Alexander VS Qin dynasty

solarz said:

In any case, while the influence of Hellenistic culture is certainly comparable to the influence of other great cultures of the world, Alexander himself was hardly responsible for that influence. So that line of argument goes nowhere.

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Alexander created the Hellenistic world as much as Shi Huangdi created the empire of Qin.

Furthermore, it can be argued the creation of Hellenistic world had an even more profound effect on the nature and character of subsequent western civilizations then creation of Qin upon subsequent Chinese the world of Qin was already Chinese civilization.

When shi huangdi created Qin out of a collection of kingdoms, those kingdoms were already the 2nd or 3rd generation remnants of an earlier politically unified cultural sinosphere that had existed for more than a thousand years before Qin dynasty. Qin is after all not the first recognizably Chinese, politically unified dynasty in history of china. Xia and Shang preceded Qin. Chinese world had been primarily a sinosphere before Qin, would have been different without Qin, but it would still have been recognizably chinese.

The western world before Alexander was, on the otherhand, definitively not primarily Greek, not a grecosphere, despite accomplishment of Greek culture. It was equal parts Greek and Phonesian, plus a much larger part Persian. It was Alexander who against all reasonable expectation overthrew the overwehlmingly more powerful and more influential persian empire and made the culture of Greece supreme in the west, and paved the way for later Roman empire. It was his personality that changed the course of western history from supremacy of near and middle east, to supremacy of Europe. Subsequent western world would probably not even have be recognizably western were it not for Alexander. Instead it would likely have assumed a much more middle eastern character.

So I would argue Europe and near east certainly, possibly all of Euroasia outside china, would have been even more different today if Alexander never existed, than china would have been different if Qin shihuangdi never existed.

chuck731 said:

Alexander created the Hellenistic world as much as Shi Huangdi created the empire of Qin.

Furthermore, it can be argued the creation of Hellenistic world had an even more profound effect on the nature and character of subsequent western civilizations then creation of Qin upon subsequent Chinese the world of Qin was already Chinese civilization.

When shi huangdi created Qin out of a collection of kingdoms, those kingdoms were already the 2nd or 3rd generation remnants of an earlier politically unified cultural sinosphere that had existed for more than a thousand years before Qin dynasty. Qin is after all not the first recognizably Chinese, politically unified dynasty in history of china. Xia and Shang preceded Qin. Chinese world had been primarily a sinosphere before Qin, would have been different without Qin, but it would still have been recognizably chinese.

The western world before Alexander was, on the otherhand, definitively not primarily Greek, not a grecosphere, despite accomplishment of Greek culture. It was equal parts Greek and Phonesian, plus a much larger part Persian. It was Alexander who against all reasonable expectation overthrew the overwehlmingly more powerful and more influential persian empire and made the culture of Greece supreme in the west, and paved the way for later Roman empire. It was his personality that changed the course of western history from supremacy of near and middle east, to supremacy of Europe. Subsequent western world would probably not even have be recognizably western were it not for Alexander. Instead it would likely have assumed a much more middle eastern character.

So I would argue Europe and near east certainly, possibly all of Euroasia outside china, would have been even more different today if Alexander never existed, than china would have been different if Qin shihuangdi never existed.

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Mmmm, thats a lot of conjecture. I would bet that you can find convincing evidence to support your claim. Xia and Shang, are very different than Qin, Qin was considered a semi barbaric state; and the difference between the warring states could be compared to the difference between Persia and Greece, each had its own language, its own government system, its own set of values... it is the chronological tendencies of Chinese imperial historians which these differences were downplayed so that a line can be drawn from the Xia, Shang and therefore directly downwards to what ever dynasty they belong to.

How the west like to romance themselves with Alexander is purely just that. Alex never went to Europe, Why Greece is considered a part of Europe is well, much more to do with the fraternization than geography. To say that the success of UK, France, Germany is based on Alexander or Greece is to ignore the fact that the UK/France is considered barbarians untill the end of the middle ages, that Germany is still considered barbarians from the east until after WW1...

