In the field of Roman history, large amounts of ink have been spilt over the question of whether the economy of the Roman empire can be regarded as less sophisticated than that of late medieval and early modern Europe. In a similar vein, western Europe has served as a yardstick in the intense search for the ‘sprouts of capitalism’ that has long dominated the study of Chinese economic history. These approaches are now widely regarded as unsatisfactory, in part because they result in a narrowly economic research agenda and also because many feel that if we want to understand how pre-modern empires worked, more insights can be gained by comparing these empires with each other than by comparing them with the city-states and emerging nation-states of Europe.Footnote ¹

The present volume takes up this challenge by examining military, political, social, and economic developments in Han China in the light of developments in Roman Italy and in the Roman empire, and vice versa. In the Introduction, Walter Scheidel forcefully argues that comparisons between these two empires are potentially remunerative. His main argument is that there were many parallel developments at a macro-level, although he does not deny the existence of manifest divergences, such as the Chinese failure to develop a close equivalent to the civil law tradition of the Romans.

In Chapter 1, Scheidel tries to demonstrate the strengths of the comparative method by calling attention to some striking parallels between patterns of state formation in Qin–Han China and the historical trajectory followed by republican and imperial Rome. In line with this general approach, he plays down differences in levels of bureaucratization, even venturing the suggestion that the Roman tradition of ‘government without bureaucracy’ and heavy reliance on the cooperation of self-governing city councils did not profoundly influence the course of Roman imperial history. This approach logically leads to the question of why the fifth and sixth centuries CE witnessed the restoration of centralized government in China but an irreversible process of political fragmentation in western Europe. Although Scheidel identifies the Confucian-legalist tradition as a potent force promoting imperial unity in China, he admits that the exact reasons for this ‘first divergence’ between Europe and China are not well understood.

In Chapter 2, Nathan Rosenstein explores the relationships between war, state formation, and military institutions. Building heavily on Mark Lewis’ monographs on early Chinese history, he identifies the unremitting violence of the Warring States Period as the main factor that promoted the creation of an imperial autocracy and of a bureaucratic apparatus capable of controlling the Chinese population down to the level of groups of five households – originally with the aim of mobilizing huge armies composed of peasant conscripts. By contrast, Rome successfully enlarged its manpower base by incorporating large groups of Italians as citizens and by building an alliance system that left local elites autonomous. The emperor Augustus created a standing army of professionals but this continued to be led by aristocratic non-specialists. Only after the prolonged military crisis of the third century CE were military and civilian elites separated, but this separation did not keep the western half of the empire together in the period of the barbarian invasions. Like Scheidel, Rosenstein describes this process without really explaining the striking contrast with the successful reunification of China in the final decades of the sixth century.

Chapter 3, by Karen Turner, looks at the development and general character of Roman and Chinese criminal law. In China, legal change tended to be seen in a negative light and those emperors who aspired to clean up the law books presented their policies as attempts to eliminate secondary accretions. Similarly, the imposition of punishments that were either lighter or heavier than those prescribed by the laws was often frowned upon. The bottom line was that legal certainty was seen as an essential element in a legal system that had been created to discipline the population of the Qin and Han empires. In practice there were so many types of crime, and so many convicts, that convicted criminals formed a more efficient labour pool than slaves. As Turner notes, the Roman republican tradition of public trials, in which cases were judged by juries, was completely different. Up to a point, proper procedure remained important even after the displacement of the republican jury courts by single judges, and in late antiquity Christianity provided a new counterweight to imperial power in political cases. The underlying message is that both the European tradition of procedural justice and the modern Chinese emphasis on law as a means to preserve order have deep historical roots.

In Chapter 4, Maria Dettenhofer looks at eunuchs. Much of her discussion is descriptive, and her conclusion that eunuchs were ideal mediators between emperors and subjects because their loss of genitals lowered their social status is unspectacular.

