Escape From Rome

by Walter Scheidel

  103. Lieberman 2009: 111.

  104. Ko, Koyama, and Sng 2018: 292–99, 300–309.

  CHAPTER NINE

  1. Xigui 2000 is fundamental. See also Boltz 1994; Zhou 2003.

  2. See Dong 2014 for a recent account.

  3. Chiang et al. 2017, esp. fig. S4.

  4. For instance, Lieven 2000: 33–34 and H. Lin 2014: 487–88 consider China’s uniform writing system and the lack of vernacular literatures (unlike in Europe) sources of unity. Lieberman 2009: 535–36 holds that the logographic system did not encourage regional identities as much as the phonetic alphabets used in the Roman empire and in South and Southeast Asia. For China’s variety within unity, see Moser 1985.

  5. MacMullen 1966; Millar 1968; Neumann and Untermann 1980; Adams 2008; Visscher 2011. For the continuing split between governmental Latin and common Greek in the East in the fifth century CE, see Millar 2006: 13–25, 84–97. For the Roman Near East in general, see Millar 1993, esp. 503–4 on the role of Aramaic.

  6. Duncan-Jones 1990: 48–59; Scheidel 2014: 26. “In broad terms,” the Eastern empire of the fifth century CE “was not only a Greek-speaking world, it was the Greek-speaking world” (Millar 2006: 15).

  7. See the epilogue in this volume.

  8. I sidestep the thorny question of the extent to which cultural unity and state formation were in fact meaningfully correlated in premodern societies. In second-millennium-CE India, for example, growing regionalization at the expense of an earlier Sanskrit ecumene, combined with the inflow of Persian and Middle Eastern elements, coincided with the creation of more rather than less powerful empires: Asher and Talbot 2006: 9.

  9. “Render”: Mark 12.17; also Matthew 22.21; Luke 20.25. This was, however, more accommodating than the Islamic notion that rulers were to be obeyed only in keeping with Allah’s command: Rubin 2017: 52–53.

  10. Very briefly, e.g., Mitterauer 2003: 177–78; Drake 2007: 412–17; Gwynn 2012: 878–87. Gelasius: Letter 8, “To the Emperor Anastasius” (PL 59:42AB); and Dagron 2003: 295–306 on the “two powers” theory. See the epilogue in this volume. When the Constantinopolitan patriarch Nicholas I excommunicated the Byzantine emperor Leo VI for entering a fourth marriage, he was dismissed and kept in exile until Leo’s death: Tougher 1997: 156–63. The contrast to Ambrose or papal activities in the High Middle Ages is instructive.

  11. See chapters 5 and 10 in this volume. Papal detachment: Mitterauer 2003: 153.

  12. Mitterauer 2003: 178; Angelov and Herrin 2012: 151–52, 166–69. For the complexities underneath the surface, see Dagron 2003, esp. 282–95 on the concept of “Caesaropapism,” and 309–10 for the hybrid (political-religious) character of the patriarchate.

  13. For this counterfactual, see J. Hall 1985: 135. Cf. also Hoffman 2015: 174 for the notion that a more enduring Frankish empire would have managed to suppress the papacy. See Goldstone 2009: 40–41; Hoffman 2015: 133 for the pliant Eastern Church. Causation: contra Hoffman 2015: 134 (“western Christianity and cultural evolution are the ultimate cause behind Europe’s fragmentation”). Hoffman’s judgment runs counter to his own emphasis on the primacy of political history.

  14. Berkey 2003: 12 (Muslim majority in Egypt by the tenth century); O’Sullivan 2006: 74–78 (Muslim majorities in Egypt by the ninth century and larger ones in Iran by the tenth century and in Anatolia by the sixteenth).

  15. Lieven 2000: 35 claims that the expansion of Islam and resultant division between Christendom and Islam “undermined this possibility of empire renewed.” It might be more sensible to think of this as a coincidence than a causal relationship. As noted in chapter 6 of this volume, by the time of the Ottoman expansion, deepened European commitment to Christianity may have mattered more.

  16. Origins: M. Lewis 2009a: 162, 19, 204–12. Patronage: M. Lewis 2009a: 113, 205.

  17. Janousch 1999; M. Lewis 2009a: 206. Potential: Pines 2012: 61.

  18. M. Lewis 2009a: 207; Pines 2012: 61.

  19. M. Lewis 2009a: 208.

  20. M. Lewis 2009b: 214–17 (quote: 215); Gernet 1995: 5–43, esp. 7–12, 39–40.

  21. Pearce 1987: 700–703.

  22. Weinstein 1987: 114–36 (suppression), 136–44 (restoration).

  23. Zhao 2015a: 13–14, 274–93.

  24. Zhao 2015a: 280, 293 (quotes). See also M. Lewis 2009a: 206. Legalism: Fu 1996.

  25. Zhao 2015a: 297–313. Neo-Confucianism: Bol 2008. See Chaffee 1995 for the Song examination system, and Elman 2000 for later dynasties.

