Guaporense

Well, since Ionia was a part of the Persian Empire and Greece, at the same time, at least this part of the Persian Empire used money.

Also, coinage was first invented by Lydia, a kingdom of Anatolia, near the Aegean Greek cities. That kingdom was incorporated into the Persian Empire.

The Persian Empire probably used coins, specially the provinces closer to the mediterranean. The economy of the Persian Empire probably did not use money as much as Greece, since the Persian Empie was not as urbanized as the Greek cities, so the size of the monetary economy was smaller in proportion of the total economy, but money was used, just in a smaller extent.

Interestingly that your source, Dart Roach, that Herodotus claimed that Persian tax revenue reached 14,560 talents of silver. Later it declined to 12,000 talents, according to my sources, after Persia lost Egypt, Ionia and the Indus Valley. Also, I note that Alexander found 170,000 talents of silver in the treasuries of the Persian Empire, which would be the accumulated stocks of 15 years of tax revenues.

That's a huge ammount of money, for comparison, Athens had tax revenues of around 1,000 talents of silver, increasing to 1,500 talents in the Peloponnesian war. While I estimate that Alexander's field army cost about 5,000 talents of silver a year in terms of wages and supplies (just the annual wages for the 50,000 soldiers of Alexander would total 25 million dracmas, or 4,167 talents of silver), which were probably the tax revenues of Macedon after they conquered the rest of mainland Greece.

So in terms of economic resources, Macedon at the time of the death of Phillip II had about 40% of the annual tax revenues of the Persian Empire (assuming tax revenues of 12,500 talents for the Persian Empire), while controlling a much smaller territory (hence, they had enough surplus to raise an army of 50,000 to attack Persia, while the vast Persian Empire could barely pay for the garrisons of their provinces).

Also, for effect of comparison, Rome's tax revenues in the 1st century CE totaled 1 billion sesterces. That was enough to buy 4 billion liters of wheat, using the prices of the provinces, while the 12,000 - 14,500 talents of silver that the Persian state received in taxes were enough to buy 700 - 900 million liters of wheat, less than a quarter of the Roman tax revenues.

Guaporense

So, do you have any argument? Or just ad hominens?

The fact is that Indian civilization is young. Writing was used continuously in India for the last 2,500 years, while in the Fertile Crescent it has 5,000 years of history. The Mauryan Empire ruled over lands that did not have writing 300 years before it and there are very few ruins of Mauryan buildings.

Most "ancient" Indian buildings date from the middle ages, like these:



are from like the 13th century, so it is contemporary with European buildings like these (which, by the way, is way more advanced in terms of engineering than any existing medieval indian building):



The oldest stone building in India is the Great Stupa of Sanchi, this is actually the zenith of Mauryan engineering, build around 250 BC:



It measures 37 meters across. For comparison, the Parthenon, build 200 years earlier than the oldest existing stone structure in India, measures 70 meters across. So, those are the engineering capabilities of an empire equal or more powerful than the Roman according to the Indian chauvinists?

The Romans were building stuff like this 2,000 years ago:




The Great Stupa of Sanchi can be almost fitted inside these arches. You will only see engineering of this level in India until the modern age (i.e. 18th century onwards).

The fact is that 90% of the notable existing structures build before the 4th century CE are inside the territories of the Roman Empire at the time of Trajan. I think that this has to be taken into account before the emission of opinions.

The Imperial

Lol this is the first time i have come across someone say that the Indian Civilisation is young. I can only lol at this. No use arguing with you.

Its like what Indians say - pouring water on an upside down pot. . . . how much ever you pour, the stuff just doesn't get in!

Guaporense

No use arguing with you!

The fact IS that by comparison with the Central world system, Indian civilization is young. Indian buildings from the middle ages are comparable in terms of technology to the Egyptian buildings of the 20th century BC.

Indians and Chinese have a certain ideology that their civilization must be older than the "European's", since today they are in the sh*t, in the past they must have been in a better position. But the fact remains that Egypt has developed continuous civilization for about twice the time that India and China had! While Indian civilization is old in comparison with, for instance, the United States, it is not old if compared with the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East.

(also, Indus Valley civilization is not Indian civilization, it is actually a civilization that collapsed centuries before the continuous use of writing in India up to the present day)

The Imperial

Lol keep dreaming man.

Guaporense

My point was that there wasn't standing structures.

