublai Khan in 1279. It was during this 150-year period that Middle Chinese began to mix with Jin dialects in the north to create what would eventually become Mandarin, while the Song-governed south continued to speak Middle Chinese. After the Yuan Dynasty, this northern language began to be used all over China and soon replaced Middle Chinese as a lingua franca, but the furthermost provinces of the south and south-east clung to their Middle Chinese influences, which would eventually evolve into contemporary Cantonese (Yue) and Shanghainese (Wu.) This, at risk of gross simplification, is why Cantonese and Shanghainese are so named.

In a world in which the Jin and Mongol invasions never happened or were quickly rebuffed, China would probably speak something very similar to Cantonese today. In European terms, it is like the Italian to Mandarin's French.

Also I don't understand the Zhongguo point.

Frankly that's pretty obvious judging from the rest of your post. Grasping the concept is essential: you cannot have a serious discussion about what China is without it. It would be like trying to describe the virtues of a contemporary secular republic to a medieval peasant who had no concept of government beyond that of a divinely anointed monarch. You cannot grasp the concept of popular sovereignty if you believe that all sovereignty are bestowed upon certain individuals who are chosen by God, just as you cannot grasp the realities of "Chinese civilisation" without understanding the concept of Zhongguo.

If we use one definition of civilisation for China and another one for Rome then not only can we not answer the OP's question by definition, ("Rome can't become like China because Rome is Rome, not China, silly.") we ironically end up in exactly the sort of hyper-relativistic scenario you claim to criticise. If civilisation is simply what one claims it to be, then anyone or any state can quite literally claim to be any civilisation it wants. Right now, Italians call themselves Italians and so you consider them to be a separate civilisation from the Romans, from whom they descend. But if some latter-day Mussolini came along and declared that the state of Italy was to be renamed SPQR, its inhabitants were to refer to themselves as Romans, and then claimed that all of Italian history hitherto had actually been a continuation of that same glorious Roman master race, how would you refute this if enough Italians believed it for long enough?

You might think this a ridiculous strawman, but it isn't. You have no objective definition of what Chinese civilisation is beyond the fact that Chinese self-identify as "Han," therefore are indistinguishable in a civilisational sense from those who lived under the Han. Despite the fact they speak different languages, use different writing systems, pray to different gods, etc. and never minding the fact that the concept of Han = Chinese wasn't in continual use over the past 1800 years. It was certainly not used much under the Tang, for instance.) Because such a view rests entirely upon the arbitrary nature of self-distinction, it cannot refute a fascistic and fallacious retconning of history like the example above.

Replaced? Mandarin is an evolution from Middle Chinese and Old Chinese. It's natural that languages change. Latin likewise didn't stay the same for centuries.

It's an evolution but not a direct evolution. Both Middle English and Low German evolved from Old Saxon, but one of those languages is far closer to the source than the other. This is because Middle English is awash with Franco-Norman influences whereas Low German is not. Thus, it would be completely fair to say that Middle English replaced Old English as the English lingua franca even though Middle English carries its own share of Saxonic influences.

Middle Chinese is a dead language, it doesn't exist anymore. Don't confuse other Sinitic languages with the actual Middle Chinese. Cantonese, Wu, Gan, Xiang represent other paths of language evolution just as Mandarin does.

I literally said "ancestor language" in the bit you quoted. By definition, Middle Chinese cannot be its own ancestor language!

To be fair, I suppose what I said could be misconstrued as "Middle Chinese, the ancestor language of Mandarin" rather than "the descendants of Middle Chinese." Suffice it to say I meant the latter: ancestor was a poor choice of term in this regard.

 

[LordTempest]

"Han" is now the official name of China's dominant ethnic group, but the same group has several other names still in use (Huaren or Tangren) and historical or literary ones (Zhonghua or Huaxia). Han people speak Chinese languages (more on that later), bear certain surnames, and have a set of traditions that set them apart from China's other ethnic groups.

Use of the term "Han ethnicity" picked up over the course of the 19th century, partly under exposure to Western nationalist ideas and partly due to the declining fortunes of the Manchu-ruled Qing dynasty. The Han dynasty was an appropriate namesake for their purposes because it was the first stable, united Chinese empire and a formative era for Chinese culture (for parts of China that were not Sinicized yet during Han times, the Tang dynasty has a similar cultural stature).