Chapter 5, by Peter Bang, argues that Han China and Rome were both tributary empires. In an analysis that leans heavily on the taxes-and-trade model that Keith Hopkins developed for the Roman economy,Footnote ² he emphasizes the importance of commercial exchange as a way of transforming tribute into a flexible and disposable surplus. More interesting are his observation that the sheer size of tributary empires enabled their rulers to achieve economies of scale in army organization and his suggestion that the relative ‘cheapness’ of these empires helps to explain their longevity. Unfortunately, no attempt is made to back up this intriguing hypothesis with concrete evidence. Can we be certain that the creation of the Roman empire reduced levels of military spending in the Mediterranean world and, if so, did this development entail material benefits for the entire population or only for local, regional, and imperial elites?

Chapter 6, by Mark Lewis, looks at gift circulation and charity in Han China and in the Roman empire. It appears that the Han emperors not only ‘gave’ sacrifices to the gods, and ranks, cash, and gold to officials and nobles, but also awarded dove-staffs to the elderly, distributed land to needy peasants, and provided assistance to regions afflicted with flood or drought. Unlike their Roman colleagues, the Han emperors seem to have made most of their gifts to people who lived in the countryside. As Lewis points out, this pattern can be traced back to the Warring States Period, when rulers used gifts of titles and land to ensure the loyalty of rural elites and especially that of the innumerable peasants who served in their armies. This tradition of direct control over the rural population also helps to explain the absence in Han China of anything resembling the Graeco-Roman phenomenon of urban euergetism. Whereas the self-governing urban communities of the Roman empire functioned as public spheres in which local elites defined themselves by bestowing gifts on their fellow citizens, the only public realm in Han China was governmental.

The volume ends with an extremely detailed account from Walter Scheidel of the monetary systems of the Han and Roman empires. The main point of this long contribution, which makes up about one third of the entire volume, is that the value of the bronze coins of Han China was not entirely nominal. Scheidel also asks why the Han emperors failed to develop a bimetallic currency system along the lines of the Hellenistic kingdoms and the Roman empire. Relying heavily on the famous story that one of the palaces of the emperor Wang Mang contained sixty chests each of which was filled with 10,000 jin (c.2,500 kg) of gold, he argues that only the force of tradition can explain the failure of the Chinese emperors to mint gold coins. However, since the veracity of literary references to imperial wealth cannot be determined, there is still a lot to be said in favour of the traditional view that gold and silver were not coined in China because these metals were in short supply.

The importance of gold coins in the monetary system of the Roman empire also casts some doubt on Scheidel’s claim that the economy of the Roman empire was more heavily monetized than that of Han China. If Duncan-Jones is right that gold coins accounted for about 70% of the Roman money supply,Footnote ³ we must surely reckon with the possibility that a high proportion of monetary stocks was immobilized by hoarding. Therefore it is by no means certain that levels of liquidity in Han China were dramatically lower that those prevailing in the early Roman empire.

As Scheidel explains (p. 137), the main value of the comparative method is that it invites us to question established interpretations by defamiliarizing the familiar. In other words, comparative history must be more than juxtaposition. Viewed in this light, the harvest of this ambitious volume is less abundant than might have been expected. It is true that some interesting new hypotheses are formulated, for instance about the cost-effectiveness of tributary empires and about the fiduciary aspects of Chinese coinage, but, as the latter example shows, at least some of these insights are achieved simply by re-examining the surviving evidence rather than by applying the comparative method. Although on an abstract level one can only agree with Scheidel’s view that comparisons between developments in various pre-industrial empires can help historians to come to grips with problems of historical causation (p. 6), comparative approaches can also be used for the mundane purpose of identifying promising areas for further research, which is essentially what Lewis does in his short but important contribution. While some historians may find this particular way of doing comparative history insufficiently ambitious, it seems particularly appropriate when confronting two tributary empires whose military organizations, political cultures, social structures, and juridical traditions were as different as those of Han China and the Roman empire.