I mean't 1,200 BC. That was a typo.



This tread is about dick comparison! Look at the title!

It is also about having some basic NOTIONS of scale.

For instance, just because you find someone using a computer in Ethiopia it doesn't mean that Ethiopia is comparable to the USA in terms of technology. The same can be argued with China/Western eurasia.

So while there are some ruins from ancient china and some ancient structures, the point is that when compared with the mediterranean world they are clearly pale in comparison.

I perfectly know that we have SOME surviving stuff from outside of the Central world system during ancient times. But it is very small in quantity.

Most surviving pre-modern Chinese texts come from the Middle Ages, also the notion of China as an highly advanced civilization comes from the Tang and Song dinasties, not from the ancient period.

I was only comparing the differences in the function of mediterranean and chinese cities.

Chang'an was only large when it was the capital of China. One will never heard of a medieval Chang'an with half a million inhabitants without beign the political capital of China.

So the point is that the largest city in Ancient-Medieval China by far always was the center of political power, that's because these cities were consumer cities. They were not like Athens and Venice, but more like Ottoman Istanbul, living off the predation of the centralized government.

The simple fact is that there are many more surviving structures from the areas of the Roman Empire than from China at the same time. Just pointing that out.

The Pharos was refered out in reference to the engineering capabilities of the civilizations (I though about that when posting the pictures of chinese pagodas because I figured it out that the tallest western eurasian buildings were always much taller than the tallest buildings of any other civilization, that is an interesting fact that fits the other evidence I have seem: a more advanced culture is expected to build bigger, and not ancient culture build bigger than the Romans)

Well, I agree that argument was not valid.

Who said I don't like studying other cultures? I like it very much. I am just pointing out some inconvenient truths, since if there is one that I value the most is the truth.

Also, I never argued that some culture was "superior" to another. There is no such thing.

What I am arguing was that all existing evidence do not support the idea that the most powerful ancient polity was outside Western Eurasia. Which is the topic of this tread: determining the most powerful ancient states. I reached the conclusion that considering only the ancient period we cannot say that non-western eurasian states could compete with western eurasian states.

Maybe the simple reason is that western eurasia being far older had more time to develop their civilization.

For instance, Chinese civilization did not reach their zenith until the middle ages, a thousand years after the zenith of the classical culture. For this time period we can argue that Chinese civilization was more advanced than any other in the world.

However, for the ancient period we must conclude that western eurasia had a clear lead in military power. Since the Roman Empire was certainly the most powerful empire of ancient western eurasia, I reached the conclusion that it was the most powerful state in the ancient period.

Just connecting the dots, with no bias at all. Just hard, cold analysis without caring about being politicaly correct:

1- Writing was used continuously in western eurasia since 3,300 BC, compared with 1,200 BC for China and 500 BC for India.

2 - Agriculture was invented in Western Eurasia 11,000 to 14,000 years ago, compared with 9,000 years for China and 8,000 years for India.

3 - The oldest surviving structures in Western Eurasia are older than the oldest buildings in any other place by several thousand years.

The oldest surviving structure in the world is 10,000 years old and is from Jericho:


4 - One would expect that a civilization with more time to develop will tend to become more advanced.

5 - For the Roman period, 150 BC to 150 CE, we have that: 90% of the surviving buildings are from inside the Roman Empire, 10% for outside. That 90% of the estimated global levels of copper, lead, tin, gold, silver and mercury production came from the Roman Empire.

All the evidence point out to a rather clear conclusion. And it doesn't support the hypothesis that empires such as the Mauryan and the Han were comparable to the strongest western states of antiquity.

That's just my impression on the matter, given the information that I have collected.

HackneyedScribe

Is that supposed to mean anything? We found the foundations to those buildings. Are we supposed to think that they stopped building and slept without roofs over their heads?

Maybe to you. It's getting to sound pretty personal.

Look at your posts. You're discussing how ancient Egypt, Sumeria, etc... (which by extension includes Rome for some reason as you jumbled them all into "Western Eurasia") beat "India and China" in length of history. Which really has nothing to do with being "most powerful". Yeah, I'm looking at the title alright.

Which is why you compared the Erlitou ruins with equivalent more impressive "ruins", which in reality was just ruins with modern reconstructions built on top of it. In effect you compared ancient scale with modern scale. Uh-huh.

