HY2206: China's Imperial Past

Author(s)

In AD 311, Luoyang, sacred city of the Sons of Heaven[1] was sacked by five ‘Barbarian’ tribes; in AD 410 the same would occur in the “Eternal City” of Rome, not only birthplace of the empire but also long called the “root and matrix of the Catholic Church”[2] by then the dominant religion of the Romans. These two events drastically shook the two civilizations, as Church Father St Jerome wrote: “the whole world perished in one city”.[3] Both Chinese and Romans perceived themselves as supreme empires in the center of the world divinely appointed to bring civilization to the unfortunate ‘Barbarians’. Both subsequently experienced waves of migration from these ‘Barbarians’, here defined as the cultural ‘outsiders’ who retained a distinct identity from the pre-migration population of ‘Romans’ and ‘Han’. This essay will compare the two political ideologies: the Chinese concept of All-Under-Heaven （天下）and the Roman concept of Universal Empire. The similarities between the identity of each of the empires in the religious and moral domains will be discussed. In the next section, the paper will examine the attempts of ‘Barbarian’ leadership to retain legitimacy over diverse populations. I will investigate the relationship between these ‘Barbarian’ leaders and cultural institutions which conferred that legitimacy. Here, the European and Chinese experiences may be contrasted; while Confucian academia did not establish an organized response to Imperial demands, the Catholic Church did so to great effect. The effect of this difference bore major consequences for the varying levels of success in legitimation.

Mirroring imperial self-conceptions

Roman and Chinese records regarding each other reveal an uncanny resemblance in mutual attitudes: the Chinese praised the Romans as an upright and moral people; the Romans lauded the Chinese as wise people who lived by just laws.[4] The two polities saw similarities in each other that they denied in other peoples who were typically called ‘barbarians’. This common contempt held for cultural ‘outsiders’ stemmed from a similar understanding of their own identity as united while diverse[5] political communities with moral and religious underpinnings.

Chinese ideas of their identity as an empire were deeply interwoven with a religiously inspired sense of duty to establish universal moral order. The Chinese empire was deemed the only civilization in the world, the font of all moral behaviour; Chineseness（華）was not defined by culture or ancestry but by obedience to the moral precepts（禮）that were recognized by Chinese convention and later Confucianism.[6] The Romans shared a similar philosophy: the Roman empire was envisioned as a citizen body (civitas), that was seen as the sole cradle of human flourishing because it is ordered by the rule of law that encapsulates the universal moral law of humanity.[7] Roman self-identity (romanitas) centered on their identification as the center of the world, marked by rational and moderate behaviour, while surrounded by ‘Barbarians’ who lacked these values.[8] Conversely, unlawfulness within the empire was seen as tantamount to de-Romanization. This equation of lawfulness with Romanitas was crucial, as in China, in making ‘Roman’ a highly fluid category.[9]

The Emperors’ role as civilization’s moral preceptor was another commonality: In the Chinese conception, the Son of Heaven was to be the supreme moral example for the world, and his duty was the moral transformation （化） of humanity towards moral perfection and world peace, as related by the Zhou dynasty’s Kingly Way[10] and echoed by the Qin dynasty’s Imperial steles: “transforming influence reaches without limit”.[11] The emperor’s moral guidance to the community was analogized in paternalist rhetoric, as related in the Book of Rites: “A loyal subject’s serving his lord and a filial son’s attending to his parents, the roots are one,”[12] which strengthened the emperor’s claim as universal moral educator. Correspondingly, the Roman emperor was the all-powerful sovereign needed to provide universal jurisdiction and protection to the law, and to spread it to all of humanity.[13] Rather than a militaristic conqueror, the empire was seen as a positive force for universal harmonization, to “practice men in the art of peace”.[14] This ideal caring authority of Roman emperors over the people was also expressed in familial rhetoric: just as the father-son relation was the most potent of Roman social bonds, the emperor role was cemented by being declared the Father of the Country (Pater Patriae).[15]

