Alexander VS Qin dynasty

Finn McCool said:

At least part of the reason for this is that the West was, for most of history, inferior to China in terms of agricultural productivity, communication over long distances, and centralized state power. So China was always able to maintain more standing forces and stretch wars out over long periods of time, while Western states were generally slaves to the idea of "campaigning seasons" which really only leaves room for one decisive battle. Western kingdoms and empires simply couldn't keep troops in the field like China could. I think that's why wars in Chinese history tended to be much more long, drawn out affairs (like the Han-Chu contention had what 15 battles? Most Roman civil wars had one decisive fight).

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The main reason for Qin to maintain such a huge force unlike Western counterpart is exactly because of its policy on conscription. In peacetime, a huge part of the Qin army are actually farmers... however they pick up arms to fight during wartime.

Plus most of the Chinese war actually happened inside China itself... so it is easier to get food in their own turf as they fight.

It was not really true that the western state couldn't keep troops in battle for a long time... I think Richard the Lionheart actually wage a campaign that spanned over years... maybe a decade (I think) and in foreign land.

but greek and roman hoplite formation has one advantage, discipline.
to train your soldiers fighting hoplite formation you need professional and discipline armies, intructor to drill your troop,march in rank.
compare to ancient China, Greek or roman military organization is obviously superior to ancient Chinese military org.
even today you read and see any military academy around the world, origin can be trace back to ancient greece.

rhino123 said:

The main reason for Qin to maintain such a huge force unlike Western counterpart is exactly because of its policy on conscription. In peacetime, a huge part of the Qin army are actually farmers... however they pick up arms to fight during wartime.

Plus most of the Chinese war actually happened inside China itself... so it is easier to get food in their own turf as they fight.

It was not really true that the western state couldn't keep troops in battle for a long time... I think Richard the Lionheart actually wage a campaign that spanned over years... maybe a decade (I think) and in foreign land.

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1- Ancient China had both conscripts and standing armies.

2- It's not "your own turf" if you're fighting in hostile territory. China has an extremely diverse range of terrain, so logistics had to be very well developped.

3- Richard the Lionheart waged a campaign in the Middle East AFTER the Crusader Kingdoms had been established. In other words, he was able to receive local supplies.

rhino123 said:

The main reason for Qin to maintain such a huge force unlike Western counterpart is exactly because of its policy on conscription. In peacetime, a huge part of the Qin army are actually farmers... however they pick up arms to fight during wartime.

Plus most of the Chinese war actually happened inside China itself... so it is easier to get food in their own turf as they fight.

It was not really true that the western state couldn't keep troops in battle for a long time... I think Richard the Lionheart actually wage a campaign that spanned over years... maybe a decade (I think) and in foreign land.

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I think we need to look at the time period, imperial rome is during the Han, and Richard the lion heart is.. the third crusade? - much later.

The thing is, during the trojan war, greece was able to field an army for 10 years numbering in the 10 thousands, but only during the fighting season. But in comparison, Qin can field multiple armies of 200,000 strong for extended periods including battle in winter. Even in the first crusade, the entire crusader force is less than 40,000 men whom lived off the land instead of being well supplied back home as in the case of Qin.

The difference really is, Qin is fighting to absorb people, they didn't want to piss off the local population as they will become new subjects, so they didn't take as much from the land as western armies. Troy, Carthage was basically leveled and the population enslaved.

Also, the concept of China didn't exist prior to the Qin. it is just like the EU, people are English, French or German while in China, people were, Qin, Chu, Wei, Han etc each with their own languages and culture. Qin also fought barbarians too, All i am saying is that the challenges of fighting in a foreign land are still there.

Lezt said:

Also, the concept of China didn't exist prior to the Qin. it is just like the EU, people are English, French or German while in China, people were, Qin, Chu, Wei, Han etc each with their own languages and culture.

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Well, that's debatable, as the Shang and Zhou dynasties preceding the Warring States period was a unified state. Even during the Spring and Autumn era, the various states still paid nominal homage to the Zhou Emperor.

Did the various states (Wei, Qin, Chu) actually have their own, different, languages (as opposed to dialects)? I've never read anything that might indicate so.

