Darth Roach

Why did their general population live so much worse than in Rome, then?

Lord_of_Gauda

I don't think they did. Faxian for example, was astounded by the fact that the Gupta Empire didn't really have 'truely poor and homeless people'- even the lowest rungs in society were by and large fed and clothed amply.

Our 'idea' of what is living well/worse for example, is skewed by our modern interpretations of classical history. For example, we see big dense cities in the mediterranean and not so much in rest of the world and we automatically conclude that the mediterranean world must've been the richest, because in our current world, the richest nations have the densest cities.
But we ignore the reality that city density in pre-industrial world is fundamentally dictated by terrain: in places such as Italy, Greece, Mesopotamia, the terrain lends itself intrinsically towards greater density: cities in Greece/Rome do not have infinite space to grow- they are usually located on small coastal plains or narrow river valleys ringed with a mountainous/hilly terrain. In mesopotamia, we have encroachment of the desert being the prime 'densification' factor.

However, in places like China, India and western/northern Europe (France, Germany, England, etc), we wouldn't see high density in pre-industrial times due to again, terrain: most of these lands are vast plains with essentially 'infinite' space to grow. Now, we can make a fairly accurate generalization about human beings:given a choice, with everything equal, people will prefer to live in their own home than apartments. This adage is true for the vast majority of people even today. As such, in places such as the Yellow river valley, the rolling plains of Southern England and France, the vast Indo-Gangetic plains, there simply arnt enough geographical 'choke-points' to concentrate a city to the same degree as in the mediterranean. For eg, Athens or Rome can grow only to a point before the mountains/hills hems it in. By contrast, Delhi, Chang An or Pataliputra could grow in every/most direction for hundreds of kilometers- essentially 'infinitely', as they are centrally located cities on flood plains.
As such, these locations obviously will not have the same 'metropolitan density' of cities that are ultimately, choked by geographical factors

As far as material evidence goes, there is no evidence to suggest that the Indians, Chinese and Persians/Mesopotamians of antiquity/early medeival period had a lower quality of life than the Romans/Greeks. Indeed, analysis of human remains- indicators such as average height, bone density, etc. quite categorically points towards a superior constitution for the average man in India and China over those in the Roman/Greek/Persian world: which is consistent with the fact that Indian/Chinese diet is significantly more varied, has a much bigger diversity of vegetable and spices, which are essential carriers of minerals, vitamins and anti-oxidants into our diet.
This is also corroborrated by the fact that the bulk of the vegitables in our diet that are of old world origin, singularly originate from lands east of the indus river- the Indian subcontinent, South-East Asia and Chinese plains.

We also come to the conclusion that the Greco-Roman world was better off, simply because we have far greater material evidence left from the Greco-Roman world. But again, there are contributing factors towards this: climate and human interaction.

The vast majority of the mediterranean is not humid- which leads to far better preservation of material evidence. It isn't just organic material that perishes faster in higher humidity- even stone, bricks, etc. deteriorate significantly faster in higher humidity conditions. This is because, where there is higher humidity, there be higher condensation and evaporation over the course of the year. Higher levels of condensation/evaporation leads to higher levels of expansion and contraction in anything that contains water- which is virtually everything, as air gets into everything and leaves water residue: a rock in Congo deteriorates faster than a rock in Libya: higher levels of condensation & evaporation leads to higher expansion/contraction within the rock, thus structurally weakening it faster.

Thus, it is to be expected that less humid regions of the world will yeild higher material evidence than more humid regions of the world: even in India, the material evidence of first civilizations are abundant in the Pakistan-Rajasthan region, region that are less humid than peninsular India or the Ganges basin. Same with China- material evidence drops off as you travel from North China to South, directly in correlation with increasing humidity from North to South.

The second major factor too, is human interactions: It is no coincidence that there are more material evidence from Rome from 100 BCE to 200 CE (300 years) than there is for the last two millenias of Chinese and Indian history. It is no coincidence that China and India went through several phases of large swathes of land genocided and razed to the ground while almost all of the mediterranean world has never been genocided or razed to that scale. It is important to note than when we talk about material destruction and its impact on archaeology, scale is the relevant benchmark: destroying a city here or a city there has very little effect on overall material quality of a vast civilization. But razing and genociding entire regions the size of France and Germany put together makes a massive difference- this is the scale of destruction that has impacted Persia, India and China on multiple accounts while singularly being absent in the mediterranean world- a direct correlation with higher material evidence from the mediterranean than most of the world.

