Why is China united and Europe divided?

GdwnsnHo

Banned
I agree with this. Even after the fall of the WRE, there was still commerce and communications between the élites of the Mediterranean.

This is basically the Pirenne's argument, but i'd say that the whole "the barbarians caused middle ages" theory can be restricted only to the Franks, because they were not tied to the Eastern Empire for legitimacy, and created a union between the gallo-roman élites and the frank ones, obliterating the "roman identity" of the population. It was an alternative to the separation method pursued by the Goths in Italy and Spain, who saw themselves (at least at first) as mere occupants.

I think that without Islam (and the devastation of the Gothic wars from Justinian), the gothic West could have fared pretty well, and if they succedeed to keep the Franks away from the Mediterranean, securing Occitania, i think that some kind of new roman empire could have ultimately be formed.

If this is the case, then could a successful reconquest of (at least) Egypt by an Emperor utilizing foederatii, Romans, and others i.e. before Justinian, or alt-Justinian focuses on Egypt instead of Africa, force the Mediterranean open enough to begin to Re-"Romanize" Europe? Admittedly this may lead to a Romo-Germanic idea of Roman, but with access to Egypt and the Indian Ocean, could the Romans re-apply influence on the Franks and rebuild over time?
 
China has been divided at many points in its history.
* The Spring and Autumn Period 722-476 BC
* The Warring States Period 476-221 BC
* The Three Kingdoms Period 265-316 AD
* The Sixteen Kingdoms 304-439 AD
* The Northern and Southern Dynasties 420-589 AD
* The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms 907-960 AD
* The Warlord Era 1916-1928
* The Chinese Civil War 1927-1950

That's right.

It boils down to timing.

Also, it involves age.

China has been in existence as a nation/national group for about four thousand years.

Arguably, Europe as a whole didn't come close to having a coherent cultural identity until the Greek and then Roman empires, and this was a couple thousand years behind China in that regard.
 
There was the development of an increasingly uniform 'Roman' cultural union around the Med.

I'd agree. With the rise of Islam the Med went from the center of the world and a route that connected all the major nations to a moat that protected Europe from Asia and Africa. If North Africa had remained Christian (or Europe converted) a large nation centered on the Med would have been possible, basically a new Rome. But the difference in religion killed that.
 
TLDR Warning, lots of text and brainstorming. If you want my basic thoughts just go down the the third to last paragraph for my starting conclusion.

I do not believe Europe was destined to be as divided as it is today, not by geography alone, but rather the climate at the time. Between France, Benelux, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, the Carpathian Basin and the Balkans there is no clear natural division and there are countless rivers to connect it, non-Mediterranean Europe is basically a River orgy. Today the area is also very fertile, but that was not always the case. The Channel, Oresund, the Pyrenees and the Alps are really the only natural obstacles I can see. The Carpathians or the Sudetes really are not all that formidable barriers, and even the big obstacles like the Pyrenees and the Alps are not impassable, they can be circumvented.

Before I start brainstorming, I just want to point out that I did not forget Rome. Rome or a Roman successor state could've come to dominate most of Europe. It's just that I personally believe a periphery, be it Italy, Iberia, Britain or Scandinavia are disadvantaged at conquering/holding Europe. Also for a state with its core territory in Southern Europe it becomes harder and harder to dominate Europe the closer we get to today unless it can successfully integrate and assimilate most of it. Southern Europe had a huge advantage early on due to climate and proximity to the near east where western civilization first started and spread from. But the closer to today we get the rest of Europe gets an increasingly warmer and milder climate, and thus the center of power moves away from the Mediterranean, as its agricultural and population advantage diminishes. Rome can not predict the future, I see them focusing and prioritizing the Mediterranean and the Near East, it only makes sense. I could see them form a Mediterranean state similar to China. A Roman Europe would be harder, that would be if they survived as a united Empire until central Europe became profitable to conquer. If they somehow conquer and Romanize central Europe then I can definitely see a more Roman Europe surviving, be it though the empire or successor states.