Excuse me, but you need more hard data than simply just saying so. Chang'an wasn't always the capital. In the latter Han Chang'an(most likely a satellite town of the previous) grew back to about the size it was, even though Luoyang was the capital, heavily signifying that it's size has to do with something more than just centralized control. On the other hand the "registered" population of Maoling and Yanling had larger populations than contemporary Chang'an(which was at its height in terms of population count). And these were just two out of the ten random cities listed with registered records surviving, which does not include all cities of the Han dynasty. Linzi was also claimed by contemporaries to be bigger than Chang'an, although we have no official records on population count. However I'm sure they made a census just like how they made a census of all their cities. It's just that we only have records of ten of them. And out of these ten(including Chang'an, so it's more like nine), two of them are bigger than Chang'an. None of these three were Han capitals, nor was the city of Linzi a Han capital. Lets not also forget that 5 out of the 9 excluding Chang'an only counted family size, not population size. In effect out of 4 random cities chosen HALF of them had more population than the Han capital. Now if we count family size by itself only Linzi would be greater than Chang'an, yet the other cities would be comparable in size with Chengdu having only 4000 less households. So by your own logic Rome was much less a consumer city than any Han city, considering Rome's size as compared with every other Roman city. Your logic, not mine.

There are more surviving structures because more ancient structures were repaired in that region. Or do you suppose the ruined foundations looked exactly the same as it is now 2000 years later?

Why is it that the tyranny of Oriental despotism suddenly not apply to huge construction projects from "Western Eurasia", but it applies to everything oriental? That's my question. Does the Han Gou and Hong Gou canal not help the population at large? These actually survive to this day because people had an incentive to repair it.

Oh how can this be any closer to a dick comparison. Wow, it's actually kind of funny. Do you expect me to now give data on the "height" of the tallest pagoda or something? It's pretty pointless because pagoda height is determined by RELIGION. For example, some pagodas have five stories because it symbolizes the five elements, others had stories for each chapter of a sutra, etc... They didn't build as high as they possibly can. That's because they didn't measure their manhood by their architecture.

It sounds more like that you are trying to topple what would be inconvenient truths for you. For example, I mentioned that the Han dynasty had its ample share of city ruins. Now you are arguing it has less surviving architecture, as if that means anything. Significant ruins mean architecture existed, which is all that matters when it comes to civilization having some form of architecture. No one aimed for their architecture to last 2000 years except tombs. And if it did, it was thanks to constant repair throughout those thousands of years. Not everyone puts the same amount of emphasis on that.

Which is why you made so many obvious mistakes when talking about other cultures, eh? I don't believe I ever belittled Rome as much as you attempted to belittle areas outside of your focus. I suppose one, with the intent of belittling other cultures, can still enjoy his studies in some fashion.

That's a bit of a stretch. You basically listed some of the achievements about "Western Eurasia", and then painted it as if it was an achievement of Rome. I don't think power works that way. Rome may be influenced by Phoenicians, Hittites, Egyptians, and Babylonians. It doesn't mean Rome were Phoenicians, Egyptians, etc... Plus, Roman achievements happened way after these ancient "Western Eurasian" achievements. That doesn't mean anything in terms of power, superiority, or whatever point you are trying to make. China had the longest continuous language today, in which a modern literate Chinese could easily read Zhou dynasty inscriptions. Does that mean anything in terms of wealth or power for the Han dynasty 1000 years later? No, it does not. When the United States invaded Iraq, the cabinet did not shake in fear at Iraq having such ancient ruins, with their ancient architecture and their ancient irrigation history on top of their ancient artifacts. No, Saddam hid in a hole in fear of American superiority in firepower. That's how power works.


ahem, not even China was completely cut off from the outside world. Civilizations are more advanced in certain aspects than others depending on the problems they faced. When concerning periods prior to the industrial revolution, to say that one major civilization is more advanced than some other major power in every aspect only signifies a lack of study on other cultures.

There is no way you could have gotten that number, unless if the source is completely unreliable. The amount of archeological digs on copper, tin, and mercury in India and China is zero. It doesn't mean they didn't produce any, it means no modern archeologist ever bothered with such a great scope. On the other hand gold and silver were imported. That doesn't mean anything in terms of power. In fact none of these products meant anything. Even if we knew the amounts each civilization produced we can't say anything about their industry. Otherwise the Spanish/Portuguese colonies in South America would be more powerful than their own mother country. The only metal that may show industry is iron (please don't make me whip out those equations again), simply because iron was plentiful in most areas of the globe. That's why there was a global change from bronze to iron culture. Again, the amount of archeology done for even the Roman empire is not enough to statistically mean anything, and the archeological progress for China and India is behind in both funding and time. For example, Pompeii was researched for how many hundred years? The Chang'an ruins was researched for how many years? Only .1% of Chang'an was uncovered. How much for Pompeii?