Most of the historical research fails to factor in these things and as such, gets disproportionately skewed in favour of mediterranean history- which after all, also has a component of favouritism associated with it, as we westerners consider mediterranean history as 'our history' while Indian and Chinese histories are 'their history' and are inherently less funded and interesting to the western scholarship.
Unfortunately, India or China have not had the material wealth in the recent centuries to compete with western institutions of education, which is why they have not been able to successfully bridge the gap of funding and interest shown in western history by westerners. But times are changing and one can only hope that their future generations can uncover the complete picture of their civilizations far more effectively than 'us outsiders' have done for them.

Guaporense

Perhaps the process of political centralization of the Sassanids was caused by Rome's decline whose influence previsouly keept these lands unorganized. Now with the decline of the Roman Empire and it's political influence these lands could get organized.

An organized Persia was not in the interests of Rome and Rome at their zenith had the power to make it not happen, in the same way that the USA keept Latin America mostly free of communists during the cold war.

Guaporense

Source?

The only quantitative sources that we have are that the Roman Empire imported 50 million sestertii per year from India and another 50 million sestertii per year from China and the Arab peninsula.

Archaeological evidence and reconstruction of trade routes show that goods flowed from China and India to the mediterranean as it was there that people had money to buy stuff:



How many tons per year? Certainly an insignificant fraction as compared to Rome's output.

No, not 25 times: 15 times was the standard conversion ratio for most human history.

Also, of course you think that India and China were richer than the west for 90% of history, while in the recent past there is the undeniable fact that the West became 1 million times richer than India and China.

You also do not provide ANY actual evidence of China and India beign richer than the west. Just assumptions, perhaps based on simple anti-western ideology.

Let's se the ACTUAL evidence them!

Silver taxes per capita in the 17th century and 18th century:

Silver taxes per capita 1675 CE

Netherlands ------- 161.9 grams of silver
England ------------ 45.1 grams of silver
France -------------- 46.6 grams of silver
Spain ---------------- 35.8 grams of silver
Ottoman Empire -- 11.8 grams of silver
Qing China --------- 7.0 grams of silver

Silver taxes per capita 1775 CE

Netherlands ------- 170.7 grams of silver
England ------------ 158.4 grams of silver
France -------------- 66.4 grams of silver
Spain ---------------- 63.1 grams of silver
Ottoman Empire -- 12.9 grams of silver
Qing China --------- 4.2 grams of silver

Other indicators of economic development such as urbanization also show that China and India lagged behing France and Spain and MUCH behing England and the Netherlands.

The Netherlands in the late 17th century had an economy SUPERIOR in terms of development as compared with Japan in 1940!

Japan for instance had 50% of their labor force engaged in agriculture in 1940, while the Netherlands had only 40% of their labor force engaged in agriculture in 1700 CE. Also the Netherlands around 1700 CE was more urbanized and had a higher per capita income as compared with Japan in the mid 20th century (Netherlands in 1700 CE, 2,600 dollars as compared with 1,760 dollars for Japan in 1936).

The general reconstruction of per capita output shows that:

(graph came from a paper presented in September 2011 in the 9th conference of European Historical Economics Society)

From the 14th century to the 16th century the richest region in the world was Italy, from the 16th to the 18th century it was the Netherlands, in the 19th century came Britain. While all the European countries in this sample are clearly above the rest of the world.

From before the 14th century we lack decent data to produce estimates, here we have per capita income estimates based on some surviving data from the middle east, produce by scholars from the London School of Economics. However according to the MIT Economic Historian Peter Temin, the comparative evidence points out that Roman Italy in the 1-2nd centuries CE was about as rich as UK and the Netherlands in the 18th century, so far well above ALL non-western societies in all recorded pre-industrial historical gdp per capita estimates.