Zhou and Shang dynasty have a feudal system whereby the lords under the king were pretty independent and ruled their own subjects. They just need to contribute troops to fight when there is a foreign invasion (like the lords fighting for Harold at battle of Hasting against Normandy) and if there are disputes the king usually acts as the arbitrator.

Later on the lords becomes more powerful and are less inclined to listen to the king during the warring states. Eventually they began to call themselves kings one by one, meaning that they considers themselves equal to the zhou king. When Qin unified china, he had to make a new title for himself, and he became the emperor. From then on you have a beaucratic government system and you have officials and ministers instead of dukes and kings (except for relatives of the emperor, which still have royal titles).

The various warring states have their own writing systems and characters, it's not unbelieveable that they may speak different languages, though grammatically they should be very similar. (like catonese vs mandarin)

Lezt said:

I think we need to look at the time period, imperial rome is during the Han, and Richard the lion heart is.. the third crusade? - much later.

The thing is, during the trojan war, greece was able to field an army for 10 years numbering in the 10 thousands, but only during the fighting season. But in comparison, Qin can field multiple armies of 200,000 strong for extended periods including battle in winter. Even in the first crusade, the entire crusader force is less than 40,000 men whom lived off the land instead of being well supplied back home as in the case of Qin.

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What you say here is very true. However it might be as much a weakness as it was a strenght for the Qin or later Chinese forces. In a sense, although the western forces numbering at a very small number of around tens of thousands as compared to the Qin's hundreds of thousands, their men could live off the land and maintain very minimal needs for supplies from their home country.

The Qin, although impressive in numbers and operational procedure, supply chain and logistic, relied heavily on the supplies from their terrority. So when their supplies are cut, they will throw the entire army into disarray. I believe Cao Cao of the three kingdoms had done this before against a much larger force led by Yuan Shao (I think).

However such fate might not be true to the western forces when they had the skills to live off the land.

This could be zoomed in to more modern days during the WWII when the Chinese resistance fought against the Japanese invaders... Mao's guerillas forces do not rely much on supplies (from weapons to foods) that the nationalist could or would provide, and still fought a great resistance against the Japanese.

solarz said:

Well, that's debatable, as the Shang and Zhou dynasties preceding the Warring States period was a unified state. Even during the Spring and Autumn era, the various states still paid nominal homage to the Zhou Emperor.

Did the various states (Wei, Qin, Chu) actually have their own, different, languages (as opposed to dialects)? I've never read anything that might indicate so.

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Well... how different the langauges they spoke and write might not be known now because Qin Shi Huang had already unified the language and burnt off or destroy different languages. (but there is records that these states speaks and write differently).

But one thing is for sure, during the spring and autumn period, these states had different currency... and I believe different exchange rate either. So they basically functioned as individual countries.

no_name said:

(like catonese vs mandarin)

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More like Tamil and Hindi I think. Whereby both languages have their own system but sounded quite the same (as to layman like myself).

rhino123 said:

More like Tamil and Hindi I think. Whereby both languages have their own system but sounded quite the same (as to layman like myself).

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They couldn't be that different, Hindi is Indo-European and Tamil is Dravidian. They're very different. I think in China it was more like today's regional dialects (i.e. Cantonese vs. Mandarin) but even harder to mutually understand. After the Qin though, Chinese language gradually became more and more unified, but from what I understand it was a very slow process. The elites in the imperial government and higher classes spoke a pretty unified language but the common people retained their regional dialects for a long time.

Someone said that China had a history of bigger armies than Europe because of conscription. This is true, but we have to ask, why was China able to put together such an efficient conscription system and not Europe? The answer goes back to the things I said in my earlier post. China had more agricultural productivity, a bigger population base, and had a more centralized, efficient and modern government at a much earlier time than Western nations did. The government had more control over the lives of its people and thus was able to put together bigger armies.

The first time that the West reached a level of organization comparable to Chinese states like the Qin was the Roman Empire. Rome was able to put similar amounts of troops in the field as Chinese states were and maintain them over long periods, but it took a far greater area to draw resources from.

at around 1.AD, armies of Roma empire number 170,000 men, Han dynasty around 800.000 (likely include auxilary troop).