Download PDF | Raoul McLaughlin - The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes_ The Ancient World Economy and the Empires of Parthia, Central Asia and Han China-Pen and Sword History (2016).
291 Pages
Introduction:
The Ancient World Economy
The subject of this book is long distance trade in the ancient world. It studies how ancient commerce transferred valuable resources over great distances to enhance the prospects and prosperity of far-off regimes. It considers how Han China created the silk routes through Central Asia and how imperial Rome profited from these commercial exchanges. This study of the silk routes examines ancient steppe-based regimes that rivalled Rome and contains the research for a monograph and taught university course entitled The Roman Empire and the Steppe Nations: Parthians, Sakas, Kushans, Sarmatians and Huns. There are five appendices at the back of the book which provide a context for assessing ancient economic evidence, including revenue figures and military capacities.
The book is limited to four non-colour maps, but the reader can copy and enlarge these images to add additional labels and incorporate further detail including political boundaries, population movements, trade routes, campaign courses and military capabilities. The successor volume in this series contains detailed maps of Parthia, Syria and Arabia. There is a lack of academic attention given to this subject because leading Classical Scholars and Ancient Historians are reluctant to engage in the detailed study of archaeological remains, or consider texts from eastern civilizations. This book examines the ancient evidence without the agendas or limitations of ongoing academic disputes. There is currently only one other scholarly work that examines Sino-Roman connections in detail and that is John Hill’s Through the Jade Gate to Rome (2009). The work presents passages of ancient Chinese text in translation alongside extensive notes and modern analysis. Consideration of the classical texts relating to the Far East can also be found in John Sheldon’s Commentary on George Coedes’ Texts of Greek and Latin Authors on the Far East (2012).
The term ‘Seidenstrassen’ or ‘Silk Routes’ was first used by the nineteenth century German geographer and explorer Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen, uncle of the First World War aviator Manfred von Richthofen, known as the Red Baron. In the early 1870s Ferdinand Richthofen surveyed the land routes that crossed Central Asia from Afghanistan to China. He studied itineraries contained in ancient Chinese and Roman texts and considered the practicality of these routes for the construction of a proposed railway line across Central Asia that would have linked the German economy to Chinese markets. The term ‘Silk Routes’ was appropriate since mountains, desert environments and scarce resources meant that pre-modern travellers were limited in the paths they could use to cross Central Asia. Ancient texts recovered from the region reveal that Chinese authorities recognized permitted routes that restricted travellers under their control to fixed itineraries. A Chinese text called the Weilue outlines these routes and confirms that the concept of planned courses is legitimate.1
The adjective was justified, as silk was the most internationally important commodity conveyed along these overland routes. This is confirmed by contemporary Greek and Roman texts which refer to the Chinese as the ‘Seres’ or the ‘Silk People’. The first Greek account to mention China (Thinae) by name records that from this country ‘silk floss, yarn, and cloth are conveyed by land via Bactria to Barygaza [Afghanistan to the Indus ports].’2 When the sixth century Byzantine scholar Cosmas Indicopleustes described the world he asked his readers to imagine a cord ‘stretched from China (Tzinitza) that passes through Persia until it reaches Roman territory’.3 The Qin Dynasty united China in 220 BC, two centuries before Rome fully conquered the Mediterranean and Augustus was acclaimed Emperor. For almost four hundred years from 202 BC to AD 220, China was governed by the Han Empire which ruled as many people as the Roman regime at the height of its power. Rome was confined to western Europe and the Mediterranean, while China extended its Empire deep into Central Asia.
The Han acquired resources and developed technologies to overcome the mounted warrior populations that occupied the vast Eurasian steppes. Chinese workshops mass-produced high quality steel to equip their armies with powerful multi-shot precision crossbows. Han armies returned from Ferghana (Uzbekistan) with a breeding-stock of superior horses for use in steppe warfare and imperial envoys brought alfalfa seeds back from Bactria (Afghanistan) so that Chinese fields could produce abundant forage for new cavalry regiments. Between 121 and 100 BC the Han Empire conquered the Tarim kingdoms that led west into Transoxiana and the main land routes into Afghanistan, India and Iran. Under Chinese protection a system of overland trails around the Tarim deserts developed into a network of commercial highways known to modern scholars as the silk routes.