While 4th century BC Athenian silver and wheat wages compared very favourably with any other pre-industrial wages:




During the Early Middle Ages apparently the most developed societies were Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia, which were the regions of the mediterranean that declined the least from the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. With the economic recovery of the high middle ages by the 14-15th centuries Italy had regained the top spot as the richest region in the world.

Guaporense

We do not have much actual evidence of the actual standards of living in Ancient China and India. However the scant evidence shows for example that huts escavated in China from 8000 BC to 3000 BC increased in size from 7-8 square meters to 25-30 square meters, showing increasing living standards with the development of agriculture.

Still 90% of the Chinese houses remained huts for the next several thousands of years until the last 30 years when China is finally reaching modernity.

For instance, in this paiting dated from the Song Dynasty at the height of pre-industrial Chinese economic prosperity shows that most houses were still huts with 1-2 rooms:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...r_QingMing.jpg

While houses in Classical Greece, 1,500 years earlier were already houses with a dozen rooms:



On average Classical Greek and Roman houses were 5-6 times bigger than houses of all other ancient and medieval civilizations. Classical Graeco-Roman houses were typically 2,500 - 3,000 square feet in size (these above were 3,200 square feet at the base), with 8-10 rooms while typical houses of other civilizations were usually huts of 1-2 rooms and 400-500 square feet.

I reached the conclusion that China and India were poorer than the classical mediterranean from comparative evidence: since the classical mediterranean was clearly well above the curve of ancient and medieval economies it is most probable that other contemporary cultures were least developed.

Lord_of_Gauda

That is the only qualitative source we have for western trade with the eastern resource behemoths (India and China). Our sources about trade within these eastern behemoths lack precise economic numbers, but numerous authors from antiquity- such as Faxian, Xuanzeng, etc. have commented upon hundreds and thousands of trade caravans connecting the Indians with the Chinese via the Soghdians as well as tremendous amount of trade via the South China sea.

That map specifically deals with sea route only, not land route, as not a single land route- even overland land route between Egypt and Puntland, is not shown. Zero trade route along the Nile- that we know existed, is shown. Therefore, what you are quoting, is incomplete source to support your skewed perspective.

India, Persia and China had insignificant silver output compared to Rome. They had orders of magnitude greater gold output than that of Rome. You seem to be unaware of the fact that most metal mined in human history can be traced to its original mines- simply because the isotopic balance of ores differ from mine to mine. In some cases, we can do this for gemstones too (we can do this for Diamonds and Emeralds, based on impurities content and their type, we cannot with Rubies and most others).
You might be interested to know that over 70% of the gold that is around today has originated from east of mesopotamia- predominantly from India, Iranian plateau and central Asia.
This is despite the glut of gold from the Americas and Africa in the last 500 years. This might give you an idea as to how insignificant the Roman gold production was compared to Indian, Chinese, Persian and such.
Certainly, archaeology confirms this- we have found far more gold from Persia, India, Central Asia and China than we have found in europe from excavations.
The fabled 'Begram treasure' alone is greater (in pure mass) than the top 100 gold hoardes discovered in the European/mediterranean world.

False. For most of Human history, previous to the last two hundred years, gold has historically traded at 20:1 to 25:1 by weight against silver. Numerous sources exist for this conversion rate amongst various cultures and times in human history.

I prefer providing an analysis of a situation than peddling incomplete and inaccurate facts like you and your ilk do. Incase you havn't noticed, i am not big on academic dishonesty and i have pointedly questioned the conclusion you and your sources draw from the evidence presented only to be greeted with stunning silence from you. I know the reason why so i don't take it personally: you are more interested in pepetuating your 'Rome and Europe rocks, everyone else is crap' mentality- which is why you make absurd statements like Roman empire had 75-80% people in the upper-middle class bracket.