I am willing to make the claim that Julius Ceaser impacted the western world more than Alexander did. The fact that modern historians like to lump grecco roman culture together, does not mean that roman culture is significantly different than Greek. Where Roman left infrastructure, laws, ways of thinking, affects the western world much more than what greek left.

Basically, I see China as the empire that crumbled but didn't fall apart. The east, or Europe is the remnant of the roman empire which fractured and developed into each distinct culture we see today.

chuck731 said:

Alexander created the Hellenistic world as much as Shi Huangdi created the empire of Qin.

Furthermore, it can be argued the creation of Hellenistic world had an even more profound effect on the nature and character of subsequent western civilizations then creation of Qin upon subsequent Chinese the world of Qin was already Chinese civilization.

When shi huangdi created Qin out of a collection of kingdoms, those kingdoms were already the 2nd or 3rd generation remnants of an earlier politically unified cultural sinosphere that had existed for more than a thousand years before Qin dynasty. Qin is after all not the first recognizably Chinese, politically unified dynasty in history of china. Xia and Shang preceded Qin. Chinese world had been primarily a sinosphere before Qin, would have been different without Qin, but it would still have been recognizably chinese.

The western world before Alexander was, on the otherhand, definitively not primarily Greek, not a grecosphere, despite accomplishment of Greek culture. It was equal parts Greek and Phonesian, plus a much larger part Persian. It was Alexander who against all reasonable expectation overthrew the overwehlmingly more powerful and more influential persian empire and made the culture of Greece supreme in the west, and paved the way for later Roman empire. It was his personality that changed the course of western history from supremacy of near and middle east, to supremacy of Europe. Subsequent western world would probably not even have be recognizably western were it not for Alexander. Instead it would likely have assumed a much more middle eastern character.

So I would argue Europe and near east certainly, possibly all of Euroasia outside china, would have been even more different today if Alexander never existed, than china would have been different if Qin shihuangdi never existed.

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Your own words prove that Alexander was just one link in a long process that influenced the Romans into adopting Hellenistic culture. We could just as easily argue that if Leonidas had not held off 300k Persians with only 300 Spartans, the Greek civilization would've been swallowed by the Persian and it would not have even continued to exist as an independent entity, nevermind spreading out. Therefore, Leonidas obviously was a greater contributor to the Greek civilization than Alexander could ever hope to be.

While we're at it, why don't we acknowledge the contribution of Daji toward the unification of China. No Daji means the Zhou dynasty would never have risen, which means no Warring States, and obviously no Qin Shihuang. So obviously the Chinese civilization owes its existence to a nine-tailed fox spirit!

I think that the root of much of the debate/disagreements, along with many other China-related ones, is related to how poorly the West in general knows about the ancient China.

China today to most people in the West represents a backward country, partially having a ring of truth in it and partially due to the whitewash of all powerful mainstream Western media.

Under this light, it is almost incomprehensive for most Westerners to imagine, let alone to argue for, how technologically advanced China was for the most part of its history. It is always a question in the back side of the Western brains asking “how could that possiblely be since China is now a byword for cheap knockouts by copying and stealing Western ideas?”.

For most Westerners who are not Chinese history experts, probably 95% of anything you know ancient China is about largely wrong.

Exaggeration? Perhaps, but not too much. Western perception of China and Han Chinese is largely based upon and influenced by what happened in the last 150 years or so till today’s “Made-in-China by Wallmart”, things happened for the last 3 or 4 generations that their grandpas, fathers, Hollywood and CNNs have been describing all along.

These misleading images however, are almost the complete mirror-images of what China and Han Chinese really were and used to stand for for the last 2 millennia.


The easiest way, I guess, for these people to get up to the basic speed is to look up `China history` in wikipage. Not much time, 1 hour, read through the whole thing.

The Brits are pound of themselves for their almost 200-year domination of the world since the Industrial Revolution. Rightly so.

The Americans are pound of themselves for their almost completely domination of the world since WW2. Rightly so. Only 4 decades, already “American Exceptionalism”.

Even the Japanese are pound of themselves for their about 100-year technological domination in East Asia since the beginning of the 20th century after being industrialised, particularly their semi conductor , electronics industries in teh 80's . Rightly so. Only after several decades, already pandering the laughable propaganda that “Japanese are the master race of Asia”.


