User talk:Teeninvestor/Comparison between Roman and Han Empires/Draft

Would anyone object to this being restored?Teeninvestor (talk) 16:18, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

err... I think the answer to that would be a resounding "Yes", since it's been like 5 minutes since the AfD came back as stubify and rewrite. --Ludwigs2 16:54, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The AFD is being reviewed currently at WP:DRV.Teeninvestor (talk) 19:32, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

second paragraph of introduction

two issues with this paragraph:

using repeated references to the same source on adjacent lines is excessive. one reference to the source to the source at the end of the paragraph is sufficient, unless actual specific quotations are given.
can you provide a quote from Scheidel that shows he's talking specifically about the absence of comparative analysis between Roman and Han empires, and not merely about the extent to which western scholars neglect the Han dynasty in general?

--Ludwigs2 17:00, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

first concern has been addressed. A quote from Scheidel about the lack of comparative scholarship is here:

Comparisons between the ancient Mediterranean and China in the works of Max Weber or Karl Wittfogel have had little impact on the research agenda of specialist historians in either field. As a consequence, systematic comparisons between the Greco-Roman world and ancient China have been extremely rare (relative to the total amount of scholarship in either field) and moreover almost exclusively confined to the sphere of intellectual and philosophical history. In recent years, a number of studies have focused on the nature of moral, historical, and scientific thought in Greece and China. The most active proponent of this line of enquiry has been Geoffrey Lloyd, with six books to date (Lloyd 1996, Lloyd & Sivin 2002, Lloyd 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006). Further efforts in the same area were undertaken by Steven Shankman and Stephen Durrant (Shankman & Durrant 2000, (eds.) 2002), and by David Hall and Roger Ames (Hall & Ames 1995, 1998), as well as Lu 1998, Kuriyama 1999, Schaberg 1999, Mutschler 1997, 2003, 2006, 2007a,b, 2008, Reding 2004, Sim 2007, and Martin 2009, 2010. Their work was preceded by Konrad 1967 and Raphaels 1992. Poo 2005 explores attitudes toward foreigners in the ancient Near East and China, and Kim 2007 = 2009 compares concepts of ethnicity in Greece and China. (The Warring States Project at the University of Massachusetts (http://www.umass.edu/wsp), though interested in comparative perspectives, primarily focuses on the Chinese literary tradition and is exclusively concerned with pre-imperial China.)
There are no comparable studies of Roman and Chinese ‘high culture’, and, more importantly, virtually no similarly detailed comparative work on the political, social, economic or legal history of Hellenistic, Roman, and ancient Chinese empires. (Hsing I-Tien 1980, an unpublished thesis, seems to be the main exception in a western language; cf. also Lorenz 1990 and Motomura 1991, and now Adshead 2000: 4-21 and 2004: 20-29 as well as Gizewski 1994 and Dettenhofer 2006 for brief comparisons of the Roman and Han empires. A recent conference focused on literary and ideological constructions of the Qin-Han and Roman empires: Mutschler & Mittag (org.) 2005 = (eds.) 2008; but see now also Mutschler 2008 (org.)) For instance, Wittfogel’s contrasting of the despotic nature of hydraulic regimes in the Near East and China Recent with the diffused structures of the ‘West’ has been criticized but not replaced by comparably broad analyses. Recent historico-sociological studies of imperialism and social power that deal with Greece and Rome comparatively and within a broader context do not normally include China (Doyle 1986; but see very briefly Mann 1986); the older global study by Eisenstadt 1963 is the only notable exception (cf. also Eisenstadt 1986). Kautsky 1982 excludes post-Zhou China. A new collection on early empires also failed to alter the picture (Alcock et al. (eds.) 2001. The same is now true of Morris & Scheidel (eds.) 2009). Hui 2005 expands comparison beyond antiquity. Some work has been appeared on relations between Rome and China (e.g., Ferguson 1978; Raschke 1978; Leslie & Gardiner 1996), especially in the general context of ‘Silk Road Studies’, but this perspective is of no relevance here (cf. also Teggart 1939). The closest approximation of a comparative study of the imperial systems of Rome and an early Asian empire, Quaritch Wales 1965 (on Rome and Khmer), is a rather amateurish attempt.
There is no intellectual justification for this persistent neglect. Recent macro-historical work has highlighted independent parallel movements of socio-cultural evolution in different parts of the globe (Diamond 1998). More specifically, historians of the more recent past are showing great interest in comparative assessments of Europe and China that further our understanding of the emergence of modernity and the Industrial Revolution (e.g., Pomeranz 2000). By contrast, the comparative history of the largest agrarian empires of antiquity has attracted no attention at all. This deficit is only explicable with reference to academic specialization and language barriers.

