romans fighting in china???

[jimmy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_embassies_to_China


i hadnt come across this before especially regarding the military aspect of it.

it seems the romans[mercenaries] were fighting for the chinese/huns long before the empire split in two[caesar period].
i know its not quite the right forum but there maybe a few people suprised by it i know i was.

[Somebody Else]

There are theories that Roman legionnaires captured at Carrhae may have ended up as mercenaries way out there, fighting for the Hsiung-Nu - there's a Chinese historical record about a siege when they had to fight against strange mercenaries who adopted a 'fish-scale' formation (testudo anyone?). I've also seen a painting (from a bit later admittedly) of a Roman ambassador to 7th century China.

*And now... I read the wikipedia article, which says what I just said. Oh well, redundancy for me then*

[edyzmedieval]

Romans in China...

This sounds like Huns in America....

[BDC]

I saw a painting of a Roman ambassador to China... I assumed he was actually Byzantine though.

[Kraxis]

I saw a painting of a Roman ambassador to China... I assumed he was actually Byzantine though.

If you want to go into that destinction then a 7th century person from Constantinople is considered half'n'half Roman-Byzantine as it was around that time the state began its radical change towards a Greek society.

[Red Harvest]

Yes, I've read about the Carrhae link as well.

[Kekvit Irae]

Goodbye, Colosseum!
Hello, Monastery!

[edyzmedieval]

Goodbye, Colosseum!
Hello, Monastery!

Bye bye Paganism.
Hello Christianity.

[Conqueror]

Bye bye Paganism.
Hello Christianity.

What does this have to do with Romans in China?

[edyzmedieval]

Making a small add to Kekvitirae's comments.... Doh!!!

[master of the puppets]

i think he means that they could have brought christianity to china.

but i have heard several stories of imfamous mercenaries with odd features. they supposedly used a fish scale formation and had a stupendouse kill count.

[Steppe Merc]

I know the later Parthians had a great deal of contacts with the Chinese...

[Kraxis]

i think he means that they could have brought christianity to china.

Pretty hard given the pre-Jesus date...

I'm pretty certain christianity was brought to China by nestorian monks, given that the Chinese christians were nestorians and that the nestorians were indeed driven east (they were also the ones to bring back silkworms). As late as the time of the Mongols, the nestorian faith was still alive in the east, with the Mongols themselves being nominally nestorian (practically they were not).

[ajaxfetish]

Goodbye, Colosseum!
Hello, Monastery!

Colosseum: Pagan Rome, therefore Paganism
Monastery: Christian Monasticism, therefore Christianity

No connection to Romans in China, or at least that's my assumption.

Ajax

[Kekvit Irae]

Colosseum: Pagan Rome, therefore Paganism
Monastery: Christian Monasticism, therefore Christianity

Colosseum: RTW Single Player discussions.
Monastery: Historical discussions.

The offending thread was out of place, so I moved it.

[ajaxfetish]

I know. I was just explaining what I figured edyz had meant in his "addition" to your comments since it seemed to have caused some confusion.

[Kekvit Irae]

Just clearing up the confusion

[jurchen fury]

For basic info, I might consult wikipedia once in a long while, but for any serious discussion or info that is even historically accurate, I'll drop wikipedia any time of the day. It at many times contains the most erroneous of info you can find.

And "fish-scale" formations are also nothing new. IIRC, a "fish-scale" type of formation was already used by some troops of the Zhou-Spring and Autumn Period-Warring States Period, and "fish-scale" formation sounds too general. It's common Western-centric type thinking to equate the Romans/Westerners as the only people capable of performing such "complex" formations as the "fish-scale" formations when in fact these Caucasoid merenaries fighting for Zhizhi could range anywhere from being Sogdians to Tocharians and other Iranic speakers of Central Asia.

Wouldn't surprise me. China was not as "Closed" as one might think during that time.