What the Chinese are pound of then?


Now think about this:

almost 2,000 years complete cultural, economical and technological domination of the entire known world (East Asia) recognised by the emperors at a time. Logically, the length and depth of the pride is what the former 3 putting together and multiplying 6 times. The grand daddy of all? And rightly so.

It is precisely this deep-rooted historical superiority that makes even a starving illiterate Chinese peasant under some of the most unprivileged environments no matter in WW2, or Communist Mao era, or Apple´s assembly line, pound and resilient, knowing somehow deep in his mind that good times and bad times come and go, but on one and nothing can stop him and his people.

China(Qi-Han), as a unified all powerful imperial empire and technological giant, was similar to what the Roman Empire always tried to maintain, but failed.

If Alexander de Great had been greater, there wouldn’t have had all those endless struggles of the Europeans to forge a large unified empire throughout the history (and failed, too), the most recent examples being Hitler’s Third Reich and the current EU – failing fast.

If Alexander de Great had been greater, for a starter there wouldn’t have had so many languages (not dialects) left today in Europe but 1, just 1 – Macedonian, speaking from Finland to Egypt and from Portugal to Turkey, because that’s way China has been more or less for the last 2,000 years since Qin.

The debate on who is more powerful, army of Alexander or Qin Empire? or Alexander de Great or the First Emperor of China Qin Shihuangdi? Isn’t that obvious?

chuck731 said:

People throughout the world wear western dress, study and practice mostly western developed business and science, aspire to a live style modeled on the west had first shown possible, listen to western music, often takes a substantially western influenced world view, and often express most cutting edge concepts in a western language. This happens in all of shanghai, Beijing, Mumbai, everywhere humans have progressed to civilized urbanity. Next to this what is a few china towns in the middle of western aspiring metropolis?

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It is not "Western", but primiray English, and its derivatives such as American.

The reason why English ( American) is because of the all powerful industrial revolution happened there.

If the industrial revolution had happened in Somalia, most of the world today ( except the Chinese, of course, lol) would have wore ropes and face veils instead of suits and ties.

Why industrial revolution happend in England instead of other places?

It is due a combinations of reasons (high IQ locals, a cumulation of wealth throughdiscovering new lands, freedom of scientific research, fireced competions among small European nation states...) and some luck 9 at the eve of the industrial revolution, Yangzi Delta of China was about as advanced as England, but China's system killed it off...) , too.

chuck731 said:

You stand here arguing about the influence of Qin and gloried of Chinese heritage. But you personally have undoubtedly been so thoroughly infiltrated by western influences at every level that you've become unaware of it. Step back and examine how much the west has made you as a Chinese person today different from what a Chinese person would have been 150 years ago, and you can argue the influence of china and Qin upon the world matchs the influence of the west upon china?

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Of course he can stand here arguing about the influence of Qin and gloried of Chinese heritage!

What''s wrong with that?

You've messed up your own logic here:

you are using a current snapshot instead of a full known history to judge superiority.

In the same logic, why don't you dismiss everyone all together as well, since obviously all Germans Anglos Saxens were barbarians in the eyes of the Romans if you took the snapshot in the height of the Roman Empire.

The inferiority complex from the last centuries of Chinese historiy makes it very difficult to lead this discussion.

Alexander the Great was a great conqueror, as an administrator he was less than great.
Western Eurasia had strong militaristic traditions and Macedonia was part of that with a mounted noble warrior elite defending the state until Alexander's predecessor completed the ongoing infantry reform into an effective organization by a vast array of different measures. This effective fighting force defeated all neighbours who had constantly raided the country. The peace dividend was invested into armament and expansion.
Eastern Eurasia took a different roots during the Warring States. They installed a meritocratic bureaucracy that created a militarized state if required. Militarism was lost with the remanants of the old nobility in China which Confucius still refers to.
The cultural impact of Alexander's conquest can still be seen in China's old Buddhist temples. They do have roots in Greek art tradition.
Because Western Eurasia was militaristic, the kings there are great conquerors/warlords and base the legitimation of their rule on success in war. Eastern Eurasia had a different concept of legitimacy that made the rulers there less inclined to justify their position by trying to subdue as far away lands as possible. Subduing as far away lands as possible was the great achievement of the king Alexander and the reason why he remained celebrated for millenia among the militaristic cultures of Western and Central Asia.