Personally I believe the lack of a large historical European state depends more on that central/western Europe started to develop much later than the Mediterranean did and was heavily shaped by the politics of Mediterranean states, Rome especially. Europe's first major civilizations were all around the Mediterranean, often on the periphery. The rest of Europe for lack of better words was unsuitable for major development early on. Specifically in the critical time in history when agriculture and civilization begun to rise, spread and develop. The distance to Mesopotamia/Egypt did not help.

For Europe what this means is that there was no major civilization that early on in history could become the main occupant of the European plains+Central Highland, or since the terms are flimsy, the area west/north/northeast of the Alps, roughly modern France to modern Poland/Czechia/the Carpathian plains. The area that today I would argue is the core of Europe, and the core of any type of theoretical alt-historic pan European state that is not Rome or a successor of Rome. (1) So there was no early state/civilization to grow and cement a sense of unity or even tradition of unity in the area. Yes Rome did conquer Gaul and did a halfhearted attempt at western Germania. But the fact that they did not succeed meant that now northern/western Europe had a fairly major Roman/German linguistically and political divide. Later made even more prominent with Slavic settlement in Poland. This hurt possible unity more than it aided it. An area which otherwise would've been perfect as a core of a stable, fertile, easily connected Central/West European state instead ended up divided between 3 different cultural/linguistic groups.

Had Central/Western Europe been warmer and thus been developed/deforested earlier then I can see having a successful civilization develop along the river orgy in France/Germany/Benelux early. From there on it's not that far fetched to have such a civilization spread to the Alps and Pyrenees, into Poland, Austria, Czechia and possibly Lombardy fairly easily. Then you got the basis for a state controlling most of Europe, it already controls the center, it's fertile, got a fairly mild climate and the rivers help make the state interconnected. But this was not the case, Central/Western Europe when the Romans showed up had been sparsely populated throughout most of pre-history, was heavily forested and had no large unified states (2). There was a short lasting Carolingian Empire, but that failed to remain united and was divided pretty close to the Roman-German cultural and linguistic line.

So in my opinion, Europe's failed unity has its base in that its early civilizations were Mediterranean based and that's where their focus understandably was. Northern Europe's climate/ice ages made the area unsuitable for early development or major population centers. Later on the disparity in development, the Roman/German divide and the political situation made unity... hard. Central Europe, NE Plains and the Carpathian basin, the large area in Europe that lacked natural borders and was interconnected by all the large rivers had been divided between a multitude of competing ethnicities, languages and states. From this point unity becomes very hard. Compare that to China, where the core territory of modern China was united very early on, and a tradition and sense of belonging to the same group of people took grip early on. This is the opposite of what happened in Europe, and I believe it has to do with the core territory of modern China having favorable climate to develop early on. While the core territory of modern Europe developed very late. In Europe the periphery developed first, and due to climate and geography it had a hard time spreading into the area that is today the European plains, all it got was Gaul, Dacia + minor parts east of the Rhine and North of the Danube, which just created another divide.

So in conclusion, I believe for Europe to be as united as China historically you need western and central Europe to develop much earlier, either to create a native civilization or to make it more tempting for a Mediterranean based empire to conquer. But that is hard due to the climate and lack of incentive, but possible. Other than that the only way I see a "European China" is to somehow change when the first major civilizations centers started to develop in the rest of the world, to make it coincide with one of the warmer period in Europe, when it would be more heavily populated and thus more easily farmed and settled. But the butterflies would be the size of moon, and the flapping of their wings would displace cities, entire nations and cultures.

1. I do not mean to insinuate global importance here, Iberia, the British Isles, Italy, Greece and Scandinavia all make up important parts of Europe and several held massive sway in the world until very recently. But in the theoretical state I am talking about they, while all important parts of it, would at the same time also a periphery and not necessary for the survival of the state. Unlike western mainland Europe and Central Europe which I view as absolutely critical to such a large European state, both positional and agriculturally.

