I think it’s fair to say Rome was pretty exceptional in both good and horrible ways.
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But… China? India?
Another point, it lasted so much longer than more modern empires… Empires seem to have an expiration date now a days…
Well, let’s compare it to other empires of the ancient world? Empires are violence in the names of civilizing machines. That’s pretty much what they do.
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I agonised a bit over what substitute for globe I should use, specifically with China in mind. I settled on “known world” because while the two empires knew each other existed nobody really had any first hand experience with each other. To the best of our knowledge the trade goods we know were exchanged between the two were traded through a chain of middlemen.
India (and sub-Saharan Africa) are a different matter. The Romans definitely knew they were there and there would have been direct contact. In the end, though, I figured my point was being made with “known world”. After all, this was 2000 years ago, so the spread of the Roman empire is breathtaking, even with these exceptions.
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I guess my problem with the term is that it’s eurocentric? Could not the same point of the “known world” be made from their POV?
Sure, but is the spread of other civilizations and their breadth any less breathtaking?
How do we get out of our “centric” mindset?
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I’d argue that it is rome-centric in this instance. It is the known-world from the perspective of the Romans. Had I been talking about the Jin Empire for example, I would have used the same word, but meaning most of Asia and the Indian Ocean. It is eurocentric because Rome was in Europe. Of course it can be argued that I chose Rome as an example because I know a lot about it, which isn’t true about empires in other parts of the world, so in that way the example chosen is eurocentric.
That’s exactly the thing: I don’t know. I don’t know whether the aforementioned Jin Empire could be compared to the US because they established military bases in foreign countries. I know the Romans did, because I have excavated some and visited countless ones. So choosing Rome makes sense. It is without a doubt eurocentric and more data points would strengthen the case, but in the end to disprove a categorical thesis that something is unique, you only need one counter example.
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That makes more sense to me, at least in terms of understanding your perspective…
Was it? Or was it Mediterranean? Was’t much of Europe covered in weird barbarians, who are mainly causing trouble for Romans? We certainly understand Rome helping to structure what we understand as “Europe” today, but that would have been a different understanding then, yes?
As a historian, I have to ask how we understand the POV of those in the past… would they have understood themselves as “Europeans” or as “Romans”… But if we reach back into the past and understand their world in our own categories, how much does that distort our understanding of how they understood themselves?
I think I’m just probably dancing about architecture now…
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I mean that is a whole other amphora of fermented fish. The concept of Europa did exist in Roman times, imported from Greece. It would have been primarily used, as I understand it (but I am no classicist) to create a distinction towards the equally fuzzily defined Asia. The northern tribes didn’t figure into this distinction. So you would call yourself a European when talking about your difference to the Parthian Empire, but when thinking about the Rugians you were just a Roman.
It is certainly true that a Roman would have felt more kinship with a Hellenized Syrian or a Ptolemaic Egyptian than with a Germanic tribesman, and what was central to their understanding of “Us” was, as you say, the Mare Nostrum (the clue being in the name, as it is in “Mediterranean”). So there is only partial overlap of their concept of Europe and ours.
But the concept as we understand it is really just what in the Middle Ages emerged as the Christian part of the former Roman empire with some areas tacked on that later adopted the same kind of Christianity (notably Scandinavia and the central and eastern parts of Germany). In the Middle Ages, this, i.e. western Christianity under the aegis of the pope, is what created a feeling of community. The renaissance later retconned this into having classical roots and then it suddenly became a very important concept when they realised there were whole other continents out there and we needed a pithy shorthand to describe ourselves while plundering them.
This is veering very much into off topic territory now, but the point we are both making still stands: those that forget history are doomed to repeat it, and the Romans also once thought their way of life was the be all and end all of human civilization.
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Fascinating! I didn’t know about that find. Berenike was central in the flourishing trade across the Indian Ocean from the Roman red sea ports.
Conversely there is at least one port in India that probably housed Roman traders.
Although, I have to say:
The artifact is the first Buddha ever found west of Afghanistan, according to the New York Review of Books’ William Dalrymple.
Someone hasn’t heard about the Helgö Buddha! http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/12/the-helgo-treasure-a-viking-age-buddha/
I suspect something was lost in translation there between academics and journalists, as often happens. They might have meant the first ever Buddha manufactured east of Afghanistan, because it is made from Mediterranean marble, fascinatingly enough. I wish I could read that piece by William Dalrymple, but there was a pay wall.
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As a Brit, I can say our exceptionalism may be mainly in our past; but it was every bit as horrible and far-flung as the US version. Unfortunately, America learned from the worst.
Like Scottish Exceptionalism?
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A lot, like a huge amount more, people come to Europe than America. It’s bigger and much more accessible for the majority of refugee populations.
Where northern/western/imperialist wars have been fought in the last 50 years is a factor in that of course.
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Just FYI, I’m not a classicist either…
But would they have included the Middle East and/or North Africa in that designation?
Okay, so yes, then…
Yeah, exactly my point…
Maybe, but that’s why it’s so problematic, as our own designations tend to gum up our thinking on understanding how the ancients organized the world. I think it’s difficult for even those of us who work in a historical field to not be influenced by that…
Right!
Yeah, yeah…
Right!
it’s fine!
Agreed!
No doubt, but I was talking specifically about people fleeing on foot from south and central America, not about pure numbers of human beings.
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Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire has entered the chat.
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They were great at creating an empire, not as good at securing it over the long-term, though. But it strikes me that they are more similar in length to the modern empires (British, French, American, etc) who really were not pre-eminent powers for all that long, when compared with the older, land-based empires of the classical world…
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No. No they are not.
No, it is not. Very clearly not now.
No, No you are not.
Only the people that are far worse off.
A sizable chunk of American citizens do not believe this. They believe the opposite.
This was a good example of American exceptionalism though.
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Textbook, even.
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I apologize for being too obtuse to make my point: that American Exceptionalism isn’t magical thinking—it is a fact.
How’s this for exceptional: when factoring out nuclear weapons, the United States is fully capable of going to war with every single nation on Earth, and winning. Being the pre-eminent global superpower is kinda exceptional.
China is destroying itself just trying to be number two. Look, I love Norway a whole lot: they’ve baked egalitarianism right into their Constitution; I wish we could do that (I am sorry my generation failed to do so—what can you do to turn this around?) On the other hand, as of 2019, the US is three points ahead of Norway in sustainable fish stocks (Sustainable Fishing | Smithsonian Ocean). I don’t have immigration numbers, but until proven wrong, I will assume that there is no brain-drain from the US to New Zealand or the EU (glad to see your numbers, though!)
I am glad the country you live in is nice. I wish being nice could give you a claim to excellence. I wish being excellent meant you were nice, as well. I also wish the people who do nothing to make America better couldn’t get away with laying claim to that excellence—perhaps if the left picked up the mantle and took ownership of what actually makes us a standout nation, instead of ankle-biting and actively wishing for our downfall. I mean, what would our (albeit astronomically unlikely) downfall actually accomplish?
Naturally, I am not smart enough to come up with this by myself. Here is the source of my thesis:
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Even taking the most generous interpretation (that the US is exceptional at being horrible) your personal opinions do NOT equate to facts.
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