Another similarity is the theocratic justifications for imperial rule. The Chinese Emperors bore the title “Son of Heaven”, signifying his role of acting on behalf of heaven to implement moral order and universal harmony. When Confucianism was adapted as the state philosophy, its exponent Dong Zhongshu further refined the religious dimension of Imperial legitimation: that the Son of Heaven derived his legitimacy from heaven alone, on the condition that he adheres to the moral example of heaven.[16] This theocratic dimension necessarily precludes equals: since there was only one Heaven they could only be one Emperor uniting All-under-Heaven; other peoples must accept that legitimacy stemmed exclusively from Imperial power（皇權）.[17]      Roman emperors, first pagan and later Christian, was likewise underpinned by theocratic aspects[18] as justification for their universal rule: pagan Emperors were accorded the status “son of god” (divi filius), [19]  while their highest deity Jupiter granted them rights to a limitless empire (imperium sine fine).[20] Roman Christians refined the theocratic concept further: as Roman morality became equated with Christianity, and barbarism with paganism, the Christian world (orbis Christianum) encapsulated the civilized world.[21] The Christian bishop St Eusebius of Caesarea developed the doctrine that the Roman Empire was divinely ordained to evangelize the world in Christianity. From this derives the belief that the emperor was representative of God,[22] venerated likeness (eikon) of the Son of God.[23] The emperor was empowered to create a harmonious order mimicking God’s rule of heaven.[24] Sacrality defended the Roman claim to exceptionalism, and monotheistic Christianity with its one Church served as an analogue of the Roman claim to be the sole legitimate power with unlimited jurisdiction[25] just as one Heaven did in the Chinese Empire.

Despite the resemblance between the two imperial identities, a crucial difference was the existence of an organized religious body that served to interpret orthodoxy. Although Christianity was largely compatible with prevailing imperial tropes, Christianity was not a Roman invention but came with a preexisting Church that had to be deferred to, as the first Christian Emperor Constantine did when first convening the bishops in the First Council of Nicaea.[26] This contrasts with the Chinese experience: when Imperial Confucianism was developed by Dong Zhongshu, it was tailored-made to suit imperial needs by synthesizing eclectic ideas from various philosophies.[27] This contrast would have tremendous repercussions in rulers’ relations with moral authorities, as discussed in the next segment.

Universalism tested by migrations

The moral-religious rhetoric of empire in both civilizations would become critical in the aftermath of the ‘barbarian’ migrations, which strained the limits of the universalistic definition of self in both Chinese and Roman Empires. These ‘Barbarian’ peoples, partly due to imperial cosmopolitanism, were recruited en masse to serve in Imperial armies (as seen in the Roman military acquiring a somewhat-Romanized ‘Barbarian’ identity), later seizing power.[28] In both civilizations, rulers utilized diverse means to portray themselves, tapping on both tribalistic and universalistic conventions to secure power.

Legacies of engagement with Roman institutions smoothened the transition to ‘Barbarian’ rule since ‘Barbarian’ leaders utilized these institutions to legitimize themselves. In the Roman world, ‘Barbarian’ pioneers who occupied the Western empire were content to accept Roman titles to gain recognition of their rule from locals.[29] Aware of the need to adapt to secure rule, leaders were quick to preserve the old Roman-universalistic institutions with their fluid boundaries of identity. ‘Barbarian’ kings co-opted Roman institutions such as the Senate, Consulate, provincial governments and prefectships.[30] This strategy is clearer still when Gothic King Theodoric used Roman rhetoric as pacifier of nations (domitor gentium) to justify conquering Provence from other Goths; several kings celebrated imperial-style Triumphs complete with commemorative coinage and public games[31] – events deeply connected to imperial domination and cult.[32] Vandal kings even maintained the Roman imperial cult.[33] Since the late imperial era’s divide between the Roman civilian (and officials) and the ‘Barbarian’ military was preserved;[34] Romanization was advanced despite the retention of distinct ‘Barbarian’ culture and identity: Kings combined Roman legitimacy with traditional Germanic royal imagery such as the long hair of the Merovingian Franks, or claims of descent from the Germanic god Woden.[35] The Ostrogoth rulers presented themselves as tribal kings to Germanic peoples and as imperial viceroys to Romans.[36] Frankish king Pippin took this further when he emphasized his disdain for Romans on the grounds of their historical persecution of Christianity and claimed that their leadership of Christendom had passed to the Franks.[37] Here ‘Barbarian’ leadership presented a multifaceted political strategy that aimed to cater to a diverse public, which the non-ethnically restricted Roman sense of self was important in facilitating.