Certainly not. And no contacts with Romans doesn't even equate to "China" as being a closed nation (I'm not necessarily saying you're directly saying that, I'm just merely talking about widespread inaccurate Western stereotypes of Chinese history and seeing Chinese history through Western-centric lenses and not the way it really was relative to the rest of the world). For one, the even bringing up of this topic is directly related to the Early Han conquest of Sogdia and Kangju territory (steppes north of Sogdia) by Chen Tang in 36 BC against Zhizhi Chanyu, and the Han dominance of the Silk Route that passed through Da Yuezhi, Indo-Saka, and Parthian territory into Rome.

[Taiwan Legion]

While what you say is good, you give the chinese too much credit in the military department. The level of discipline found in the Roman Army around, say, 100AD certainly surpasses anything found in a chinese army of the same time. Especially once the Han Dynasty started to decline. Indeed, I'm not even sure there was a widespread use of shields large enough to create a "Fish-Scale" formation.

However, don't get me wrong. Aside from that you're totally right in regards to the Western view of chinese "Isolation" being totally wrong.

I don't think you're giving the Chinese enough credit here. Chinese have never been a militaristic people. Their real accomplishment is not in their military power, but their cultural power in their arts and literature and their philosophies, as they are even more powerful than swords.

The Early Chin dynasty had some of the most mighty military around that time. I'd believe if Roman and Chinese fought on balanced circumstances, Chin would've beat the Roman army around that time since the technology was more advanced in the Chin military than the Roman military at that time. The problem is that at around 100 AD, Han dynasty was already on the decline.

Btw I thought peopel knew Roman and China had contact, since the whole name China comes from land of the Chin (dynasty)

[jimmy]

Btw I thought peopel knew Roman and China had contact, since the whole name China comes from land of the Chin (dynasty)[/QUOTE]


not as early as the period suggested.[ceasar,pompey crassus] i had never come across this and neithier had a friend of mine. [and he is at uni doing history]. so there would be a good chance that the both of us would have gone through life oblivious to the fact of roman-chinese contact. i only found this out by accident from a book.[mercenaries of the ancient world] by serge Yalichev. and this is the ONLY book i have were it is mentioned[i have a few regarding the romans ceasar etc.]

[jurchen fury]

While what you say is good, you give the chinese too much credit in the military department. The level of discipline found in the Roman Army around, say, 100AD certainly surpasses anything found in a chinese army of the same time.

LOL. I "give the chinese too much credit in the military department". I never said anything in my previous post that even suggested a direct comparison between Rome and Han military soldiers and yet you already said I "give the chinese too much credit in the military department". Freaking hilarious. And then you immediately jumped to your own ill-informed assumptions that "The level of discipline found in the Roman Army around, say, 100AD certainly surpasses anything found in a chinese army of the same time." If you want to start a new Han vs. Romans thread, then I'll gladly contribute.

I apologize if what I just said doesn't fit into your pre-conceived and ill-informed assumptions of Chinese soldiers as being less adept militarily and weaker than Rome and can only rely on human numbers and human-wave tactics (no, you don't have to be all over me about this, what you just said would suggest human waves/numbers since you directly said Han soldiers were supposedly less disciplined than Roman soldiers - how else am I supposed to interpret all of this?). I'm sure you are enlightened enough and also informative enough to do an indepth analysis of both the Han and Roman militaries, draw accurate conclusions from reliable sources, and also compare their training methods and the level of discipline found in both armies to make such a conclusion.

Especially once the Han Dynasty started to decline.

Yes, I'm sure Rome never declined and her armies, being all god-like and disciplined and all were just suddenly wiped off of the face of the earth and were never ever in a state of decline. And I'm also sure that it's fair to compare Han armies when the Han was near destruction at the end of the 2nd century CE to Trajan-era Romans while it's not fair to compare late 1st-early 2nd century CE Han armies to declining 3rd-4th century Roman armies or Roman armies when they were constantly thrashed by rebels like the gladiator Spartacus, right?