The evidence of India and China being far richer than the Greco-Roman world throughout 1st millenium BCE and 1st millenium CE is fairly categoric and obvious: both these regions had population comparable to (and for most of the 2000 years period i mention, greater than) the mediterranean world. China and India also had significantly greater gold output, they had traders encompassing a far broader and diversified trade network and most importantly of all, they were agricultural and resource behemoths compared to the mediterranean: the food output of the yellow river valley and the indo-gangetic plain dwarves food production of anything west of it into insignificance, these regions specialized in key industries (India was the apex of metallurgical quality throughout 1st millenium BCE and CE, China was the apex of ceramics for most of this period as well, China was the singular world leader in silk production as well as paper, India was the nexus of alchemy- predominantly used in the dying and tanning industries in that era). Furthermore, these regions were havens of expensive commodities such as spices- so much so that for a period, black pepper was almost worth its weight in gold to the Romans.

These factors outweigh any pseudo-scientific documents you produce and draw conclusions that are not only absurd but logical fallacies.

Lets see you address anything I have said about the spurious nature of your data for the last 20 posts i've commented upon your stuff and then we shall talk.

Precisely the kind of intellectual dishonesty we talk about that you refuse to address. We are specifically talking about 1st millenium BCE and 1st millenium CE here, and you come up with figures from 1775 and 1675 CE.

I have repeatedly told you that comparing Netherlands with China or Ottoman Empire is as patently unfair as comparing the Per Capita Income on PPP basis of Singapore with USA: Singapore obliterates USA in such a benchmark ( PPP of 56,000-62,000 per capita depending on your source- IMF, World Bank or CIA factbook versus 46,000-47,000 for the USA from the same sources).
Drawing conclusions like you do, one would say Singapore is a far richer society and far more economically successful than the USA. Which would be ridiculous, since it ignores economy of scale, the fact that Singapore can be collapsed if just one major bank of their goes kaput while most economists believe the USA is 'too big to collapse' and as such.
I have also told you repeatedly that comparing gigantic polities such as Mauryan/Gupta/Mughal India, Qing/Tang/Han China, Ottoman Empire, etc. can only be valid with each other and empires of similar scale- comparison for example, with the entire Roman empire.
But no.You engage in logical fallacies such as comparing Italy and Greece (two of the most developed regions of the ROman empire) with the entire Indian subcontinent or China- which obviously is the average of extremely rich (magadha region, central china plain) and extremely poor regions ( south-eastern coastal china, central Indian boonies, etc).
Your comparison, of comparing Netherlands with Qing China, is as laughable as me comparing Moscow with entire USA and concluding that Russians are better off than USA because of such skewed standards. I have asked you repeatedly to consider comparing the richest regions of India/China with richest regions of Europe at a given date previous to the Industrial revolution, but you have patently refused to entertain such thought- one wonders why.

Not to mention, you have conviniently side-stepped the fact that we have explicit documents from the latter Mughal Empire period, that shows in 1600 CE, Mughal Empire, which comprised of half of Indian subcontinent, collected over 16 million pounds in taxes while the entire British treasury was worth 6 million pounds in 1800, that the Mughal Empire circa 1700 CE- which encompasses almost the entire subcontinent, collected taxes in the vicinity of 120 million pounds.
Again, one wonders why.



Truefor post 1750s CE. Not true for periods prior to it.
True. Mumbai has a superior economy today than the entire British Empire circa 1900 CE. Proves zilch.
I expect little tiny pieces of land-whether they be independent such as Netherlands or not- such as London, the Delhi/Beijing region- to be extremely affluent at certain points in history.

Again, compare like to like. Lets see the figures for Netherland- the most advanced region of Europe- compared to the most advanced region of Japan- the Oda-Kyoto region.
Again, your comparison of Netherlands with Japan is as laughable as comparing Singapore with USA and drawing the conclusion that Singapore obliterates the US of A in every economic benchmark save gross GDP.

The graph is worth less than most graphs i see in 1st year mechanics, given that your graph is incomplete, the data-points are purely speculative and the error margin is greater than the actual weight of the data. Seems to me that economists patently lack sufficient understanding of mathematics to realize that when your error margin is greater than the magnitude of data itself, it means absolutely zilch. Like, do you people seriously refuse to understand the simple idea that saying 'the value of x = 2.5 +/- 1000' means essentially the same as 'we don't have the slightest clue,pick a number and run with it' ??