"China" most likely comes from Qin (秦), the northwestern state that unified China in the late 3rd century BC, entering European languages by way of Persian. Qing (清) was the last dynasty of China, coming well after Westerners had gotten used to the name "China."


The overwhelming majority of modern China's population are registered as Han, and Mandarin Chinese is the official language, spoken by most people. Mandarin is spoken natively throughout northern and southwestern China, and as a second language in southeastern China (alongside other Chinese languages like Yue, Min Nan or Wu) or by speakers of minority languages like Tibetan or Uighur. Han people make up such a large majority over such a vast area because of many centuries of intermarriage and assimilation, the same way Gaul and Spain came to be full of Latin-speaking Roman citizens.

The reign of dynasties was separate from ethnic identity- in fact, the whole point of setting up a dynasty at all was to show you were part of Chinese tradition. Ancient Han people would have identified by the dynasty they lived under ("man of Tang" or "man of Ming") but also by the same old terms for China itself (zhongguo, tianxia, shenzhou) or Chinese civilization (huaxia, zhonghua).

This is a good overview.

 

[GurenGaaze]

@LordTempest I feel like I need to clarify - I under no circumstances thought that I was right and was defending my points with you. I only seek to learn. I felt the way you wrote was arguing and setting me right.
All of your points are yet again good ones. I didn't take breeding between the different ethnic groups into consideration at all. At the same time, while these new italians have descended by blood from the Romans, they are still a new culture, created together with the germanic tribes, and ceased to be Romans. Altough I still think like this, I can't argue with what you said.

You might think this a ridiculous strawman, but it isn't.

No, you made it perfectly clear what you meant, and I understood all of it. Sometimes we have to exaggerate to get our points clearly across.

@icedt729 Thanks, that was very informative, and made all of it easier to understand.

 

[IsadorBG]

Frankly that's pretty obvious judging from the rest of your post. Grasping the concept is essential: you cannot have a serious discussion about what China is without it. It would be like trying to describe the virtues of a contemporary secular republic to a medieval peasant who had no concept of government beyond that of a divinely anointed monarch. You cannot grasp the concept of popular sovereignty if you believe that all sovereignty are bestowed upon certain individuals who are chosen by God, just as you cannot grasp the realities of "Chinese civilisation" without understanding the concept of Zhongguo.

Well that's a lot of text to literally say nothing. Congrats.

I said I don't understand why you started to rant about it when your own explanation is lacking. Just like secular republic means something different to an American or to a French so does Zhongguo in the Zhou era and to the CPC.

If we use one definition of civilisation for China and another one for Rome then not only can we not answer the OP's question by definition, ("Rome can't become like China because Rome is Rome, not China, silly.") we ironically end up in exactly the sort of hyper-relativistic scenario you claim to criticise. If civilisation is simply what one claims it to be, then anyone or any state can quite literally claim to be any civilisation it wants. Right now, Italians call themselves Italians and so you consider them to be a separate civilisation from the Romans, from whom they descend. But if some latter-day Mussolini came along and declared that the state of Italy was to be renamed SPQR, its inhabitants were to refer to themselves as Romans, and then claimed that all of Italian history hitherto had actually been a continuation of that same glorious Roman master race, how would you refute this if enough Italians believed it for long enough?

Again you seem to have missed a good chunk of the arguments . Developping new identities was only part of the reason why we don't call ourself Roman. The other reason is because the former was build in respond to the actual Roman Empire.

We are not Romans thus we owe no fealty to the Emperor or his laws. We are Venetians/Genoan whatever now.

Mussolini can rename Italy SPQR all he wants but Italy is not Rome. It fell five hundred years ago with its civilisation. and has been fragmented for more than 1500 years when he was in power.
Again not the case for China.

Look this is very easy: Who's the Emperor ? The guy in Constantinople.
Who are the Romans ? The citizens of the Roman Empire ergo the people who recognise the above dude as their lord.
Who don't recognise him as their Lord ? Basically everyone in the West.