Similarly, the Chinese experience with ‘Barbarian’ migration and leadership displayed adaptive elements without discarding tribal particularity. Just as the Germanic peoples had to adapt to imperial politics, nomadic peoples in China displayed much of the same strategies, which were made possible by the universalistic, fluid self-definition of Chineseness. Some of the Sixteen Kingdoms such as Former Liang, Former Yan[38] and Former Qin[39] accepted Eastern Jin suzerainty to consolidate their position within the Imperial order. Xianbei-led states such as Former, Later, Northern and Southern Yan and Northern Wei, were able to endure by adopting elements of Chinese administration, with the Northern Wei being able to stabilize itself by taking on the apparatus of a classical Chinese state, while reorganizing nomadic subjects into 8 military-based state-provisioned artificial tribes,[40] who were honoured as ‘compatriots’（國人）.[41] As division of labour emerged between the native Chinese civilians and ‘Barbarian’ troops, targeted and self-contradictory rhetoric was deployed, just as it was in Europe, as seen in Gao Huan’s speech whereby he told Xian Bei that Han were their slaves, and Han that Xianbei were their ‘clients’.[42] While ‘slavery’ rhetoric may have appealed to Xianbei pride, clientship of immigrant settlers tapped on the universalistic worldview of Imperial China. While similar to the European experience it should be noted that these polities were unstable until Tuoba Sinicization (European transition had been near-seamless) as many of the ‘barbarian’ tribes had been resettled and had its leaders brought up in China, depriving them of an independent political tradition that could forestall constant disintegration.[43]

Relations with moral authorities

In both China and Europe, ‘Barbarian’ rulers were enthusiastic in adapting to different political traditions, yet they further needed to engage with moral authorities that served to confer legitimacy. Whereas ‘Barbarians’ in China were able to pursue a stable patronage policy, in Europe the predominance of the Church meant that rulers had less options open and had to be more coercive in acquiring legitimacy.

North China’s cultural authorities remained the Confucian intelligentsia and the newly arrived Buddhism; ‘Barbarian’ states needed to build rapport with both groups. This meant cultivating Confucian values, learning and ritual was key to winning this support and was carried out to great effect by the Former Qin, who came to portray themselves as a representative of Chinese civilization against Xianbei ‘wild customs’.[44] Northern Wei Emperor Taiwu in similar fashion imitated Qin Shihuang’s act of erecting a stele to commemorate unification while offering sacrifices to Confucius.[45] The policy of accommodation was also flexible in that these states tended to cater to ‘Barbarian’ interests as well: for instance, in patronizing Buddhism and its monasticism, which attracted them due to its foreign origin as it offered an alternative non-Confucian form of legitimation.[46] Former Zhao and Later Qin were examples of polities known for both Confucian and Buddhist patronage: the latter garnered a reputation for Sinicization among the ‘Barbarians’.[47] The culmination of these efforts was Yuwen Tai’s development of shared ruled between the Confucian administrators and Xianbei military.[48] Rulers possessed the upper hand in relations with these cultural authorities which effectively competed for patronage.

On the other hand, European moral authority since the Christianization of the Romans had rested on the Catholic Church’s religious monopoly with whom the ‘Barbarian’ rulers had to develop a deeper, exclusive relationship to consolidate their polities. Pagan ‘Barbarian’ leaders, such as King Clovis of the Franks and various Anglo-Saxon kings performed their role as inheritors of the empire by quickly converting to Christianity as a key display of Romanization.[49] The Frankish conversion to Christianity, specifically Roman Catholicism, facilitated the formation of a kind of “national church” in which the Frankish kings were able to reach accommodation with both the Roman Emperor surviving in the East and the local Gallo-Roman population, boosting Frankish political credibility.[50] This was particularly important as the Gallo-Roman aristocracy had largely retained their influence by pursuing clerical careers, and now represented the bulk of civilian administration.[51] Roman aristocrats elsewhere similarly flourished as landed gentry or churchmen.[52] The Visigothic kingdom would eventually advance rapprochement by converting to Catholicism and organizing the national church councils of Toledo, which similarly mended relations between the Romans and Goths.[53]

