History as a Deck of Cards
Listening to the history of China, I’m struck by the frequency with which events there mirrored events in the history of Europe, and earlier in the eastern Mediterranean, despite the way that the two regions were separated—culturally as well as geographically. At least, the parallels are there when painted in the broad strokes unavoidable when one collapses thousands of years into a nine hours’ lecture.
China under the Tang underwent a classical revival comparable to the European Renaissance. The Han empire struggled with issues of land reform as the Greco-Romans did, and with the tendency of wealth (even in the relatively illiquid form of land) to accumulate in the hands of the few, with consequent peasant unrest. Ming China enjoyed an economic boom as newly uncovered silver flowed in from Japan, just a little before Spain enjoyed a similar windfall from the Americas, followed by a comparable ruination of economies and initiative when the emperor overtaxed the newly rich merchants, killing the goose that laid the silver eggs. Buddhism, initially dismissed as an alien philosophy was embraced as a tool for uniting disparate imperial elements of empire, as Christianity was.
Seeing history repeat itself this way seems to suggest that a certain pattern of history is inevitable, just as the Aztecs and Incas seemed to be gearing up to repeat the Mesopotamian cradle of civilization act in the Americas when Spain showed up and spoiled the whole thing. (If Europe hadn’t gained a 10,000 year head start while Americans migrated across the Bering Strait, we might have seen history repeated again.)
To be sure, there are differences, as well. Or perhaps, one huge difference: China was (and is) a massive central power, surrounded by smaller peripheral kingdoms in what we now call Manchuria, Korea, Vietnam, Tibet, Mongolia. Occasionally, order broke down, and China fragmented into rival fiefdoms, but a central order reasserted itself fairly quickly. Europe is just the opposite: it has spent most of its time as a balancing act between roughly equal rivals and partners of convenience. Occasionally, some great conqueror would seize a hegemonic block of territory, but it soon dissolved into national or even sub-national units, often immediately upon his death.
If history is so dependent on the conditions in which it grows as we are taught in classes, this kind of massive contrast should lead to a radically different history. Perhaps early China, in the Yellow River valley, should resemble Mesopotamia (and it does), but imperial China should—intuition demands—be radically different from Renaissance Europe. The massive difference of united empire and fragmented kingdoms should produce a radically different set of issues. But it doesn’t. Historical differences begin to look like a crock.
But hang on a minute.
If history is deterministic, and independent cultures will repeat the same history, then there shouldn’t be a massive dichotomy of central empire and rival states between China and Europe. That’s a big difference in power-political terms which can’t be waved away with geography. Yes, north China is a plain, and easily penetrated by steppe nomads, but south China isn’t. It’s rocky and fragmented like Europe, and especially southern Europe; if history is a constant, the Chinese of the Yellow and Wei Rivers should not have been able to absorb this territory any more than the Egyptians could absorb Asia Minor. Clearly a more sophisticated view of history’s broad outlines is called for.
The best I can do is by way of analogy to a deck of cards. Sooner or later, often spurred by changing technologies, rising civilizations all have to deal with the same issues. Cyclic qualities of climatic change—population swings, for example—mean they must often deal with the same issues repeatedly; each time, a civilization can try a variation on the last solution, trying to preserve what worked and fix what didn’t. Perhaps human nature demands that we adopt the same solutions to these repeated challenges, but we might try them in a different order. Foreigners pressing on our borders? Kill them. When that doesn’t work entirely, and a new generation returns some day, try assimilating them. Or hiring them as permanent second-class citizens. Or some combination of these ideas and others. For bronze-age classical civilization, the great challenge was iron weapons, and barbarian soldiers with the right tools and tactics finally to bring down armies of chariot archers. For the Shang, the great challenge was the satellite Zhou state, which had learned all too well from its patron-overlords. Later, Rome would face Goths who had learned Roman fighting too well, and China would face the superior weapons of Britain. It’s like a story told out of order, but all the elements are there, dealt by some arbitrary cosmic process. Because there’s only so many variations available, sooner or later everybody has to play the same hands. Just not necessarily at the same time. Often, similar responses to historical imperative produce similar new problems to solve. Perhaps that’s why we see so many patterns in history, just as an ace follows a king in a hand of bridge.