Teeninvestor (talk) 18:29, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

well, that was pretty much a bummer. this passage seems to say:

no one in the academic world is making comparisons of the RE and HD explicitly (noted both by Scheidel and Hsing I-Tien)
a few people have made broader comparisons between the Greco-Roman cultural complex and Ancient China, but mostly in the realm of philosophical and intellectual history
and that's a crying shame

and he's right, of course - it is a crying shame. but basically this passage translates to a delete vote on wikipedia, because it shows Scheidel bemoaning the fact that there are currently no useful primary or secondary sources on the specific topic of the article. or am I misreading it? --Ludwigs2 19:17, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think you misunderstodo what he was saying. Note that he mentions there are few but not no sources for the article. Also bear in mind that this summary was written four or five years ago; many more sources have been published since, including Scheidel's own papers. Note how this passage shows the importance of this topic:

Recent macro-historical work has highlighted independent parallel movements of socio-cultural evolution in different parts of the globe (Diamond 1998). More specifically, historians of the more recent past are showing great interest in comparative assessments of Europe and China that further our understanding of the emergence of modernity and the Industrial Revolution (e.g., Pomeranz 2000).

.

He also mentions the following sources for this topic have already been published:

Hsing I-Tien 1980, an unpublished thesis, seems to be the main exception in a western language; cf. also Lorenz 1990 and Motomura 1991, and now Adshead 2000: 4-21 and 2004: 20-29 as well as Gizewski 1994 and Dettenhofer 2006 for brief comparisons of the Roman and Han empires. A recent conference focused on literary and ideological constructions of the Qin-Han and Roman empires: Mutschler & Mittag (org.) 2005 = (eds.) 2008; but see now also Mutschler 2008 (org.)

Some of these sources have already been incorporated, butmore could definitely be put into this article. Teeninvestor (talk) 19:20, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

don't get me wrong, I'm not taking a side on the issue at the moment. I'm just telling you the wikipedia facts of life. This passage is worse than useless for the purposes of the article - it's a reliable secondary source claiming that (at the time of writing, which was less than a year ago, mind you) no reliable primary sources are available. It is, in fact, precisely the kind of source I would use in an AfD to demonstrate that a topic is not notable enough for inclusion in wikipedia. You want to avoid this passage like the plague and use other/later sources that prove it wrong/outdated. This is the problem this article has had all along - you need scholarly sources that are actually making the correct comparisons, not scholarly sources that are working with one side of the equation (where you make the comparison) and not scholarly sources that are commenting on the lack of scholarly comparisons. --Ludwigs2 19:52, 25 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Additional sources (mostly in German)

I searched the biblio of the article and I came up with several sources not yet int he article comparing the two mentioned by Scheidel:

Lorenz, G. 1990 ‘Das Imperium Romanum und das China der Han-Dynastie: Gedanken und Materialien zu einem Vergleich’, Informationen für Geschichtslehrer 12: 9-60 (German?)

Motomura, Ryoji 1991 ‘An approach towards a comparative study of the Roman empire and the Ch’in and Han empires’, Kodai 2: 61-69

Dettenhofer, Maria H. 2006 ‘Das römische Imperium und das China der Han-Zeit: Ansätze zu einer historischen Komparatistik’, Latomus 65: 880-897 (Seems like another German source)