  26. Pines 2000, esp. 282, and Pines 2009, esp. 220, for the Warring States; and Pines 2012 for the whole of Chinese history.

  27. Pines 2012: 16–19. Mair 2005: 50 attacks teleological acceptance of ancient texts that think in terms of Chinese unity early on, possibly as the result of later redactions.

  28. Pines 2012: 33 (limited horizons). Pines 2012: 4 (quote), 37–41 (nomadic rule). But note that both Levine 2013: 576 and Wang 2014 criticize Pines’s neglect of evidence regarding the most momentous regeneration events, the Sui and Northern Song unifications. Note also that it was possible, during the divisions of the third and fourth centuries CE, to write “against the state” (Declercq 1998).

  29. Quote: Mengzi “Wan Zhang A” 9.4:215, in Pines 2012: 31, with 189n43. God: Pines 2012: 58, and 44–75 on the monarch in general. Contrast Loewe 2014: 336 for trenchant criticism of the analogy.

  30. Pines 2012: 85–92 (homogenization attempts), 101 (gentry longevity).

  31. Thus, cogently, Pines 2012: 6–7.

  32. See Levine 2013: 576 for some of these points.

  33. Pines 2012: 3, 8 (other factors), 11 (quotes). As I understand it, Pines 2000: 321–24 obliquely suggests that state formation in the Warring States period was driven by the ideological imperative of unity.

  34. Pines 2012: 11 (quote).

  35. Pines 2000: 282 (quote).

  36. Pines 2012: 19. I leave aside the question of whether elite authors whose writings survived into the unity phase can be called “everybody.”

  37. Pines 2012: 31 (quote), 11 (quote from Romance of the Three Kingdoms).

  38. Pines 2012: 42 (quote), 43 (state system).

  39. Pines 2012: 103 (quote).

  40. Contribution: Pines 2009: 222.

  41. Comparanda: Stoicism in the Roman empire did not fulfill this role (cf. Shaw 1985); Christianity transcended empire; and for later notions, see chapter 6 in this volume.

  42. Hoffman 2015: 120–32 (Europe), 144–45 (China). See also Wickham 2016: 12, 232.

  43. Lorge 2005: 9 (quote).

  44. Levine 2013: 577 (quote), and see also 575 (“one wonders … whether Pines is looking in the right place for an explanation of the longevity of the imperial project … [he] does not rigorously distinguish between political imaginaries and state capacities”). See also de Crespigny 2012 (“this fact of geography [i.e., the dominance of the North China plain], rather than any philosophical approach, explains much of China’s continuing capacity for reunification”), echoed by Lin 2014: 488.

  45. For the last points, see Lieberman 2009: 743.

  46. Spread of ecumene: Pollock 2006. Ethnic loyalty: Lieberman 2009: 105. One should add, though, that the same happened in Russia in opposition to steppe encroachment: and imperialism was possible, in this rare case, by displacing existing cultures.

  CHAPTER TEN

  1. For surveys of the debate, see the introduction in this volume. I remain unconvinced by—and offer this book as a response to—what we might call “short-termist” scholarship (often labeled the “California school,” a term coined by Goldstone 2000: 179 that ascribes divergence and modernity to fairly recent and putatively contingent factors [e.g., Goldstone 2000; Pomeranz 2000; Marks 2002]). This puts me in good company, such as North and Thomas 1973; Baechler 1975; Chirot 1985; J. Hall 1985, 1988; Qian 1985; Sivin 1991; Soucek 1994; Landes 1998: 29–44; Deng 1999; Huang 2002; Huff 2003; E. Jones 2003, esp. 225–38; Landes 2003: 12–39; Mitterauer 2003: 274–96; Bayly 2004: 81–82; Bryant 2006: 409–1
8; Mann 2006: 380–83; G. Clark 2007; Findlay and O’Rourke 2007, esp. 362; Mielants 2007: 154–62; Mokyr 2007; Bryant 2008; Cosandey 2008: 175–316; Elvin 2008; van Zanden 2009a; Appleby 2010: 14; Duchesne 2011; Huff 2011: 301–19; Rosenthal and Wong 2011, most explicitly 8; O’Brien 2012b; Voigtländer and Voth 2013a, 2013b; Vries 2013, e.g., 50–51, 57, 434–35; Hoffman 2015: 213–14; Studer 2015; Zhao 2015a: 349–70; Gupta, Ma, and Roy 2016; Karayalcin 2016; Broadberry, Guan, and Li 2017; Greif and Tabellini 2017: 32; Mokyr 2017; Roeck 2017: 24–26; Rubin 2017, esp. 212; Ko, Koyama, and Sng 2018; Wrigley 2018: 41. Moreover, as I argue in chapter 11 of this volume, the role that New World resources—one of the short-termists’ principal “contingencies”—may have played in Europe’s ascent was itself a result of the long-term dynamics of European polycentrism.

