Putting side by side technologies of the two contemporary empires, the Romans appear much more advanced and productive. Lets compare metallurgy: Roman mines produced copper, lead, gold and silver and iron by thousands of tons. Roman aqueducts and lead pressure pipes were unequaled till the 19th Century. And they drank wine like the Mediterraneans they were (Pic.:wine strainer). In civil engineering, the Romans were the world's first major bridge builders.
A list of Roman bridges compiled by the engineer Colin O'Connor
features 330 Roman stone bridges for traffic, 34 timber bridges and 54
aqueduct bridges, a substantial part still standing and even used to
carry vehicles. Another list by the Italian scholar Galliazzo gives even 931 Roman bridges, the majority of which were arch bridges."These bridges were part of the Roman road system. This spanned more than 250,000 miles (400,000 km) of roads, including more than 50,000 miles (80,500 km) of paved roads.[56][57] When Rome reached the height of her supremacy, no fewer than 29 great military highways radiated from the city.[58] Hills were cut through and deep ravines filled in.[58] At one point, the Roman Empire was divided into 113 provinces traversed by 372 great road links.[58] By comparison, in Han China, there were two known arch bridges, referred to in Han literature,[59] while a single Han relief sculpture in Sichuan depicts another arch bridge.[60] The Han road system, mostly unpaved, was 22,000 miles.[61]" And Roma had a larger population than China.
Romans, as all White peoples, took decisions by public assemblies, where good speakers became the leaders. In America it was the City Hall meetings, in Israel the kibbutz meetings in the communal dining room. The Chinese had no formal meetings and decisions were taken by strict hierarchy. Even today, Chinese assemblies uniformly vote for the leadership's proposals and applaud for long minutes, while real debate - if there is - is hidden and solved by intrigues of underground factions. The Soviet Union had the same type of governance. Romans had extensive and public (transparent, codified) legislation, the Chinese had no enforceable laws nor lawyers.
Extrapolating history to the future, I reach the conclusion that the West needs not to fear China, and that co-operation is possible and fruitful. Nixon and Kissinger were right.
While I do not deny the impressive technological advances the Romans set in motion, your equating this to some kind of superior morality of "White peoples" surely cannot be serious. For one, you mention the “height of her supremacy” - surely, you realise that at the height of her supremacy Rome was an empire, i.e. with an emperor at its head. Rome at its most vast and “powerful” was also a Rome wracked by political strife and the hidden intrigue you have condemned.
ReplyDeleteYour happy picture of radical democracy, “where good speakers became the leaders” is also frankly naive. Ancient Greeks and Roman writers spent no small amount of time worrying about the rise of a charismatic, eloquent demagogue who would ultimately concentrate absolute powers solely upon himself. From the way things turned out, they weren’t exactly wrong to do so.