Walter Scheidel - Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires

ROME AND CHINA

OXFORD STUDIES IN EARLY EMPIRES

Series Editors
Nicola Di Cosmo, Mark Edward Lewis, and Walter Scheidel

The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium
Edited by Ian Morris and Walter Scheidel

Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires
Edited by Walter Scheidel

Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires

Edited by
Walter Scheidel

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rome and China : comparative perspectives on ancient world empires/
edited by Walter Scheidel.
p. cm.(Oxford studies in early empires)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-975835-7
1. History, AncientHistoriography. 2. HistoryMethodology. 3. RomeHistory
Republic, 26530 B.C. 4. RomeHistoryEmpire, 30 B.C.284 A.D. 5. ChinaHistory
Han dynasty, 202 B.C.220 A.D. 6. ImperialismHistory I. Scheidel, Walter, 1966
D56.R65 2009
931.04dc22 2008020445

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acidfree paper

FIVE of the seven chapters in this volume grew out of contributions to the international conference Institutions of Empire: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient Chinese and Mediterranean History that was held at Stanford University on May 1314, 2005, under the auspices of the Stanford Ancient Chinese and Mediterranean Empires Comparative History Project. It is a great pleasure to thank our generous Stanford sponsors, above all the Social Science History Institute and its director, Steve Haber, as well as the Department of Classics and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. I would also like to acknowledge the support of my coorganizers Mark Lewis and Joe Manning. Lai MingChiu, Luuk de Ligt, Joe Manning, David Schaberg, Robin Yates, and Zhao Dingxin presented papers that are not included in this collection but greatly enriched our discussion. Finally, thanks are due to Stefan Vranka of Oxford University Press for his interest in this project, to Brian Hurley for his assistance, and to Gwen Colvin for her work on this volume.

Introduction
Walter Scheidel

Walter Scheidel

Nathan Rosenstein

Karen Turner

Maria H. Dettenhofer

Peter Fibiger Bang

Mark Edward Lewis

Walter Scheidel

PETER FIBIGER BANG is Associate Professor of History at the University of Copenhagen. His research focuses on the comparative economic history and political economy of early empires. He is the author of Roman Bazaar: A Comparative Study of Trade and Markets in a Tributary Empire (2008) and is working on a comparative study of the Roman state and patrimonial government. He has also published a number of articles on the comparative history of early empires and is the coeditor of the forthcoming Empires in Contention (with Chris Bayly) and The Oxford Handbook of the Ancient State (with Walter Scheidel). He chairs the management committee of the European research network Tributary Empires Compared that coordinates comparative study of the Roman, Mughal, and Ottoman empires.

MARIA H. DETTENHOFER is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Munich. Her research focuses on Roman political and court history, gender, and the comparative history of Rome and Han China. She is the author of Perdita Iuventus: Zwischen den Generationen von Caesar und Augustus (1992) and Herrschaft und Widerstand im augusteischen Principat: Die Konkurrenz zwischen res publica und domus Augusta (2000) and the editor of Reine Mnnersache: Frauen in Mnnerdomnen der antiken Welt (1994).

MARK EDWARD LEWIS is KwohTing Li Professor in Chinese Culture at Stanford University. He specializes in the history of ancient China and is the author of Sanctioned Violence in Early China (1990), Writing and Authority in Early China (1999), The Construction of Space in Early China (2006), and The Flood Myths of Early China (2006). He has recently completed a series of three books on the history of early Chinese empires, The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han (2007), Between Empires: The Northern and Southern Dynasties (in press), and a forthcoming sequel on the Tang period.

NATHAN ROSENSTEIN is Professor of History at Ohio State University. He specializes in Roman military, political, and social history, and is the author of Imperatores Victi: Military Defeat and Aristocratic Competition in the Middle and Late Republic (1990) and Rome at War: Farms, Families, and Death in the Middle Republic (2004), and coeditor of War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (1999, with Kurt Raaflaub) and A Companion to the Roman Republic (2006, with Robert MorsteinMarx).

WALTER SCHEIDEL is Professor of Classics and, by courtesy, History at Stanford University. His research focuses on ancient social and economic history, premodern historical demography, and comparative and transdisciplinary world history. He has authored or (co)edited nine other books, including Measuring Sex, Age, and Death in the Roman Empire (1996), Death on the Nile: Disease and the Demography of Roman Egypt (2001), Debating Roman Demography (2001), The Cambridge Economic History of the GrecoRoman World (2007, with Ian Morris and Richard Saller), and The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium (2008, with Ian Morris). He is currently editing The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy, The Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies (with Alessandro Barchiesi), and The Oxford Handbook of the Ancient State (with Peter Bang), and working on monographs on ancient empires and ancient demography.

KAREN TURNER is the Rev. John Brooks Chair in the Humanities and Professor of History at the College of the Holy Cross. Her work focuses on comparative law, Chinese legal history, Vietnamese history, law and human rights in Asia, and women and war. Her publications include Even the Women Must Fight: Memories of War from North Vietnam