  2. Quotes: Montesquieu 1750 [1748]: 385 (De L’Esprit des Lois, book XVII, ch. VI); Kant 1903 [1795]: 155 (Zum ewigen Frieden, Erster Anhang).

  3. Mao Zedong as quoted in Moser 1985: 136.

  4. For the concept of the “capstone” state, see J. Hall 1985: 52 (“Its concern was less with intensifying social relationships than in seeking to prevent any linkages which might diminish its power”) and J. Hall 1996: 35, 42–43, followed by Crone 2003: 57 (quote).

  5. This contrast has a long pedigree: the best and most detailed comparisons can be found in Rosenthal and Wong 2011 and Vries 2015. See also J. Hall 1985: 33–57; Wong 1997: 142–49; Pomeranz 2000; E. Jones 2003, esp. 202–22; Landes 2006; Arrighi 2007; Mielants 2007: 47–85; Ringmar 2007: 275–89; O’Brien 2012b; Vries 2013: 401–8; Zhao 2015a: 357–70; and more generally I. Morris 2010.

  6. In keeping with the focus of this book, I consciously and deliberately privilege social science literature that explicitly engages with the questions of developmental divergence rather than with the gigantic specialized scholarship on the history of the institutions I refer to. What will be lost in nuance should be offset by that focus.

  7. Vries 2002: 126 (quotes); E. Jones 2003: 104. Vries himself attempts to do so in Vries 2015. The section subheading is a play on the idea of the “long march through the institutions” promoted by German student activist Rudi Dutschke after 1968, envisioned as a process of subverting state and society from within. This did not in fact create conditions for revolution; Dutschke himself died of long-term health complications caused by an assassination attempt.

  8. Bosker, Buringh, and van Zanden 2013: 1425 (hubs); Dalgaard et al. 2018 (various persistence metrics in Roman Europe); and especially Wahl 2017, who carefully argues for (a small degree of) higher contemporary development (proxied by luminosity) in southwestern Germany on the Roman side of the limes associated with the Roman road network and its later effect on urbanism. For the difference between urban locations in post-Roman England and France, see Michaels and Rauch 2018.

  9. Reforming of the papacy: see, e.g., C. Morris 1989: 79–108; briefly Mitterauer 2003: 157–60; Cushing 2005, esp. 55–90; van Zanden 2009a: 46–47; Wickham 2016: 113–17. Investiture: C. Morris 1989: 154–73, 527–28.

  10. See, e.g., Wickham 2016: 141–42.

  11. Van Zanden 2009a: 43–44.

  12. See chapter 5 in this volume.

  13. Thus also J. Hall 1996: 48: “The church did [the] most to make empire impossible.”

  14. C. Morris 1989: 582; Wickham 2016: 212–13, 256; see also chapter 6 in this volume.

  15. Wickham 2017 provides an incisive comparative survey (quotes: 391–92); also briefly Wickham 2016: 33–34.

  16. Wickham 2017: 397–424. See also Barnwell and Mostert 2003, esp. Barnwell 2003; Mitterauer 2003: 137–39; Reuter 2018; and Roach 2013 specifically for Anglo-Saxon England (to which I will return).

  17. Mitterauer 2003: 137–40.

  18. Ibid., 141–47. Rise of taxation and its consequences: Watts 2009: 224–33.

  19. Watts 2009: 233–38; Maddicott 2010: 377–78; van Zanden, Buringh, and Bosker 2012: 837–39.

  20. Duchesne 2011: 481–88; Maddicott 2010: 378.

  21. Van Zanden, Buringh, and Bosker 2012: 840–44 (spread), 846 (access), 847 (communes). See Hébert 2014 for a survey of late medieval parliamentarianism across Western Europe.

