7Han Dynasty China and Imperial Rome

300 BCE–300 CE

Before You Read This Chapter

GLOBAL STORYLINES

Comparing the Han and Roman Empires

  • Flourishing at roughly the same time, Han China and the Roman Empire become powerful and enduring “globalizing empires.”
  • The Han dynasty, building on Qin foundations, establishes a bureaucratic imperial model and social order in East Asia.
  • The Roman Empire becomes a Mediterranean superpower exerting far-reaching political, legal, economic, and cultural influence.

CHAPTER OUTLINE

FOCUS QUESTIONS

  • What features made the Han dynasty and the Roman Empire globalizing empires?
  • What political, social, economic, and cultural elements characterized the development of the Han dynasty from its beginnings through the third century CE?
  • What was the process by which Rome transitioned from a minor city-state to a dominating Mediterranean power?
  • How were Han China and imperial Rome similar and different in terms of political authority, economic activity, cultural developments, and military expansion?

In third-century BCE China, the Eastern Zhou state of Qin absorbed the remaining Warring States (see Chapter 5) and set the stage for the epic Han dynasty. The chief minister of the Qin state, Li Si, urged his king to seize the opportunity presented by the disarray of his opponents: by combining his fearsome armies and his own personal virtues, the king could sweep away his rivals as if dusting ashes from a kitchen hearth. “This is the one moment in ten thousand ages,” Li Si whispered to the man who would become Qin Shi Huangdi. The king listened carefully. He followed the advice and laid the foundations for a mighty empire. Although Shi Huangdi’s Qin Empire collapsed in 207 BCE after a mere two decades, its political innovations set the stage for the much more powerful and longer-lasting Han Empire (206 BCE–220 CE), which became one of the most successful dynasties in Chinese history. Following the Qin model, the Han defeated other regional groups and established a Chinese empire that would last for four centuries. Subjects of the Han basked in a world whose landholding elites, free farmers, trained artisans, itinerant traders, and urban merchants were building a society that, unlike the allegedly cruel Qin state, would emulate the statecraft ideals of antiquity.

At the other end of Afro-Eurasia, another great state, imperial Rome, also met its rivals in war, emerged victorious, and consolidated its power into a vast empire. The Romans achieved this feat by using violent force on a scale hitherto unseen in their part of the globe. The result was a state of huge size, astonishingly unified and stable. Living in the Roman Empire in the mid-70s CE, Pliny the Elder wrote glowingly about the unity of the imperial state. In his eyes, all the benefits that flowed from its extensive reach derived from the boundless greatness of a peace that joined diverse peoples under one benevolent emperor.