2. Yes Gaul was developing and had smaller states/major tribes, but compared to the Mediterranean world it was too late. Had the Gauls been 500 years earlier to develop then I could see the region having the time to develop a dominant state in Gaul, creating a more organized state. Which could have acted as en embryo for the theoretical Central/Western Europe state I am theorizing here.
 

jahenders

Banned
I think the short answer is that China first became a cohesive kingdom/empire 1500-2000 years ago by one empire beating kingdom conquering others. At that same point in time, Rome was a sizable empire, but the conquered areas were never fully integrated such that they were considered to be PART of Rome. Then, the Roman Empire fell (in the West) and you were back to numerous small states fighting amongst themselves.

So, basically China has a substantial history of being a single country (that's their "normal") while Europe has a history of being a bunch of distinct countries (that's their "normal"). The collapse of empires in WWI and self-determinism of the past 100 years or so only made that balkanization more severe in Europe, while China avoided that by a combination of fully concluded civil war (i.e. one side almost completely conquering the country) and brutal totalitarianism.
 
If this is the case, then could a successful reconquest of (at least) Egypt by an Emperor utilizing foederatii, Romans, and others i.e. before Justinian, or alt-Justinian focuses on Egypt instead of Africa, force the Mediterranean open enough to begin to Re-"Romanize" Europe? Admittedly this may lead to a Romo-Germanic idea of Roman, but with access to Egypt and the Indian Ocean, could the Romans re-apply influence on the Franks and rebuild over time?

Egypt was not lost before Justinian.

Btw, i think that a swifter reconquest of Italy could have secured the byzzies the peninsula below the Po river. I heard that during the war, there were peace talks about stopping the conquest at the Po river, but Belisarius refused to finish the conquest. This led to two decades of destruction. We can take this POD, and the Mediterranean is united again.

I think that after this conquest, the Romans will fare better with the Slavs and the Sassanids (and Lombards). You would have the balkans united, the Lombards replacing the Goths in Northern Italy (maybe being used as foederati against the Franks). The Visigoths will probably look for protection to the Romans, because with a stronger Empire, they wouldn't be able to reconquer Southern Iberia as they did in OTL. Maybe an earler conversion of a Visigothic king under the pressure of the Romans? I think that, by the end of the century, the Romans would subdue Iberia (getting also some ports in Catalonia and Asturias), because of the inherent instability of the Gothic kingdom. Probably the Franks will advance beyond the Pyrenees.

If there aren't sudden wars on the East, the Romans could try to get Southern France, closing the Mediterranean before the gallo-roman élites become too "frankisized"
 

RousseauX

Donor
That's right.

It boils down to timing.

Also, it involves age.

China has been in existence as a nation/national group for about four thousand years.

Arguably, Europe as a whole didn't come close to having a coherent cultural identity until the Greek and then Roman empires, and this was a couple thousand years behind China in that regard.

It really hasn't, China's nationalization probably occurred in the last century and half or so. Mandarin as a spoken language was only created in the mid-20th century.

4000 years ago China didn't exist in any meaningful form.
 

RousseauX

Donor
I'd agree. With the rise of Islam the Med went from the center of the world and a route that connected all the major nations to a moat that protected Europe from Asia and Africa. If North Africa had remained Christian (or Europe converted) a large nation centered on the Med would have been possible, basically a new Rome. But the difference in religion killed that.

The problem is that people keeps on assuming a common language or culture will somehow result in a unified state.

It's a very 19th-20th century opinion and is basically irrelevant in the antiquity (see the fragmentation of the Greek city states vs the unification in the Persian empire despite the latter being composed of different ethnic/linguistic groups). Nor does it explain for instance, why the Arab world despite having largely similar language and ethnicity is not unified, or why France became a nation-state despite being ethnically fragmented 1788.

This is why when people start talking about the Han ethnicity in the 1200s or something I get very doubtful as to whether they know what they are talking about. Because the Han ethnicity was for the most part constructed in the 19th/20th century.


It helps to take a step back and realize ethnicity is largely an artificial construct which took a huge degree of effort to accomplish, the success of nation-building projects is exactly what makes everyone forget this simple fact.
 
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RousseauX

Donor
Well, given that timeline, China was a unified state for almost 1000 years.

