Talk:Sino-Roman relations/GA1

GA Reassessment

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I tried to improve the article in the recent past by rewriting the lead and removing only very vaguely related material (usually falling short of the Chinese sphere's borders by many hundreds of kilometers) which tended to dominate the article, but I feel it is still far from enough.

The core section Indirect trade relations relies overly on direct quotations without ever realizing that "Seres" cannot be easily equated with "Chinese" in Roman sources. The fuzziness of mutual knowledge and the mythological connotations which pervades the few accounts on both sides are underplayed or completely ignored.

The second main topic Embassies and travels does not fall in the pseudo-objective trap of letting speak the sources without interpretation, but here the reference die out almost completely. If the primary sources were moved to Wikisource, the article as it stands would retain little in the way of hard, reliable information; a major overhaul is required to keep the status. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 22:16, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

• Yawn*. Notified the top contributors. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 09:50, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Have just received notice of this possible reassessment tonight. Will try to have a proper look at it and make changes wherever necessary over the next few days. Have just made one minor improvement tonight. John Hill (talk) 12:05, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

I'll have a look at it too, and see what reliable secondary sources I can gather to confirm (or provide analysis on) primary sources.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 16:22, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Some of you here may find this useful: these are some notes I've taken from Yü Ying-shih (1986), paraphrasing his work:

• Page 460-461: Yu says that the Book of Later Han says emissaries from beyond Rinan claimed to come from Daqin, ruled by Andun, and brought gifts of ivory, rhinoceros horn, and tortoise shells. Yu says they may have been from the Roman Empire and Andun could be interpreted as Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, but nothing is confirmed. The Chinese had ventured into Central Asia ever since the travels of Zhang Qian and discovered lands as far west as Anxi (Parthia), which was Parthia. The Book of Later Han says that the Parthians were determined from keeping the Chinese from traveling to Rome, and prevented Gan Ying from doing so in 97 AD when sent by Ban Chao. It is known that Chinese silk reached the Roman world while Roman objects of ornaments and precious metals reached China.
• Page 461-462: However, Dr. Manfred Rashke argues that there is no surmountable evidence to suggest that the Han upheld a large export trade of silk and that Roman funds were not drained away by purchasing Chinese silk to the extent that some scholars have asserted.

I hope that these notes are of some help. I shall try to gather more soon.

Full reference: Yü, Ying-shih. (1986). "Han Foreign Relations," in The Cambridge History of China: Volume I: the Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 B.C. – A.D. 220, pp. 377-462. Edited by Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521243270.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 23:36, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Crespigny (2007) provides more analysis:

• Page 600: QUOTE: "Most spectacularly, it is recorded that a mission from Daqin 大秦, identified as the empire of Rome, came to Luoyang from the south in 166. The envoys claimed that they had been sent by their king Andun [?][?], presumably the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus [reg. 161–180], and the gifts they brought, including ivory, rhinoceros horn and tortoise shell, had evidently been gathered on their journey. There was and still is some suspicion that these men were enterprising traders rather than accredited officials, but their visit provided valuable prestige to the emperor at a time of political difficulty. [It may be only chance, but the date of this visit coincided with the outbreak of the Antonine plague which ravaged the Roman empire from the middle 160s: the question of epidemics is discussed in the entry for Liu Hong, Emperor Ling.]"

Full reference: de Crespigny, Rafe. (2007). A Biographical Dictionary of Later Han to the Three Kingdoms (23-220 AD). Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. ISBN 9004156054.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 23:41, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

So far I can't find anything in my notes for the Seres in particular, but I will continue to look.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 23:44, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

While I was working on my book, Through the Jade Gate to Rome, I made a careful study of the report on envoys from Da Qin to China over many years, not only of the text itself, but of everything written about it (including all the quotes above). My conclusions are that there can be little if any doubt that, a) Da Qin refers to the Roman Empire, and b) there is no question that the Chinese believed the people arriving in 166 CE were legitimate envoys from Da Qin. The way the text reads it is (I believe clear) that the question was rather that, if the envoys arrived with reasonably common trade goods, maybe the earlier (and probably somewhat fanciful) reports the Chinese had had of Da Qin had been exagerrated.

I believe the confusion amongst several Western scholars as to whether the visitors were indeed genuine envoys, or just merchants making that claim, can be traced to an unfortunate misreading by Édouard Chavannes in his pioneering translation of the passage in: "Les pays d’Occident d’après le Heou Han chou." T’oung pao 8, (1907) p. 185 and n.1, which was then repeated by others who followed him.

The Chinese text reads: " 至桓帝延熹九年，大秦王安敦遣使自日南徼外獻象牙﹑犀角﹑瑇 瑁，始乃一通焉。其所表貢，並無珍異，疑傳者過焉。"

My translation of this passage (which has been checked for accuracy by a number of Chinese scholars) reads:

"In the ninth Yanxi year [166 CE], during the reign of Emperor Huan, the king of Da Qin [the Roman Empire], Andun [Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, r. 161-180], sent envoys from beyond the frontiers through Rinan [Commandery on the central Vietnamese coast], to offer elephant tusks, rhinoceros horn, and turtle shell. This was the very first time there was [direct] communication [between the two countries]. The tribute brought was neither precious nor rare, therefore raising suspicions that the accounts [of Da Qin] might have been exaggerated." Hill (2009), p. 26.

For a detailed discussion of this passage, please see: Through the Jade Gate to Rome: A Study of the Silk Routes During the Later Han Dynasty, 1st to 2nd Centuries CE. ("An Annotated translation of the Chronicle on the Western Regions in the Hou Hanshu"), (2009), pp. 289-296, n. 12.20, ISBN 978-1-4392-2134-1.

As to the "Seres" mentioned in Western Classical literature - I think the evidence is very strong that these references were to middlemen in the silk trade (Khotanese? Sogdians? Yuezhi?), and not to the Chinese as such. Cheers, John Hill (talk) 11:05, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I have cut back again some of the tone which gives a somewhat inflated importance to their contacts which you can count on one hand even after Yubitsume! What the reader should be given is the big picture, and this is that Romano-Chinese relationship was very close to non-existent; two-three encounters in as many centuries don't make a summer. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 01:41, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

This is unbelievable. It is like to cut back references about the Vikings in America because there it is only one "encounter" in Terranova...--2offadyke (talk) 02:57, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

If the article exaggerates the scope and intensity of contacts between the Vinkings and Indians like it tends to do here between Romans and Chinese: yes, certainly. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 10:30, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

The GA reassessment has been running now for six weeks, two of them in full. One of my three main concers was the overreliance on direct quotations in the core sections Trade relations and Embassies and travels. Since this issue has not been addressed, I am going to delist the article per Wikipedia:Quotations#Overusing quotations. Regards Gun Powder Ma (talk) 11:10, 28 July 2010 (UTC)