Indeed, I'm not even sure there was a widespread use of shields large enough to create a "Fish-Scale" formation.

I'm also sure that you've done careful reading and somehow I attributed the people employing the "fish-scale" formation in the Battle of Kangju 36 BCE to Chinese soldiers, and not Indo-Iranians or Tocharians. I'm also sure that you've done careful reading and that I've established it as a fact that these Indo-Iranians and Tocharians all learned it from the Chinese. And I'm also sure that it's not a possibility that it could be suggested that the observer of the Battle of Kangju 36 BCE could've attributed Zhizhi's infantry mercenaries as practicing a "fish-scale" formation because it was a common practice or had been a common practice in earlier Chinese military history and was simply just his observation. And I'm also sure that you've read carefully enough that I never said that the "fish-scale" formation sounds too general and that these soldiers could've also been Indo-Iranians or Tocharians, and not necessarily just Chinese or Romans.

And I'm also sure you're being entirely fair by completely ignoring the Han's massed employment of powerful crossbows, one which will terrify the Romans like how Parthian recurved composite bows did at Carrhae. In fact, the effect would've been even more so since Han crossbows had tremendous draw-weights, obviously far more firepower than any hand missile weapon the Romans would've encountered, as crossbows in general had superior firepower to bows and the Han crossbowmen equipped with them also employed a three-rank drill maneuver to keep up a continuous rate of crossbow volleys, similar to how 16th century European horsemen loaded their wheel-lock pistols against enemy infantry.

Seriously, withdrawing all the sarcasm aside, shields were widespread in Han China, whether you like that or not and whether you can accept that or not, I honestly don't care. In fact, according to one authority (Yang Hong, "Weapons in Ancient China", p. 220, citing from Archaeology Corps for Juyan, Gansu, "The Excavation of the Han Historical Site at Juyan and the Bamboo Slips Unearthed", Wen Wu, 1 (1978), 6), the shield was standard equipment for Han infantrymen. According to archaeological studies, two types of shields were dominant in Han armies. There were two types of shields in use during the Han period, one which had existed during the Warring States period and had a gourd-like shape (the shield having a height one-third that of a Han infantryman), and the other one being a long, rectangular shield with rounded corners so the shield has a somewhat ellipsed, oblong shape. The former type seemed to have been more commonly depicted in Early Han-era (206 BC - 8 CE) artifacts while the latter seemed to have been more common depicted in Later Han-era (25 CE - 220 CE) artifacts. The latter type of shield also had a weapon called the "gou xiang" attached to its center, presumably to catch and partially nullify an opponent's attacks directed toward him.

However, don't get me wrong. Aside from that you're totally right in regards to the Western view of chinese "Isolation" being totally wrong.

The Chinese "isolation" view is certainly wrong as well as the Western-centric view that China was somehow always the same since times immemorial, ie that what she was in the late 19th century - modern day is a correct and accurate view of what she always was. I suppose ignorance, laziness, Western-centrism and a feeling to down on non-Western people is indeed a truly powerful combination, one that can seriously distort the reality for ignorant people.

[jurchen fury]

I don't think you're giving the Chinese enough credit here. Chinese have never been a militaristic people. Their real accomplishment is not in their military power, but their cultural power in their arts and literature and their philosophies, as they are even more powerful than swords.