China and the Mediterrenean empire shared a pretty similar history all the way up until the Sui-Tang dynasty. There was a "warring states" era (the Hellenistic era in the west), which was then unified under a universal empire (the Qin-Han emprie/Roman Empire) which subsequently broke down and got put together a few times (i.e the crisis of the third century, the Jin dynasty) before breaking apart again.

The difference was that China pulled itself back together (before falling apart again) and Europe never did. China in fact had a period of almost continual unity between the Yuan dynasty and today, punctured only by the era of the warlords in the 1920s-30s.
 
The problem is that people keeps on assuming a common language or culture will somehow result in a unified state.

I don't think people are arguing that it must, just that it makes it more likely.

It's a very 19th-20th century opinion and is basically irrelevant in the antiquity (see the fragmentation of the Greek city states vs the unification in the Persian empire despite the latter being composed of different ethnic/linguistic groups). Nor does it explain for instance, why the Arab world despite having largely similar language and ethnicity is not unified, or why France became a nation-state despite being ethnically fragmented 1788.

France was about as ethnically fragmented as China was hundreds of years ago, in fact you could potentially see the entire Romance-speaking world as being ethnically analogous to China if it had remained as one state.
 
China has its share of ethno-linguistic diversity, though the majority of the Chinese heartland is of the Sinic "Han" culture family. While Cantonese, Wu and other Chinese speakers have languages distinct from Mandarin, this is due to the lack of phonetic value in Chinese logogramic orthography, which was conducive to considerably quicker variation in all facets of language.
Not exactly. The development of the Chinese languages quite closely parallels that of the Romance languages down to the rough dates of divergence and the amount of difference between different branches of the families. The bulk of the variation within Chinese languages is phonology. Min, the earliest surviiving member of the group to diverge, still shares roughly 85% of its vocabulary with Mandarin. Both Cantonese and Min have preserved all of the Middle Chinese final consonants while Mandarin has lost all but two.

Is there evidence of Indo-European words used in the Xia dynasty, or am I crazy?
Most pre-modern Indo-European words came during the Tang Dynasty and later, but there are some words like (honey: compare with mead and miel ) that are probably very archaic borrowings.
It really hasn't, China's nationalization probably occurred in the last century and half or so. Mandarin as a spoken language was only created in the mid-20th century.
Standard Mandarin only dates to the 20th century. Standard Mandarin is based off of Beijing Mandarin, which is part of a group of languages that has been spoken throughout most of north and southwest China for over a thousand years.

France was about as ethnically fragmented as China was hundreds of years ago, in fact you could potentially see the entire Romance-speaking world as being ethnically analogous to China if it had remained as one state.
Like I said above, Chinese and Romance languages share very similar histories. You can even draw rough analogies between different languages within each group. Min and Sardinian were the earliest to diverge in their respective families, and both share many conservative features as well as significant vocabulary from an unrelated substratum. The northern dialects of Mandarin are perhaps most analogous with French. They are both highly innovative, divergent languages with considerable influence from neighboring languages.
 
The Chinese started the feudalism experiment a lot earlier than Europeans, during zhou dynasty, beaten to death by the first emperor and Liu bang, the first emperor of Han dynasty. Had liu bang failed in his struggle, a centralized China may just become a footnote in Chinese history.

On the other, Europe play the feudalism game for too long, conquerors like Charles the great and napoleon are rare (in Chinese history u can always get someone who can unite a large part of China after its division), and those who can somehow unite Europe always end up having their empire divided again for various reasons.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Standard Mandarin only dates to the 20th century. Standard Mandarin is based off of Beijing Mandarin, which is part of a group of languages that has been spoken throughout most of north and southwest China for over a thousand years.

IIRC the only reason SW spoke it was because it was repopulated by northern Chinese after a certain famine at some point.

But that's kinda the thing though, Mandarin is based on one specific dialogue in an area full of different dialogues. It's kind of like if someone imposed French as the language of a unified Europe, then we will probably start seeing Spanish, Italian etc as dialects of French. But the imposition of French would still be quite artificial.

My point is that China has always being a diverse place, it's just that the success of nation-building makes everyone forget that.
 
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