The armies of Alexander and the later Qin are very similar. Both have infantry with long spears in combination with ranged weapons. Differences are the multi-role adaption of the Macedonians by being able to shorten the pikes into spears any moment and operate as more mobile troops. The crossbow was better developed in China than in Greece, but both cultures knew this weapon and its capabilities. I surmise that during the scouting prior to a war they would get to know the technical details of crossbow locks and spanning mechanisms that make all the difference.
The Qin army has no strong javelin armament in comparison to the Macedonians and is either a big levy or a force as well equipped and trained as the Macedonians, who had been fighting under more than one king in standing armies.
China had been at war for a long time, that is not the same as having giant standing armies, rather large militias. They did have smaller standing forces that were well trained and mobilized more troops on demand. Long spears and crossbows are excellent choices for mobilization, requiring little training for effective use.

I highlighted the issue already that each of these armies does have their areas of advantage over the other and the net effect in combat depends a lot on circumstances. Macedonia mindset would be different, having fought a plethora of different nations, while Chinese Warring states warfare is within a koine of rather similar opponents. Thus the Macedonians would be more prepared for all the surprises of such an encounter.
Eastern Asia stayed rather secluded in military tradition because they were normally not a militaristic world trying to subjugate South and South East Asia.

Kurt said:

The inferiority complex from the last centuries of Chinese historiy makes it very difficult to lead this discussion.

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Wait, Kurt, what inferiority complex? of the west feeling inferior to China because they don't understand China's meteoric rise and therefore claim that China is stealing technology, manipulating currency and so on. Or are you referencing the century of warfare that China experienced that made her weak?

In anycase, resorting to labeling does not advance your argument and serves only as a flame bait.

Kurt said:

Alexander the Great was a great conqueror, as an administrator he was less than great.
Western Eurasia had strong militaristic traditions and Macedonia was part of that with a mounted noble warrior elite defending the state until Alexander's predecessor completed the ongoing infantry reform into an effective organization by a vast array of different measures. This effective fighting force defeated all neighbours who had constantly raided the country. The peace dividend was invested into armament and expansion.

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Again, we are revisiting old points, it is not like China did not do the same, the Shang pacified the Guifang Barbarians, Di Barbarians, Qiang Barbarians; and during the warring state period, the Rong, Yi, Man and Di. China subjugated Gojuson in 400BC and conquered it in around 100 BC, at the same time, the Nanyue were conquored as well. Only difference is China kept the land and sinofied the inhabitants; where as in eastern eurasia, it was never possible.

Kurt said:

Eastern Eurasia took a different roots during the Warring States. They installed a meritocratic bureaucracy that created a militarized state if required. Militarism was lost with the remanants of the old nobility in China which Confucius still refers to.
The cultural impact of Alexander's conquest can still be seen in China's old Buddhist temples. They do have roots in Greek art tradition.

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This is again, wrong, not all warring states are meritocratic; the Han dynasty (down to the Qing) that followed has a very strong nobility and gentry. Hell, the 14th son of Kangxi: Yunti lead his army to Lhasa.

What does the statement of Buddhist temple imply? That since, Alexander wore silk garments, he is under the influence of Chinese culture? Cultures traditionally do not exist in isolation, your statement is moot.

Kurt said:

Because Western Eurasia was militaristic, the kings there are great conquerors/warlords and base the legitimation of their rule on success in war. Eastern Eurasia had a different concept of legitimacy that made the rulers there less inclined to justify their position by trying to subdue as far away lands as possible. Subduing as far away lands as possible was the great achievement of the king Alexander and the reason why he remained celebrated for millenia among the militaristic cultures of Western and Central Asia.