I don't want to start a flame thread here but I seriously suggest at least reading up on Chinese military history. The idea that "Chinese have never been a militaristic people. Their real accomplishment is not in their military power, but their cultural power in their arts and literature and their philosophies, as they are even more powerful than swords" is a common Westerncentric stereotype that is rampant and blatantly wrong. The antimilitaristic ideas only began to be imposed and were of any significance during the Song dynasty (960 - 1279 CE), and before that, the empires of China were certainly far more militaristic than what is usually thought of as by the typical Westerner. In fact, a direct quote from O. Hucker, China's Imperial Past: An Introduction to Chinese History and Culture, p. 169: "For all the important developments in civil service techniques and the repeated attempts to attain the ideal of a military establishment consisting of citizen-soldiers, the most highly esteemed and rewarded careers through most of the early imperial age were in the military, not the bureaucracy. Both early Han and early T'ang exuded a notably militaristic spirit. Even in T'ang Hsüan-tsung's (Pinyin transliteration = Xuanzong's) heyday the civil service by no means became predominant in government, and after the An Lu- shan rebellion militarism was rampant. In a word, the widespread modern notion that traditional China esteemed only genteel pursuits is simply mistaken, so far as the early imperial age is concerned."

The Early Chin dynasty had some of the most mighty military around that time. I'd believe if Roman and Chinese fought on balanced circumstances, Chin would've beat the Roman army around that time since the technology was more advanced in the Chin military than the Roman military at that time. The problem is that at around 100 AD, Han dynasty was already on the decline.

Yes, you are correct. Qin soldiers were indeed ferocious, and, aside from some scholars suggesting that reason explained the Qin conquest of the other states during the Warring States era, were certainly comparable to the Spartans of the ancient Greek city-states. In fact, according to one account in the Zhanguo Ci, an elite corps of Qin soldiers were known to have thrown off all type of protective clothing after they threw themselves on the enemy formation, and fought carrying slain heads in one hand and a sword in another. Qin soldiers in total were geared for ultimately toward warfare after Lord Shang Yang clearly established the two primary concerns in the Qin state: agriculture and war. And the agriculture was conducted specifically to support war.

The Han Dynasty was nowhere near to being in decline in around 100 CE. I seriously don't know where you got that from. The era around 100 CE was actually the Eastern Han's height of power, ie when Ban Chao and his successors restored Han power in Central Asia by reconquering most of the kingdoms in Xinjiang, especially the ones in the Tarim. In fact, the era from circa 70 - 100 CE and a little later was the height of Han power, especially Dou Xian's victory over the Northern Xiongnu (these were hypothesized to have been the ancestors of the Huns that invaded Europe in the 4th century) and wiping them out of the annals of Han history in 91 CE and Ban Chao's conquest in the early 2nd century CE. We also see Gan Ying, sent by Ban Chao, attempting to establish formal relations with the Roman empire during Han dominance in middle Central Asia at this time, but Parthian middlemen mislead and were able to persuade Gan Ying to turn back after reaching either the Caspian Sea or the Persian Gulf.

Btw I thought peopel knew Roman and China had contact, since the whole name China comes from land of the Chin (dynasty)

I'm not entirely sure on this either but I think the word "China" most probably came from the Qara-khitai state of Central Asia in the 12th-13th century CE. European explorers at the time probably mistaken either the Khitan Liao or the Qara-khitai, aka Black Khitai for China since the Khitans, a Mongolic-speaking people, adopted elements of Han Chinese culture.

[jimmy]

i was under the assumtion that the nomads reffered to all chinese people as Han.?? in regards to there way of life [settled sedentary] as opposed to nomads.when khubiali khan completed the conquest of the southern song in about 1279 he was reffered to the first mongol khan who ruled over all the Han people.so is Han a word used by nomadic tribes to refer to the settled inhabitants of all of china or a certain area of china???.

[jurchen fury]

i was under the assumtion that the nomads reffered to all chinese people as Han.?? in regards to there way of life [settled sedentary] as opposed to nomads.???.