Darth Roach

That's because only part of the empire used money, and because its population was smaller. As was the population of the world at the empire's peak.

Shiva

Why does your own medicine taste so bitter to you? Lol....you had NO problem in your own ad-hominem against Lord of Gauda not so long ago ...



"The fact is that Indian civilization is young."

Not 'fact' but your own cooked up conjecture. Please refer to the heiroglyphs and the rather advanced systems of the Indus Valley of 2500 BC.



"there are very few ruins of Mauryan buildings."

So? The absence of evidence does not mean an evidence of absence. Your superficial knowledge of history is rather apparent when you say these things in the light of the FACT that India is the most invaded area in the history of mankind which has witnessed destruction at an unparalleled scale. To get an idea of the society and its achievements in Mauryan times, perhaps you ought to rely on contemporaneous accounts of Chinese travellers and chroniclers? Please present arguments which can be taken seriously, this sort of armchair wishful thinking is very tiresome.




"Most "ancient" Indian buildings date from the middle ages, like these:
are from like the 13th century, so it is contemporary with European buildings like these (which, by the way, is way more advanced in terms of engineering than any existing medieval indian building):"

Again, please refer to the IVC of 3000 BC (late period 2500BC) to bring yourself up-to-date about the level of achievement in not just building consturction but also sophisticated city planning, the likes of which were seen first in the West only in the Roman empire 2000 years post...and which form the very BASIS of modern town planning even today




"The oldest stone building in India is the Great Stupa of Sanchi, this is actually the zenith of Mauryan engineering, build around 250 BC:"

Let me reply to this by just 'correcting' you here:

The oldest SURVIVING stone building in India is the Great Stupa of Sanchi, this is actually the zenith of Mauryan engineering, build around 250 BC:

ok?


For one who poses as such an authority on world history, your lack of depth is rather lamentable. This is not ad-hominem but is meant in the most sympathetic way since your 'arguments' are embarrassingly full of holes. I wish you would bring your level of knowledge up to the rather admirable level of your passion, and that we can have a more meaningful discussion than just 'my gun is bigger than yours' sort of one-upmanship.

Peace!

tibetanbstanpo

If your world was restricted to the Medditeranean and its surroundings, perhaps you are a little closer to the truth, but if you are referring to the entire globe, Rome´s military establishment was actually smaller than that of Han China alone. In fact looking at Rome´s military, its pretty small for an empire of its size; far smaller than the hundreds of thousands deployed by the Persians, Indians and Chinese, and barely larger than nomadic empires of Mongolia. And while it was a professional force, the lack of horses in the army prevented it from projecting its power to any significant distance beyond its frontiers.

The Roman army under the early imperial period is typically composed of the legions and the auxiliars and for the most part the size of the legion is only between 150,000-200,000. While the auxiliars were usually between 200,000-300,000. Together, both legion and auxiliary the total Roman establishment usually numbered between 300,000-400,000, and occasionally up to half a million. This is much smaller than the near million men force of much of the Han the majority of which are also fully professional and the rest being at least semi professional.


The Eastern Han army is typically divided into three types: Jun-Zhou bing(commandery and prefecture army), Wang-Guo bing(army of the feudal kings), and bian-fang bing(frontier army).