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Subjugating far away lands are in each emperor's mind. You seem to think that Qin was small, it is still 2.8 million square km compared to 5.2 at the greatest extent of the Macedonian empire. China itself is not a small land mass,

I also have my doubts about the celebrated nature of Alexander in western and central asia; certainly he is celebrated in western Europe and greece; but if you talk to a local Egyptian living in Alexandria, he will probably revere Ramses II more. If you are in Iran, most likely Cyrus the great; in Iraq, probably Saladin for his martial might and in India, the many Rajputs kings

Kurt said:

The armies of Alexander and the later Qin are very similar. Both have infantry with long spears in combination with ranged weapons. Differences are the multi-role adaption of the Macedonians by being able to shorten the pikes into spears any moment and operate as more mobile troops. The crossbow was better developed in China than in Greece, but both cultures knew this weapon and its capabilities. I surmise that during the scouting prior to a war they would get to know the technical details of crossbow locks and spanning mechanisms that make all the difference.
The Qin army has no strong javelin armament in comparison to the Macedonians and is either a big levy or a force as well equipped and trained as the Macedonians, who had been fighting under more than one king in standing armies.
China had been at war for a long time, that is not the same as having giant standing armies, rather large militias. They did have smaller standing forces that were well trained and mobilized more troops on demand. Long spears and crossbows are excellent choices for mobilization, requiring little training for effective use.

I highlighted the issue already that each of these armies does have their areas of advantage over the other and the net effect in combat depends a lot on circumstances. Macedonia mindset would be different, having fought a plethora of different nations, while Chinese Warring states warfare is within a koine of rather similar opponents. Thus the Macedonians would be more prepared for all the surprises of such an encounter.

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This is also very much not true since China is so big and each state had access to unique resources.
Northen states had access to the grass lands so had heavy cavalry - Zhou was famous for their mounted archers; Qin to the west had weaker horses, but had famous crossbowmen and dragoons (yes, mounted missile troops that dismounted to fight). Southern states had larger populations due to the climate and location and had much more skirmishers (batten shields with single edged blades), eastern states had navies and a strong marines that can do amphibious operations. central states tend to have much heavier infantry; whom wore much heavier armor than Qin's - carried 2 spears, 1 sword, 1 shield and were able to consistently march 20 li (roughly 10 km) with a few day's rations on their backs.

I also disagree that Alexander had the gastraphetes at his disposal, being hard to make and heavy, but for discussion sake, fine, they have a cross bow. What China did not have is sling shots and javelins, what Macedonia did not have are pikes, elastic slingshots and repeating cross bows.

Kurt said:

Eastern Asia stayed rather secluded in military tradition because they were normally not a militaristic world trying to subjugate South and South East Asia.

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You do know that China over various times did subjugate Nanyue to the south, Xiongnu to the east, Grouyue to the west and mongolia to the north. SEA was an entire tribute state to china. Are you suggesting that China should have taken Australia?

The discussion is pointless. For whatever reason there's a strong believe that the Qin army must have been superior to everyone else globally.

Kurt said:

The discussion is pointless. For whatever reason there's a strong believe that the Qin army must have been superior to everyone else globally.

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This is not even a discussion or a debate. I have only provided sources to dispel your thesis that:

1) your perception of militarism in China is wrong
2) China is not uniformly meritocratic as you have suggested
3) China did not subjugate far away lands
4) Qin only fought an idealized uniform Chinese enemy with a set style and have no experience in fighting other types of warfare.

I also have not claimed that Qin was superior to everyone else globally; you are free to see if you can quote me saying it.

With this, you have only shown that you cannot back up your claims with proper sources nor can you counter the sources and claims that I have presented to dissuade your argument.

Therefore, who is the person unwilling to accept the facts presented in front of them and hangs onto a belief?

Will someone be kind enough to do the rough translation?

The following is one of numerous episodes of a Taiwanese TV programme showcasing some of the newest discoveries on the high tech of Qin's terracotta army. Numerous Qin military technologies were so cutting edgely high tech that it would fit more with technologies from 19th century on to the current day!

Just step back and picture that Qin's vast army with these high tech 2,200 friggin years ago...

Alexander VS Qin = Somalia VS USA, prehaps this is not an overstatement, at all?


[video=youtube;x__99wPWkDs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x__99wPWkDs[/video]