The world changed when China secured the Tarim territories and established contacts with India through Bactria. India had a very large population and produced many unique commodities from high-altitude mountain ranges, tropical monsoon forests and warm ocean shores. In Bactria and other intermediary markets, Indian spices, pearls, ivory and cottons were exchanged for highly sought-after bales of unique Chinese silk. These commercial contacts changed the fortunes, prospects and ambitions of the populations that occupied southern Asia. In 118 BC, only seven years after the first Chinese envoy returned from Transoxiana, an Indian ship sailed around the Arabian Peninsula and entered the Red Sea. The ship was wrecked in the process, but a Greek patrol ship from the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt managed to rescue a single survivor.
This Indian mariner was brought to the court of King Ptolemy VIII Physcon at Alexandria and, after learning Greek, revealed how sailings could be made to northern India xviii The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes using the seasonal monsoon winds. Physcon funded the first Greek voyage to the Indus kingdoms and the precedent was set for Mediterranean merchants to begin commercial ventures across the Indian Ocean.4 The Romans knew about India, but were unaware of the Far East until the first century BC when silk began to reach the Mediterranean through the Parthian Empire which ruled in ancient Iran. The Parthians sent their first envoys to the Han Empire in 100 BC and it was from these early contacts that they learned of the profits to be made by controlling the overland trade in Chinese goods, including silk and steel. Parthian subjects blocked Roman access to the caravan courses that crossed Iran and for security and profit they restricted the flow of information that reached the Mediterranean concerning the distant Han Empire.5 A second advance in the ancient world economy occurred in 31 BC, when the Roman general Octavian defeated the Ptolemaic Queen Cleopatra VIII and her consort Mark Antony.
This conflict was the final civil war of the Roman Republic and after his victory Octavian took control over the eastern legions and annexed Egypt. The economic prospects of the Roman regime were transformed when Octavian seized the accumulated wealth of the Ptolemaic Kingdom and distributed the funds amongst the citizen population of Rome.6 The resultant commercial boom occurred at the same time as the Empire gained direct control over the Red Sea shipping lanes that led into the Indian Ocean. Within five years, there were over a hundred Roman ships sailing to India, and Mediterranean markets were inundated with eastern products.7 By the first century AD Indian imports into Egypt were worth over a billion sesterces per annum and the Roman Empire was receiving more than 250 million sesterces from the quarter-rate custom tax it imposed on its Red Sea frontiers.8
The Empire received further high-level income from taxing eastern goods entering Roman Syria by way of the Persian Gulf and the Parthian caravan routes that crossed Iran. An inscription from the frontier city of Palmyra confirms that Rome must have received revenues of a least 90 million sesterces from this caravan traffic.9 To place this figure in context, Caesar imposed tribute worth 40 million sesterces on his Gallic conquests and by the first century AD the Rhineland frontier was defended by eight legions (80,000 soldiers) at a cost of 88 million sesterces.10 This meant that the taxes that Rome collected from international trade surpassed the revenues of entire subject countries and were sufficient to pay the costs of large permanent armies.
Every year Rome required up to a billion sesterces to finance its Empire and the ancient evidence suggests that a third of this amount came from taxing eastern commerce conducted through the Indian Ocean and Iran.11 In 27 BC, Octavian took the name Augustus and received formal recognition as the first Emperor of Rome. The new revenues derived from international commerce enabled Augustus to reform the Roman military, transforming an ad hoc system of short-term citizen service into the first full-time professional army devised by any ancient regime. Augustus calculated that almost thirty legions including 300,000 career soldiers were needed to protect the Roman Empire from external threat and maintain control over its subject nations (the Pax Romana).
xix This military force was maintained at a cost of over 330 million sesterces per annum, the single largest expense in Roman government spending.12 The revenues raised by eastern commerce helped the Roman regime meet its military costs, but this prosperity was generated by the export of gold and silver to pay for exotic commodities in foreign markets. Pliny the Elder, an advisor to the Emperor Vespasian, estimated that more than 100 million sesterces of bullion left the Empire every year as a consequence of international commerce.13 This bullion was exported to acquire expensive stocks of Arabian incense, Indian spices and Chinese silks.
The problem for Rome was that its gold and silver reserves were finite; while the products that the Romans sought in eastern markets were renewable resources for the regimes that controlled production. Consequently, the Roman Empire’s long-term prospects were determined by its economic position in the ancient world economy and the interests of China and other powerful regimes in Central Asia affected the fortunes of western civilization.
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