The second of these are too small to be of importance.
Among them, the Jun-Zhou bing was the major force of the Eastern Han and were scattered across the empire and were composed largely of mercenaries and therefore professional. Because of the complexity of this army, we cannot really determine the actual size of their forces; however, we know that many of the regional commandery governors had tens of thousands of soldiers. For example in one case in the late 1st century, the Gansu commandery forces recruited 30,000 men alone.
The frontier army is the third type of military and they are semi professional farmer soldiers like the fubing and wei suo of Tang and Ming. The size of the force was hinted in the Hou Han Shu, biography of Xi Qiang, which mentioned that "in the three prefectures(You, Bing, and Liang), there were over 200,000 soldiers in agricultural colonies." “使君频举奉国命征讨逐寇贼，三州 有屯兵二十余万人，弃农桑，被苦役，而未有功效，劳费日滋。”
The three prefectures had most of the soldiers of the Northwestern frontier, the most heavily defended region. Therefore, we can assume that the Eastern Han frontier force probably numbered between 300,000-400,000, which is probably around the same size as the frontier army for most of the Western Han(exceptions were during Wudi's time, when the frontier army probably reached an all time high of 800,000-900,000, while during Wang Mang it was around 500,000 in size). These forces were directly owned by the central government and were the backbone of the Eastern Han.
In addition to these three regional forces, the Central Government also had three types of army; Dian wei Jun(inner quarter guards), Gong Wei Jun(palace Guards), and Cheng Wei Jun(city guards), the city guards are the major force and are composed of the northern army and the 12 gates farmer soldiers in Luo Yang. The Northern army was the most powerful force and was composed of around 40,000 full time professional cavalry men. The Jun-Zhou army was probably the largest of the armies in the Eastern Han, so the latter Han’s total force was probably at least 800,000-900,000 of which at least half are fully professional mercenaries.

In addition to this, like the Roman Empire, the Eastern Han also loved to conscript "barbarian" soldiers into their army. During the Qiang rebellion, Ren Shang and Deng Zun conscripted numerous Qiang soldiers into the Han army to crush the rebellion, the Southern Xiongnu and Wuhuan were two other forces which were regularly brought into the Han ranks. The exact size of the barbarian establishment is unknown but probably varied widely over time and are at least in the tens of thousands, most likely more in times of trouble.



Also, from an examination of historical cases, the Roman military would probably be at a disadvantage against the Han army. This is due to the much larger cavalry component in the Han army, which according to Ralph Sawyer, made up around 1/5 of a typical field army(this is not taking consideration of some armies going into northern expeditions, which were exclusively composed of cavalry). The typical Roman legion of 6000 men only had 120 cavalry men, or 1/50th of their whole army. Roman cavalry mostly comes from auxiliars which often made up over one half of an expeditionary force. However, even in the auxiliary department, the Han allies were far more cavalry based than Roman auxiliars; besides the Samartians, cavalry only made up around 1/3 the force of Roman Auxiliars. Estimates of P.A. Holder puts the cavalry content of the auxiliary at 74,624 out of 217,624 men. This would put the entire cavalry content of the Roman military at around 80,000, including both Roman and auxiliaries.
The Han auxiliaries were usually made of the Qiang, Western region armies, Southern Xiongnu and Wuhuan, the last two been the major force and whose armies were almost exclusively cavalry based. The population of the Southern Xiongnu was near 300,000 while that of the Wuhuan were at least 200,000(See Zhongguo Renkou Tong Kao, Dong Han Juan), it as generally assumed that near 1/3 of the entire nomadic establishments could be conscripted into the army, so the Han auxiliary cavalry from these two nomads alone should be around 150,000. And like the typical Roman expeditionary force, auxiliary forces usually made up over half of a typical Han expeditionary forces campaigning outside of the frontier.
The frontier army of the Han probably had 1/5 cavalry content, and the central army were composed of a force of around 50,000 cavalry. This would put the cavalry force of these two region alone above 100,000. This is not including the Commandery forces, although they probably had a larger infantry component. So the total cavalry force of the Han should be at least near 200,000. This is not even including the auxiliary forces, which would put the Han total cavalry content at least in the range of 400,000.


Thats an interesting graph, it would have had some authority had it not came from a professional whose background lies in political science and not history.
For a real military historian´s view on the subject, you might want to take a look at Edgar Kiser and Yong Cai, "War and Bureaucratization in Qin China: Exploring an Anomalous Case", American Sociological Review, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Aug., 2003), pp. 523

