DBWI: Augustus didn't order the theft of Silk Production from China.

As we all know the first emperor of Rome successfully rebuilt the Empire after many years of civil war. At the turn of the millennium, he ordered a secret expedition to Han China in order to steal the knowledge of silk production. At the time Silk and other exotic good from Asia meant the empire was seeing 100 million sesterces leave it a year, with silk being one of the biggest offenders.

Augustus's men impersonating as monks and scholars made their way to China, and after spending 3 years gaining everyone's trust, they managed to learn the art of silk production and managed to steal and bring to Rome silkworms and mullberry trees they ate. This turned out to be a great boon for the Roman Emperors when silk production took off, it raked in over 50 million sesterces a year to the treasury.

So WI Augustus didn't order the theft, how would Rome have developed?
 
I was positive if The Romans didn’t steal the ability to produce Silk. China would not have faced it’s dark age. The emperor was not happy when he found out about it. he ordered the execution of most of the most intelligent and Learned monks because he accused them of conspiring with the Romans
 

Dolan

Banned
I was positive if The Romans didn’t steal the ability to produce Silk. China would not have faced it’s dark age. The emperor was not happy when he found out about it. he ordered the execution of most of the most intelligent and Learned monks because he accused them of conspiring with the Romans
Umm, well, the Roman debacle in China actually happened, and some said was tolerated by Wang Mang, who said to apocryphally received bribe of Buddhist Sutras that was previously stolen from the temple where the Roman-Greek monks reside.

Of course, when Emperor Guangwu restored Han rule, he didn't think much about it until very late, when cheaper Western silk started to become all too common, thanks to Roman agriculture. The resulting Buddhist genocide in China end up eliminating most of the adherents in East Asia, and forcing the survivors to flee to the Himalayan plains, where they formed the Republic of Shamballa or "Shang Guo"in Chinese.
 
Without silk production the eastern Roman provinces wouldn't have been viable after the collapse of Egyptian agricultural profits. Silk cultivation also gave new life to Sicily.
 

Dolan

Banned
Yet let's be fair here. Egyptian agricultural collapse was caused indirectly by the Hadrian Canal that turned lower Nile Delta from fertile agricultural region to salty bayou due to the sheer volume of saltwater erosion. And that didn't happen quickly, but only after a century after the opening of Mediterranean-Red Sea Canal through the Nile.

In current days, the opinion of Hadrian Canal is generally mixed. The Canal is one thing that enable Direct Spice Trade and Indian Colonies. But the project is completely disastrous on Egyptian ecology.
 
Without silk production the eastern Roman provinces wouldn't have been viable after the collapse of Egyptian agricultural profits. Silk cultivation also gave new life to Sicily.

In current days, the opinion of Hadrian Canal is generally mixed. The Canal is one thing that enable Direct Spice Trade and Indian Colonies. But the project is completely disastrous on Egyptian ecology.

Somehow, I think the peoples of the Levant and Greece would have prefered to, I don't know, EAT rather than wear fancier togas and smell of nutmeg perfume. The population of the Eastern Med. utterly collapsed with the lose of its breadbasket and the forces transformation of what decent agricultural land was left into cash crop orchards by their landlords to feed the decandent markets of the West, to say nothing of the constant inflow of Slavic and Celtic slaves they had to pump in to maintain the irrigation networks required to keep even those running. The Old Silk Road was INFINANTELY better for the health of everybody east of the Adriatic, except the Turkic populations who swept in as Persian mercenaries and gobbled up the Near East. Once they got Mesopotamia, the decline of the Empire in the East and the Semetic populations to virtually nothing was inevitable.
 

Dolan

Banned
The Old Silk Road was INFINANTELY better for the health of everybody east of the Adriatic, except the Turkic populations who swept in as Persian mercenaries and gobbled up the Near East. Once they got Mesopotamia, the decline of the Empire in the East and the Semetic populations to virtually nothing was inevitable.
Of course, that was why the current day Third Roman Republic tried to look on viable canal alternative, while trying to repair the Nile to restore their original freshwater flow north of Luxor. All while importing fertile delta soil from India to reconstitute the ones lost thousands of years ago.

Because, you know, closing one of the World's busiest international canal would be disastrous for World Economy.

Without Roman Silk agriculture and subsequent Hadrian Canal, however, there must be some alternative Canal elsewhere... Maybe at Sinai or Gaza?
 
Of course, that was why the current day Third Roman Republic tried to look on viable canal alternative, while trying to repair the Nile to restore their original freshwater flow north of Luxor. All while importing fertile delta soil from India to reconstitute the ones lost thousands of years ago.

Because, you know, closing one of the World's busiest international canal would be disastrous for World Economy.

Without Roman Silk agriculture and subsequent Hadrian Canal, however, there must be some alternative Canal elsewhere... Maybe at Sinai or Gaza?

I've always been a proponent of the Gaza route, though admittedly there were probably some engineering hurdles that would need to be overcome to dig there. Push comes to shove, the Romans could always use a "Twin Port-Portage" methoid of two centers of trade: one on the Red and one on the Med, and establish an organized land caravan system between them. It adds some overhead, but way cheaper in the long run and dosen't tender half your Empire starving.

I don't blame them, strictly speaking though. The knowledge of the long term environmental impacts of such projects without proper safeguards is something we learned by, not before, those mistakes.
 
Uhh Augustus and munks check your years mate Augustus died 14 years after the big J was born yor talking about justianian and that is about 400 years later because thos munks were neostorians they dont exist in the time of Augustus
 

Dolan

Banned
Uhh Augustus and munks check your years mate Augustus died 14 years after the big J was born yor talking about justianian and that is about 400 years later because thos munks were neostorians they dont exist in the time of Augustus
OOC:
Actually, when we are saying about Monks, going to China, and... Am I not already saying something about those monks being Buddhists? Buddhism has been known in Classical Age Greco-Romans due to Diadochian states on the East. We obviously not talking about Christianity here.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism
 
OOC:
Actually, when we are saying about Monks, going to China, and... Am I not already saying something about those monks being Buddhists? Buddhism has been known in Classical Age Greco-Romans due to Diadochian states on the East. We obviously not talking about Christianity here.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism
That does not change the fact that Augustus never sent some munks to china it was not untill justianian the romans stold the art of silk production
 
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