Rome And Han China Comparison Essay

The four empires maintained certain world order and stimulated the rise of transcontinental trade later known as the Silk Road.However, the Roman Empire and Han China never established direct relationship because of the great distance and rival powers between them.Initially, their states were all city-sized, but the western city-state and Chinese feudal states had different political structures.

The four empires maintained certain world order and stimulated the rise of transcontinental trade later known as the Silk Road.

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The Roman Empire did not recover from its fall, but its will to power and many ideas have become cultural genes of western culture. In the global village, the heirs to the ancient empires must interact closely, and for that, to know each other, including their traditional roots.

What were the characteristics, the respective strengths and weaknesses of the ancient superpowers of the east and west?

For the purpose of comparing two careers of rise and fall, it is convenient to shift their relative timelines.

I match up the unification of China in 221 BCE and Caesars march on Rome in 49 BCE, so that we can talk about the progress of their imperial age, here shaded in grey.

Their societies were both patriarchic, conservative and stratified.

Each person had specific social roles and had moral duty to be contended with them.Two thousand years ago, the Old World of civilization underwent its first imperial age.The Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty of imperial China coexisted with Parthia and Kushan, spanning the mid-latitude of Eurasia and northern Africa.To the west of the empire, the Roman Republic was busy fighting the Samnites, mountain folks in central Italy.The ephemerality of Alexanders empire highlights the greatest achievements of the Roman and Chinese empires, their stability and longevity.It too, found itself among a host of city-states in Italy. Strong states annexed neighboring land when convenient, but mostly they tried to win not territories but allies, whom they led to fight rivals.When administrative institutions were not yet developed to manage large populations, allies that took care of their domestic affairs but obeyed orders in foreign affairs were more effective for the hegemon to expand its power.Five years after the Greeks gathered for their first Olympic Game in 776 BCE, the host of centuries-old city-sized feudal states in China received a new company, Qin, the future empire builder.Eighteen years after the investiture of Qin, tradition had it that Rome was founded on the hills beside the River Tiber.At the formative periods of the western and eastern styles of exercising imperial power, the ancient empires left rich and influential legacies.China pulled through numerous fragmentations and invasions, and remains a unified nation.