Transcending ethnic, linguistic, and religious boundaries, early
empires shaped thousands of years of world history. Yet despite the
global prominence of empire, individual cases are often studied in
isolation. This series seeks to change the terms of the debate by
promoting cross-cultural, comparative, and transdisciplinary
perspectives on imperial state formation prior to the European
colonial expansion.
Two thousand years ago, up to one-half of the human species was
contained within two political systems, the Roman empire in western
Eurasia (centered on the Mediterranean Sea) and the Han empire in
eastern Eurasia (centered on the great North China Plain). Both
empires were broadly comparable in terms of size and population,
and even largely coextensive in chronological terms (221 BCE to 220
CE for the Qin/Han empire, c. 200 BCE to 395 CE for the unified
Roman empire). At the most basic level of resolution, the
circumstances of their creation are not very different. In the
East, the Shang and Western Zhou periods created a shared cultural
framework for the Warring States, with the gradual consolidation of
numerous small polities into a handful of large kingdoms which were
finally united by the westernmost marcher state of Qin. In the
Mediterranean, we can observe comparable political fragmentation
and gradual expansion of a unifying civilization, Greek in this
case, followed by the gradual formation of a handful of major
warring states (the Hellenistic kingdoms in the east, Rome-Italy,
Syracuse and Carthage in the west), and likewise eventual
unification by the westernmost marcher state, the Roman-led Italian
confederation. Subsequent destabilization occurred again in
strikingly similar ways: both empires came to be divided into two
halves, one that contained the original core but was more exposed
to the main barbarian periphery (the west in the Roman case, the
north in China), and a traditionalist half in the east (Rome) and
south (China).
These processes of initial convergence and subsequent divergence in
Eurasian state formation have never been the object of systematic
comparative analysis. This volume, which brings together experts in
the history of the ancient Mediterranean and early China, makes a
first step in this direction, by presenting a series of comparative
case studies on clearly defined aspects of state formation in early
eastern and western Eurasia, focusing on the process of initial
developmental convergence. It includes a general introduction that
makes the case for a comparative approach; a broad sketch of the
character of state formation in western and eastern Eurasia during
the final millennium of antiquity; and six thematically connected
case studies of particularly salient aspects of this process.
General
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