  22. Quote: Duchesne 2011: 484.

  23. Mitterauer 2003: 149–51; van Zanden, Buringh, and Bosker 2012: 848–49.

  24. Van Zanden 2009a: 50–51; Greif and Tabellini 2017: 15–16, also for the dominance of corporate bodies in high medieval Europe. Cf. also Mitterauer 2003: 284–87. Specifically for Italy, see Tabacco 1989: 182–236; Jones 1997; Menant 2005; and Wickham 2015, esp. 15–16, 196–204. See also chapter 5 in this volume.

  25. Van Zanden 2009a: 52–55, 65–66, 68.

  26. Ibid., 295–96; Greif and Tabellini 2017: 3, 32.

  27. Chronology: Stasavage 2014: 344–45. For the city-states of Europe in general, see Hansen 2000a; Parker 2004: Scott 2012.

  28. Stasavage 2011: 94–109, esp. 104 for 59 percent probability of urban autonomy within 100 kilometers from the line to 39 percent and merely 13 percent within 250 and 500 kilometers, respectively. See chapter 5 in this volume. For Italy, see the references in note 24 above.

  29. Stasavage 2014: 337–41. See now Ogilvie 2019, the most detailed analysis of the economic impact of guilds, which came out too late to be considered here.

  30. Blockmans 1994: 244–45; Spruyt 1994, esp. 184–85; Mielants 2007: 83–84, 155.

  31. Mielants 2007: 160 (quote); see also chapter 11 in this volume.

  32. Stasavage 2011: 51–53, following Blockmans’s work.

  33. Stasavage 2010, esp. 626–27.

  34. Stasavage 2011: 58, 63.

  35. Bosker, Buringh, and van Zanden 2013: 1432–34; Cox 2017: 744–46.

  36. Stasavage 2003: 51–67; Stasavage 2011: 1–2, 31–32, 39–41. For the concurrently growing sophistication of the banking system in the Italian communes, see Menant 2005: 304–12.

  37. Stasavage 2011: 3–4, 150–54. Tracy 1985 is a classic account of the Dutch financial revolution.

  38. See Mackil 2015 for public debt in ancient Greek city-states and leagues. Empires: see later in this chapter, on China.

  39. See briefly Wickham 2016: 143, 145–46, 218–19.

  40. See, e.g., Mitterauer 2003: 148; Hoffman 2015: 120–32 (martial ethos).

  41. Quote: J. Hall 1988: 37–38.

  42. Rosenthal and Wong 2011: 101–5, 115–19; Hoffman 2015: 210–11; Dincecco and Onorato 2018, esp. 9–10, 33–49, 52, 59, 75, superseding Dincecco and Onorato 2016.

  43. For criticism of the “safe harbor” model, see Vries 2013: 184–86.

  44. Van Zanden 2009a: 39–41 (cities), and 69–91 and Buringh and van Zanden 2009: 419 on medieval book production. Exit: J. Hall 1985: 139; J. Hall 1988: 35; J. Hall 1996: 56 (state system with a “built-in escape system”).

  45. Quotes: Landes 1998: 38; E. Jones 2003: 118. Karayalcin 2008: 977–85 for a model, and 985–91 for supporting evidence; likewise Chu 2010, esp. 182.

  46. E. Jones 2003: 233.

  47. J. Hall 1985: 126–28; van Bavel, Buringh, and Dijkman 2018: 47.

  48. Cox 2017: 726–29, who shows that tolls on fixed Ottoman caravan routes were much higher than on flexible English trade routes.

  49. Mann 1986: 376–77 (quote: 376).

  50. This last feature prompts Baechler 1975: 77 to observe that “the expansion of capitalism owes its origins and its raison d’être to political anarchy” (quote italicized in original).

  51. Van Zanden 2009a: 48–49. My specifications in italics add much-needed precision to his own underlying trifecta (49). For the difference between despotic and infrastructural power, see Mann 1984. Unlike traditional emperors, medieval rulers were “hemmed in by what Stephan Epstein has aptly called “freedoms,” a host of particularistic privileges that limited the prince’s capacity to tax, to regulate the economy, and to provide public goods” (quote from Rosenthal and Wong 2011: 25). As Wickham 2016: 240 stresses, “Any successful ruler had to and did negotiate with the different types
of community which made up his or her realm.”

  52. See J. Hall 1996: 35 for the distinction between “capstone” state (strong in arbitrary power but weak in penetrating society) and “organic” state (less despotic but with greater reach into social relations).

  53. Watts 2009: 424; Wickham 2016, esp. 99, 109, 160–61.