"Here we show that warfare in early Chinese history was more frequent, more intense, and lasted longer than elsewhere...because the differences between China and the other cases in Table 1 are both very large and consistent across out three measures, the data clearly demonstrate that warfare in early China was uniquely severe. The duration and frequency of war in China are higher than almost all other cases(Assyria and the European states come close), the militarization ratio is much higher(none of the other cases come close, and the casualties are significantly larger than most others as well(with the possibble exception of eighteenth century France)...Assyria, Persia, and Greece(the Delian League) show the highest militarization ratios in Table 1, although only Greece is half the level of Qin China. Assyria was "synonymous with militarism" in the 500-600 years leading up to the formation of the empire it was engaged in almost constant warfare. However, its army size peaked at 50,000 to 70,000, far smaller than China's, even controlling for population. Although the militarization ratio for the Persian Empire is similar to Assyria's, the duration of war in its formative phase was much shorter. Most of the important conquests that produced the largest empire in the world up to that time came within one generation. The effects of war were thus more limited. The figures for the Greek Delian League are similar to Persia-high miltiarization, but for a very short duration.
The militarism of the Roman Empire was also on a much smaller scale than that of the Chinese. It had a peak army size of around 500,000 with a population of about 50 million. Although the duration of frequent warfare was fairly long, the nature of the wars was very different. Early warfarer was frequent, but it was usually within Italy and on a relatively small scale.(this increased with the Punic wars). Overall, most wars in the Republic were "gigantic wars of plunder" against relatively weak adversaries...
The Byzantine Empire was less bellicose than Rome, and more defensive than expansionary. It was overextended at the beginning of the seventh century and faced "wave after wave of invaders" for the next two centuries. In spite of this, its militarization ratio is very low. The Ottoman Empire was similar in general respects: It also faced frequent war - over half of the years between 1500-1700, but had an even lower militarization ratio.
Medieval and early modern Europe resembled warring states China in some respect-over centuries of warfare, hundreds of independent political units were eliminated. However, the major difference between the two cases is that European warfare did not match intensity of China's until the seventeenth century. Medieval warfare was on a very small scale: The combined English and French armies at the battle of Hastings totaled about 40,000; 50,000 or so went on the first crusade, and about 12,000 Englis silders fought about 30,000 French at Agincourt in 1415. The scale in creased significantly after the early modern "military revolution" and only then did it begin to surpass Warring States China. The combined armies of major Western European States were 942,000 in 1700 and 887,000 in 1850 still less than the 1 million Warring States total. The highest casualties in sixteenth century Europe were the 97,000 lost by both sides in the Ottoman War(1537-1547). The first European war to tally over 1 million combined casualties was the Thirty Years War."


One thing to note is that Professional soldiers are not more efficient than conscription because of its limited size, in fact armies that are the most militarized adopt universal conscription and not small professional forces. This has been the case in China as well as modern Europe where conscription was the norm during all the major wars since the Napoleonic era. The Western Han was far militarized and waged war far more frequent than the Tang, not the other way around.

Its funny how you quoted Donald Wagner when he actually concluded something completely contrary to you in that he had little doubt the government sponsored iron production of the Han powered by the productive blast furnace was on a much bigger scale than the small private owned Roman bloomery furnaces.


To quote Donald Wagner, China has lead Europe in the production of iron ``by Song times, and has probably been so for at least 12 centuries...While there did exist large state ironworks run by the Roman army, most iron production occurred in thousands of tiny units scattered in villages throughout the Empire. There would have been no way at all of enforcing a monopoly, and it is also difficult to imagine what advantage the Roman state might have derived from such a monopoly.

The difference lay in the technology of iron production. Bloomery smelting, the only iron-smelting process known in Europe until Medieval times, lends itself well to small-scale production. It was used in early China to some (unknown) extent, but by the 3rd century B.C. it appears that most iron was being produced in blast furnaces, which provide very large economies of scale.

...In the Roman Empire, though iron production was rarely concentrated, there were other industries whose technology did encourage large-scale production. Rostovtzeff (1957, pp. 349­352) notices a trend in the Imperial period away from 'house-economy' toward large-scale 'capitalist' industry and then back toward a smaller scale of industrial production. This course of development is loosely analogous to that seen in Han China, with the rise of blast furnace iron production, the establishment of large ironworks under the monopoly, and the later rise of illegal iron production, very likely on a smaller scale than the monopoly ironworks. Any detailed comparison is of course rendered pointless by two important differences in Han China: a technology which provides extremely large economies of scale and a powerful interventionist government.

Rostovtzeff, writing in the 1920's, discusses several possible explanations for the 'failure' of large-scale industry to develop further in Roman Europe. He concludes that a major factor was a failure of demand...The quotations above from the debate in Han China include arguments which are common today. Small-scale production can have important political, social, and ecological advantages; large-scale production can be technically superior, producing a better product, and can be more efficient in its consumption of scarce resources. "