The Dragon and the Eagle: The Rise and Fall of the Chinese and Roman Empires by Sunny Y. Auyang

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Dragon and the Eagle: The Rise and Fall of the Chinese and Roman Empires by Sunny Y. Auyang Nathan Rosenstein Sunny Y. Auyang. The Dragon and the Eagle: The Rise and Fall of the Chinese and Roman Empires. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2014. xxvi + 399 pp. 3 appendices, 5 timelines, 18 maps. Cloth, $35.00. Comparative histories are difficult to write. They require mastery of two or more completely different bodies of scholarship, a sophisticated understanding of the sources on which those works are based, and the ability to read them in their original languages. And most important, the comparisons should produce insights into the individual histories that would not easily emerge if viewed in isolation. Sunny Auyang, a retired professor of physics, has undertaken a comparative study of the Roman and Chinese empires from the foundations of Rome and the Zhou dynasty to the collapse of each in the fourth and fifth centuries c.e. The result is an object lesson in why good comparative histories are so rare. Auyang divides her study into two roughly equal parts of four chapters each. The first part traces the rise and fall of the Roman Republic and the state of Qin, the second treats Imperial Rome to its fall in 476 c.e. and the Han dynasty to the wars that ended it in 220 c.e. The chapters mostly blend chronological with thematic treatments. Thus the first chapter, “Nation Formation,” narrates the creation of a “melting pot” during the Zhou era of early China and the Roman conquest of Italy. Chapter 2, “State Building,” examines the Warring States period and the early and middle Republic in terms of their respective internal developments, especially the roles of Legalism and Confucianism, the two principal political philosophies competing for influence during the Warring States period. The third chapter, “Empire Building,” narrates the military and diplomatic events of the Warring States period, culminating in the victory of the state of Qin and of Rome’s conquest of the Greek east. Chapter 4, “Winning the Peace,” deals with the failures of Qin and the Roman Republic, which she claims were the consequence in either case of the acquisition of an empire. [End Page 740] Part 2 opens with “The Courses of Empire,” which presents brief sketches of events in the West from the Julio-Claudians down through the Later Roman Empire and in the East during the Former and Later Han. The main thrust of the chapter however is a long indictment of Confucianism and the corruption that resulted when it supplanted Legalism as the dominant philosophy of government in the former Han. Chapter 6, “The Arts of Government,” examines each empire’s administrative organization and methods of rule, focusing on relations between the emperors and the elite, particularly the role of the latter in local administration, taxation, and the role of law and ideas about its role in society. The seventh chapter, “Strategies of Superpower,” deals with each empire’s wars, diplomacy, and “Grand Strategy.” It covers Rome’s conflicts with the German tribes, the Parthians, and the Huns, and the problems Confucianism created for the Han government in dealing with the Xiongnu, nomadic horsemen and herders of the steppe. Chapter 8, “Decline and Fall,” naturally examines the course of events that led to the end of the Roman Empire and the collapse of the Later Han dynasty. The cause of each “fall” in Auyang’s view was corruption, a “cancer” in both empires that led to a maldistribution of wealth in which “too few producers support too many idle mouths.” In the case of China, Confucianism was the ultimate source of the cancer, while at Rome an effete cultural elite’s entry into high government positions under the Emperor Gratian and the inability of Orthodox bishops to accept the barbarians’ version of Christianity doomed the empire. For Auyang, once the Visigoths sacked Rome and the last emperor was deposed, the Roman Empire was at an end. Any work that endeavors to present a comparison of the long histories of two great empires in a little over three hundred pages must necessarily compress a lot into a very brief...