Well, generally most nomads, specifically the earlier ones (save the Uygurs-Mongols, for example, while the Tujue/Kok Turuks oddly referred to the contemporary "Chinese" empire of their time, ie the Tang, as the "Toba", after the legacy of the Northern Wei dynasty established by the Turkic-speaking Toba clan of the Mongolic Xianbei people in the late 4th century CE), didn't really have written records left to us, so we actually don't know how they referred to the "Chinese" people. The "Han" was what the people of north China referred to themselves as when the Han dynasty unified the region in the late 3rd century BCE and, over time, I guess that label just stuck to the people of north China and now, it has been applied to whoever recognizes him/herself as a "Han", aka Chinese, hence the widespread idea that the "Han" ethnic group is the predominant ethnic group in today's China. The Chinese "nationalists" in the late 19th century, in reaction and response to Western institutionalized nationalism, made "Han" synonymous with "Chinese"; before that time, "Chinese" didn't have much meaning at all since "Chinese" is clearly a Western label simply referring to the inhabitants of China, and wasn't necessarily a designation on any specific ethnic group. Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Chinese republic in 1912, used it as a tool to inspire rebellion and reaction against the Manchus and the Qing Dynasty, since many people were actually still loyal to the Qing Dynasty. Today, what Westerners call "Chinese" is actually Han, now that "Chinese" has become synonymous with Han.

when khubiali khan completed the conquest of the southern song in about 1279 he was reffered to the first mongol khan who ruled over all the Han people.so is Han a word used by nomadic tribes to refer to the settled inhabitants of all of china or a certain area of china???.

He referred to himself as the Son of Heaven who unified China for the first time since the fall of the Tang dynasty in 907 CE. Though he still retained his separate Mongol identity from the Han in some degrees, he was a great admirer of Han civilization and was, in many ways, sinicized; for example, he aspired to be like Taizong, the 2nd emperor of the Tang, who brought prosperity and stable rule internally and pursued an aggressive foreign policy that, continued by his son, extended Tang power at its height from Manchuria (defeat of the Xi and Khitans) to the Caspian (defeat of Shabuluo Qaghan of the Western Tujue in 657 CE, pursuing him all the way to Tashkent) and from southern Siberia (defeat of the Xueyantuo and Uygurs) to northern Vietnam (Annam province). The Yuan Dynasty doesn't equal all Mongols since the Mongols were already divided when he conquered the Song in 1279 CE, though each of the separate Mongol khanates were still strong. The point is that "Han" is simply used now to refer to the majority of the inhabitants of China, ie what Westerners would stereotypically view as "Chinese" (the supposedly pacifist culture, the sexist Confucians, the mandarin hats, etc. etc.), while "Chinese" technically refers to no specific ethnic group, but just the people who inhabit China so, in a sense, all the 56 ethnic groups of the PRC today could collectively be referred to as "Chinese".

I could be totally wrong though about the history behind the semantics of "Chinese" but this is how I understand it.

[jimmy]

so Han is a western interpration of what as an "example"what the mongols may have called the chinese.it is unless i have missed it genghis birthday[700 years??]were as he is hated in the west [the former soviet union especially] in modern day china he is looked upon as one of there own a god like figure who shaped china as a whole. were as the mongolians tend to frown upon this.i think in some way the mongols think that genghis has been hijacked by the chinese and potrayed as one of there own.i know its drifted a little off topic but in my mind thats how certain threads should evolve.another book i picked up was


[land of genghis khan ]
the rise and fall of nation states in chinas northwest frontiers. for £2

by david chenyan lai[volume 30 of the national geographical series]

on something totaly unrelated i am a railwayworker. the link with mongolia is that it was of the last places on earth were they still frequently still use steam locomotives. i know a few people who been over to mongolia to film/take pictures etc of the locos before they are fazed out.and have always commented on how helpfull the mongolians are and will tend to bend over backwards to help people out.

[AquaLurker]

While what you say is good, you give the chinese too much credit in the military department. The level of discipline found in the Roman Army around, say, 100AD certainly surpasses anything found in a chinese army of the same time. Especially once the Han Dynasty started to decline. Indeed, I'm not even sure there was a widespread use of shields large enough to create a "Fish-Scale" formation.

However, don't get me wrong. Aside from that you're totally right in regards to the Western view of chinese "Isolation" being totally wrong.

Typical