I see no evidence for that. The richest 'region' of the world from 14th to 18th century was most probably the Delhi region of India or Beijing region of China. I see no data to refute this.

Trouble is, again, you have hardly any data on non-western societies and your MIT economic historian ignores the salient fact that the data on income of Roman Italy carries an error margin far greater than the value of the data itself- which again, does not cut the mustard with sciences that are a wee bit more heavy on mathematics.

Those numbers again, are speculative to a degree that is greater than the value of the data itself.
Again, similar situation as 'x=2.5, +/- 1000'. Ie, patently retarded.

Speculative and without any basis. The early middle ages are the zenith of civilization in India, with as many as a dozen universities in full active participation with each other and extremely stratified trade networks. Seems like those who talk about Syria, Mesopotamia and Egypt on the early middle ages period have zero inkling on Indian history of that period.


It might've been the richest country in the world, but the richest region is again, patently absurd- the richest region of the world at that time most likely was the area the size of Italy encompassing the Chinese capital.


Completely irrelevant without an actual number on the average family size. As i've mentioned before, today, the average house in India is about 2x larger than the average house in USA. But the US citizens have a higher living standard, since the average household size of USA is 4, while that of India is 8.
Housing size without family size is as irrelevant as speed of a particle without knowing its direction.

You have no idea from those foundation stones whether the average house had a dozen rooms or if every two rooms were a self-sustaining unit with 4 walls encompassing a 'house'. There is no reason why houses cannot share a common wall- something that is rather common from post-reneissance Europe for example.

Not to mention, Indus Valley Civilization shows similar level of architecture from almost 5000 years ago.


Interesting how you conclude that all other civilizations lived in huts- given that huts very rarely survive the test of time, please show us your sources that confirm the 'huts' being the model of standard housing for civilizations other than the Greco-Romans through antiquity.

Again, houses 5-6 times bigger means zilch without figures on total number of people in the dwelling. If your Greek family of 5 were living with 10 slaves in a house with 3000 square feet, while the average Chinese family of 5 lived in a house of 400 square feet and slaves lived in a seperate house of 400 square feet, seems to me that the Chinese family is better off.
But ofcourse, i do not expect you to address such considerations.

You did no such thing as comparative evidence.
Comparative evidence shows that the housing structure of 1st millenium BCE India is of brick-built dwellings, with thicker walls, larger room area (though smaller dwellings in total-indicating smaller numbers of dwellers per house) than the mediterranean world, it shows metallurgical quality patently greater than any seen throughout classical mediterranean as well as comparative testimonies from third party travellers that singularly depict India as the nexus of human civilization circa 1st millenium BCE and 1st millenium CE.
Comparative evidence ? I am sorry, but your knowledge of Indian and Chinese histories is quite insignificant- you should proceed to enlighten yourself on the very basic chronology of history of those regions before you even proceed to judge them.

Darth Roach

Source, please.

The Arsacids were weak because they did not really attempt to change their system while it worked. The house of Sasan saw themselves as successors to the Achaemenids was only one of the reasons they established a new system. A more prominent reason was that after the last Parthian king died, Ardashir had to (re)instate rule over the Parthians vassals and provinces, essentially conquering the place all over again. Ardashir wanted to prevent revolts and internecine warfare - rampant under the Arsacids - by brutally stamping centralized rule all over the empire.

HackneyedScribe

I think both of you miss the part where this is "taxes per capita". Most people would interpret it as the amount of taxes the government takes from the average person, it has nothing to do with wealth. Quite the opposite, in fact. Qing emperors used to boast about how taxes were "just enough" for expenditure.
I wonder if we are even looking at the same picture. I think you confused open-spaced restaurants with actual housing, though even these houses are far from huts. Also, please keep note that actual housing (of one family) consists of several small houses + a central courtyard. Housing in China is different than housing in Pompeii or Athens. In fact it's very similar to the hutongs China have nowadays, though present courtyards are much smaller. Plus, is calling them "huts" really necessary?

Isabella

Shalom, reading this with interest! I cannot PM you back, though, because I have to have 15 posts or more, and I have only just joined. :-(

Isabella

But apparently I need 10 to email you, so maybe after this post I can do that instead!