However, these relationships in Europe were not always positive, the primary distinction between the European and Chinese instances. The Church under the Papacy understood its own importance for political legitimation and attempted to leverage this advantage. The Popes argued that since kingship needed priests, while the Church (having emerged independently) did not need kings to survive, secular authority was inferior to religious authority.[54] Conversely, rulers often attempted to impose their will coercively, which led to military-geopolitical struggle for control of the Church. This is visible in the example of the Goths’ heterodox Christian King Theodoric’s interference in the internal affairs of the Church.[55] In jarring contrast to the patronage-clientship in China, military strategy would become an increasingly decisive factor behind the attainment of legitimacy. The Lombard Kingdom attempted to simply conquer Rome and subjugate the Papacy; in response, Pope Stephen II appealed for protection from the Franks by offering their king sacred anointment and Roman titles.[56] The Franks in turn attempted to place themselves in a dominant position over the Church.[57] This power struggle between religious and secular domains was consistent through the rest of European history as late as the 19^th century.

Conclusion

The Chinese and Roman imperial ideologies shared striking similarities in their use of moral and religious exclusivism as the basis for unity in each diverse polity, yet the use of such fluid boundaries of inclusion also opened the door to newcomers who tapped on this worldview to claim legitimacy for new polities that were established in the wake of the original empires’ collapse. While at their inception the two imperial ideologies closely resembled each other, minor differences – especially the existence of a preexistent Christian hierarchy – led to divergence in the ways that ‘Barbarian’ rulers related to the respective cultural authorities. In the Chinese example co-optation through patronage was a smoother process, whereas in Europe, kings and Church struggled to find a mutually acceptable arrangement. Beyond the scope of this essay are the ways in which the universalist idea would continue to be utilized by regimes to construct new Imperial projects. In this regard, ‘Barbarian’ emperors in China experienced more success than European counterparts, and legitimization processes may have also factored into this.

Endnotes

[1] Alfred Schinz, The Magic Square: Cities in Ancient China (Edition Axel Menges, 1996), 167.

[2] Nicholas Afanassieff, “The church which presides in love”. In The primacy of Peter: essays in ecclesiology and the early church, ed. John Meyendorff (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995 [1963]).

[3] Henry Wace and Philip Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), 499-500.

[4] Henry Yule, Henri Cordier (ed.), Cathay and the Way Thither: Being a Collection of Medieval Notices of China, Vol I: Preliminary Essay on the Intercourse Between China and the Western Nations Previous to the Discovery of the Cape Route (London: Hakluyt Society, 1915), 17, 30, 45.

[5] Yuri Pines, Paul Goldin, Martin Kern, Ideology of Power and Power of Ideology in Early China (BRILL, 2015), 33-35; Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (Princeton University Press, 2013), 31-32.

[6] Shaoyun Yang, The Way of the Barbarians: Redrawing Ethnic Boundaries in Tang and Song China (University of Washington Press, 2019), 10-16.

[7] Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France C. 1500-c. 1800 (Yale University Press, 1995), 19-20.

[8] Guy Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West 376-568 (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 46-47.

[9] Paul Fouracre (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History Vol. 1 c.500-c.700 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 40.

[10] Asım Doğan, Hegemony with Chinese Characteristics (Routledge, 2021), 16.

[11] Ivo Spira, A Conceptual History of Chinese -Isms: The Modernization of Ideological Discourse, 1895–1925 (BRILL, 2015), 54.

