Mongols in China?

[Kralizec]

The Franks replaced the local elite, but I doubt there were ever enough of them to drasticly alter the ethnic makeup of Roman Gaul. We know that the English are ethicly German because studies have shown a large genetic similarity between them and Dutch (and other Germanic peoples). Dunno if there have been any comparing the genetic makeup of France with Germanic countries, though.

[Watchman]

The Franks replaced the local elite, but I doubt there were ever enough of them to drasticly alter the ethnic makeup of Roman Gaul.

I sincerely doubt that; they don't call them the Migrations just for fun, you know. Don't quote me on it, but it is also fairly easy to imagine Roman Gaul to be rather low on the population side by the time the Franks moved in - virtual collapse of central authority and general chaos has a habit of lowering the population a bit by itself, and when you throw all the civil wars, migrating barbarians, plagues, famines, military recruitment and God knows what else atop that, plus the inevitable looting and pillaging with collateral damage during the Frankish conquest itself, the Gauls probably didn't outnumber the Franks by an overly large margin by the time the dust settled.

[edyzmedieval]

Typical Western fantasy about "the East".

BTW, China is hardly "full-scale communism". Its economy nowadays is fully capitalist, after Deng's reforms. Politically, it might adhere to some old Communist ideals but it is far from being "fully communist".

Excuse me?!!!

The economy might be capitalist, but not 100%. Plus, they still keep their old communist rules. Come on man, limiting access to the Internet for Chinese people? You call this democracy? I say this is full-scale communism.

[Watchman]

Communism is an ideology and an economic model, not a type of governement (although straight communist command economy pretty much requires a fairly totalitarian regime). Economically China stopped being communism a decade or two ago (something to do with the late Deng visiting Japan, taking a good look around and doing the math I understand); it's probably more capitalist than much of "the West" now, in the sense that there are fewer stops on the unpleasant exploitative tendencies inherent to the capitalist economy. Politically it's still a totalitarian police state - the two are quite compatible as such.

[Avicenna]

It's practically communist for those at the bottom, I suppose, they all get nothing. At the top though, the big bosses, they won't view it as communism.

Personally, I don't think I live under communism, though I suppose I live under the second system of "1 China 2 Systems".

[Kralizec]

I sincerely doubt that; they don't call them the Migrations just for fun, you know. Don't quote me on it, but it is also fairly easy to imagine Roman Gaul to be rather low on the population side by the time the Franks moved in - virtual collapse of central authority and general chaos has a habit of lowering the population a bit by itself, and when you throw all the civil wars, migrating barbarians, plagues, famines, military recruitment and God knows what else atop that, plus the inevitable looting and pillaging with collateral damage during the Frankish conquest itself, the Gauls probably didn't outnumber the Franks by an overly large margin by the time the dust settled.

*Shrugs* you could argue both ways I suppose, the only really viable way of finding out is doing genetic tests on the current population and possibly from graves from that period. You can name lots of stagnating factors in the empire that would have prevented population growth, but killing off say, 50% of the population? Doesn't seem very likely to me. Plagues can kill lots but populations tend to recover in 1 or 2 generations.
And remember that while the English speak a Germanic tongue with lots of latinesque words, the French speak a roman language with some germanic influences. I don't see how that would have happened if the Franks were more then just a small minority.

[Avicenna]

Ah-ha! Another convert! I mean.. want to read Empires of the Word?

Explains your question about the language, and why the Germanic tribes ended up speaking Latin/similar languages instead of the French/Italians/Spanish/Portugese etc speaking German. Plus many other examples, of course. Deals with the evolution of languages, and why Chinese is such ownage that it is still dominant after thousands of years.

[Kralizec]

Question?

I might pick up your book suggestion this summer, however there are plenty of other books I'm looking forward to read.

My thesis: Italians, Portugese, Spanish and French speak romanic languages because the population had been thoroughly romanized -a deliberate policy of the Romans in the west- by the time the germanic migrations occurred.
Germania was pretty scarce in recources, in fact the main drive behind the migrations was that germania could no longer sustain the rapidly growing -but most likely still small compared to the roman provinces- population.
In most countries, the Visigoths, Franks, Langobards etc couldn't possibly have been in sufficient numbers to form a majority in such large areas. Of course there were some influences on the language, but nothing drastic. Of course the languages grew apart because Europe would henceforth remain fractured.

Additionally, the germans did not posses a culture nearly as sophisticated as the Romans. Cultural sharing is always mutual, but why would a haughty Roman consciously adopt barbarian ways and language? Roman culture rubbed off more on the germanians then vice versa.
Germanians were generally tolerant towards other cultures residing in their realm, allowing them to practice their own religion and system of laws, and to speak their own language.

Why not England? Because that's probably the only area where the local germanians -the Saxons- did constitute a significant majority. Also the Saxons weren't christian by the time wich would hamper their assimilation in what was moreover a marginal amount of "indigenous" Romans.

About China, much of the same applies. I think the Mongols would have a particulary hard time to outnumber the Chinese in their own country

Would you say that my thesis in accordance with your recommended book?

[King of Atlantis]

Do you mix up Swedes as Italians, some people mistake medieval Vikings for Roman legionaires...

Modern China is a composite of many other nations and it's combined history is very long in the tooth. So while the Mongals went through areas that we call China it was not in a lot of cases whom we think of as the modern Chinese (Mandarin dominant) whom they defeated.

Funny thing is for most Westerners they have encountered the Cantonese, who are not the majority in China.

It is like the Chinese thinking that the French are the dominant Europeans because they buy more YSL items.

Approach ancient China as if you are approaching Europe. It is a composite of many nations trying to beat each other... and it would make such a great TW series!

That sounds good on paper, but is not really true. You can't compare Europe with China. China is somwhere in the ball park of 90% "Han" Chinese. If Europe was 90% Anglo-Saxon I would agree with this post, but this simply is not true. China is certainly not a clear cut culture, but by all means much more so than Europe.

[Avicenna]

You've pretty much hit it on the nail, Krazilec.

I don't think it's so much a deliberate policy though, but more so of the fact that there was little knowledge of Greek. Greek was known by most in the Eastern half, so the Romans just used that instead of trying to force Latin onto them. The limited Greek influence in 'barbaric' areas like Gaul and Iberia, though, didn't speak much Greek, so the Romans introduced Latin for convenience in governing the place.

Edit: KoA, I believe that it is 94% Han

[AquaLurker]

That sounds good on paper, but is not really true. You can't compare Europe with China. China is somwhere in the ball park of 90% "Han" Chinese. If Europe was 90% Anglo-Saxon I would agree with this post, but this simply is not true. China is certainly not a clear cut culture, but by all means much more so than Europe.

"Han" is a nationalistic terms used by Sun Yet Sun to rally the chinese during his revolution against the Qing goverment in 20th centry...

The people of Han dynasty will call themselves the Han people, Tang Dynasty people called themselves Tang people, Song dynasty people called themselves ...well Song people, well you will get the idea.

[Avicenna]

Aqualurker: ever since the Han dynasty, many of the Chinese have called themselves 'Han' people. It was what they called themselves, as well as 'Zhong Guo Ren' (middle kingdom people. this is Mandarin, they wouldn't have said that at the time of course).

What you've said is true, but because of the prosperity and success of the dynasty, many Chinese people have kept identifying themselves with the name Han people.

Similarly, Tang was a successful dynasty. Hence in Chinese, Chinatown is actually called Tang Ren Jie (Mandarin again). This means 'Tang People street/road'.