See ? Easy.

This is the third time I am repeating myself so I hope that was enough to make myself understood.

You might think this a ridiculous strawman, but it isn't. You have no objective definition of what Chinese civilisation is beyond the fact that Chinese self-identify as "Han," therefore are indistinguishable in a civilisational sense from those who lived under the Han. Despite the fact they speak different languages, use different writing systems, pray to different gods, etc. and never minding the fact that the concept of Han = Chinese wasn't in continual use over the past 1800 years. It was certainly not used much under the Tang, for instance.) Because such a view rests entirely upon the arbitrary nature of self-distinction, it cannot refute a fascistic and fallacious retconning of history like the example above

When you ignore half the argumentation to make your point it indeed smell of strawman. Hard to refute you here since that was not the point.

 

[Rubidium]

Look this is very easy: Who's the Emperor ? The guy in Constantinople.
Who are the Romans ? The citizens of the Roman Empire ergo the people who recognise the above dude as their lord.
Who don't recognise him as their Lord ? Basically everyone in the West.

Objection! The true Emperor is in Aachen (or later other places). He was crowned by the Bishop of Rome, who was granted that power by the Donation of Constantine.

 

[Geriander]

The last Romans existed in 1912 on Lemnos:

. When the island [Lemnos] was occupied by the Greek navy [in 1912], Greek soldiers were sent to the villages and stationed themselves in the public squares. Some of us children ran to see what these Greek soldiers, these Hellenes looked like. ‘‘What are you looking at?’’ one of them asked. ‘‘At Hellenes,’’ we replied. ‘‘Are you not Hellenes yourselves?’’ he retorted. ‘‘No, we are Romans."

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

The last Romans existed in 1912 on Lemnos:

I would have been more impressed it they had greeted them in a proper testudo.

 

[LordTempest]

@LordTempest I feel like I need to clarify - I under no circumstances thought that I was right and was defending my points with you. I only seek to learn. I felt the way you wrote was arguing and setting me right.
All of your points are yet again good ones. I didn't take breeding between the different ethnic groups into consideration at all. At the same time, while these new italians have descended by blood from the Romans, they are still a new culture, created together with the germanic tribes, and ceased to be Romans. Altough I still think like this, I can't argue with what you said.

No, you made it perfectly clear what you meant, and I understood all of it. Sometimes we have to exaggerate to get our points clearly across.

@icedt729 Thanks, that was very informative, and made all of it easier to understand.

That part of my post was directed at Isador, not yourself. No worries.

 

[Henry IX]

Objection! The true Emperor is in Aachen (or later other places). He was crowned by the Bishop of Rome, who was granted that power by the Donation of Constantine.

He was also the king of the Franks, who definitely did consider themselves as Roman subjects. So he was a Roman king who reclaimed the vacant crown of the Western Roman Empire. Hence, the legitimate Roman Emperor. So the Roman Empire fell at the beginning of the 19th Century, as that was the last point people recognised themselves as subjects of a Roman Emperor. So the Roman Empire fell around 150 years before the Chinese Empire.

 

[soda7777777]

:thinking:

 

[WJLIII3]

Mussolini can rename Italy SPQR all he wants but Italy is not Rome. It fell five hundred years ago with its civilisation. and has been fragmented for more than 1500 years when he was in power.
Again not the case for China.

How not? Yuan ruled for 300 years, as foreign invaders. By what right have you decided that Mussolini can retake Rome for Italians and call it Rome, but that's a lie, but when the Ming come and retake Beijing for the Han, that's truly China? Even though in another 200 years it will be conquered by foreign invaders again, and ruled by Manchu. This is the double standard you're practicing.

 

[IsadorBG]

Were is the double standard here ?

In one case you have a dynasty that topple the previous one and proclaim to be the new rulers of the conquered empire (and they are !!)and in the other case you have a random dude that become PM of the Kingdom of Italy and decides that from now on screw Italy, we are Rome now even tough it's been more than 1000 years since said Rome has held territories in Italy.

I don't see any.

 

[Kovax]

Q: What if Rome was China?

A: I suspect that Christopher Columbus would have been even more confused by sailing West to find it.