[12] Dai Sheng (ed.), Book of Rites, n.d., Wikisource, Jitong, 2

[13] Pagden, Lords of All the World, 19-23

[14] Arthur Herman, The Idea of Decline in Western History (Simon and Schuster, 2010), Part 1 Chapter 1

[15] Michael Peppard, The Son of God in the Roman World (Oxford University Press, USA, 2011), 60-62

[16] Xuezhi Guo, The Ideal Chinese Political Leader: A Historical and Cultural Perspective (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002), 8

[17] Tan Koon San, Dynastic China: An Elementary History (The Other Press, 2014), 48-50

[18] Pagden, Lords of All the World, 15

[19] Peppard, The Son of God, 46-47

[20] Claude Nicolet, Space, Geography, and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (University of Michigan Press, 1991), 20

[21] Pagden, Lords of All the World, 24

[22] Johan van Der Walt, The Concept of Liberal Democratic Law (Routledge, 2019), Chapter 5.2

[23] J Bortes, “Eikon Theou: Meanings of Likeness in Gregory of Nazianus”, in Studia Patristica: Papers presented at the Fourteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2003 ed. Frances Margaret Young, Mark J. Edwards, Paul M. Parvis (Peeters 2006), 288

[24] Mark McInroy, Michael J. Hollerich (ed.), The Christian Theological Tradition (Routledge, 2019), Chapter 11

[25] Pagden, Lords of All the World, 25, 28; Henri Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne (New York: Meridian Books, 1959), 45

[26] Sozomen, The Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen, c. 440, Wikisource, Book I, Chapter 20.

[27] Zhao Dingxin, The Confucian-Legalist state: A New Theory of Chinese History (Oxford University Press, 2015), 274-280.

[28] Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, 19-20; Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, 179-180, 284-5; Arnold Hugh Martin Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284-602: A Social Economic and Administrative Survey (Taylor & Francis, 1986 [1964]), 621-622; Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 180.

[29] Dick Westwood, The Two Swords: Empire, Christendom, and European Disunion (Strategic Book Publishing, 2013), 24

[30] J.B Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire: From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian Vol. I (New York: Macmillan, 1923), 409; Jones, Later Roman Empire, 257-259; Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, 284-5.

[31] Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, 490-491

[32] Nicholas Temple, Renovatio Urbis: Architecture, Urbanism and Ceremony in the Rome of Julius II (Taylor & Francis, 2011), 79.

[33] Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, 326.

[34] Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, 40-41; Will Slatyer, Ebbs and Flows of Ancient Imperial Power, 3000 BC – 900 AD (Partridge Publishing, 2014), 298.

[35] Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, 492.

[36] Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, 46-47.

[37] Alessandro Barbero, Charlemagne: Father of a Continent (University of California Press, 2004), 104-105.

[38] Puning Liu, China’s Northern Wei Dynasty, 386-535: The Struggle for Legitimacy (Routledge, 2020), 86–87.

[39] Albert E. Dien, Keith N. Knapp, Cambridge History of China Vol. 2 The Six Dynasties (Cambridge University Press, 2019), 134-135.

[40] Mark E. Lewis, China Between Empires: The Northern and Southern Dynasties (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), 79-81.

[41] Dien and Knapp, Cambridge History of China V2, 292.

[42] Sima Guang, Zhizhi Tongjian, 1084, Wikisource, 157, Liangji 13.

[43] Lewis, China Between Empires, 73.

[44] Dien & Knapp, Cambridge History of China V2, 136.

[45] Dien & Knapp, Cambridge History of China V2, 166.

[46] Valerie Hansen, The Open Empire: A History of China through 1600 (Norton, 2000), 159.

[47] Dien & Knapp, Cambridge History of China V2, 129-130, 138.

[48] Dien & Knapp, Cambridge History of China V2, 218.

[49] Fouracre, The New Cambridge Medieval History, 198, 206, 484.

[50] Fouracre, The New Cambridge Medieval History, 121-122, 172-173.

[51] Jamie Kreiner, “About the Bishop: The Episcopal Entourage and the Economy of Government in Post-Roman Gaul.”, Medieval Academy of America Speculum 86, no. 2 (2011): 321-360.

[52] Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, 497.

[53] Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, 343.

[54] Herbert Schutz, The Medieval Empire in Central Europe: Dynastic Continuity in the Post-Carolingian Frankish Realm, 900-1300 (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 20.

[55] Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, 490.

[56] Pirenne, 220-226; Walter Ullmann, Growth of Papal Government in Middle Ages – Study in Ideological Relation of Clerical to Lay Power (Routledge, 2013), 67-69.

[57] Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, 229.