Rome vs Han essay- want get some opinions

[Anthrophobia]

Each time they lose, they will get under strong pressure from other neighbouring tribes, because to hassle and attack the weakened is the iron law of the steppe. That consideration alone has kept nomads warfare usually far more cautious than the mental image of the unconditionally wild nomadic onslaught might have conveyed.

Nomadic steppe warfare always had to calculate with the intrinsic weakness of having no safe havens (fortified towns) to which one can fall back in case of defeat and wait out the worst from a favourable defensive position. Therefore, a defeat on the steppe should not be equated easily with a defeat in urbanized societies. A defeat on the steppe endangered the basis of life, that is the pastures, and the life of ones family in a much more immediate way than it was possible in sedentary societies.

Your approach is a bit one-dimensional because you only view the strategical situation of the nomads vis-a-vis the sedentary Han, but you leave out the shift of power balance vis-a-vis other nomads, that is whats going on in the back of a nomad tribe in case of defeat.

Overall, I dont think that the XiongNu were such super-formidable enemies of the Han - what is sometimes portraited in order to upgrade the performance of the Han armies in view of the almost complete lack of other worthy enemies the Han China had to face in their history - the XiongNu certainly must have felt their own strategical constraints heavily.

I would not place them in terms of military capability over the Sarmatian tribes (in view of the military innovationess even less - consider the Sarmation contribution to the development of the cataphracts), who operated in a similarly large area west, north and east of the Black Sea and were numerically therefore probably in the same bracket. But, unlike in case of the Han, the Sarmatians were only one major enemy Rome was busy with. If you go by the quality and number of foes both empires fended off successfully in their time, I dont think it is even a contest and I dont think I am guilty of stretching things here.

Look here, I'm trying to guide the discussion into a nonobjective comparison here. There is no need to compare which one is "better". I believe we have agreed that to say that the Han is superior is nationalistic. By logic the same then would be true when people say that Rome is militarily superior.

As for the Xiongnu, the ShiJi have already seen that the XiongNu's manueverability(not just the army, but the whole population) is a threat to all sedentary civilizations. We will never know for sure what the XiongNu is thinking because they don't keep much recorded history, but the fact that a most military defeats means nothing but a loss of men/horses means that their defeats pale in comparison to sedentary defeats. They do not have an economy that can become strained due to an defeat, and they do not have a land that can be pillaged. Women can herd sheep despite that their husband is dead, while for sedentary sociities and their sexist attitudes a family without a man = death. Thus, a defeat by the XiongNu empire hurts it a lot less than other sedentary civilizations. A nomad can move to another land without any economical strain. A farmer or city dweller cannot.

As for the Han not having formidable enemies... what's that all about? Keep in mind that the Han is a dynasty of an empire, while Rome is an empire(with many dynasties). If Rome where still intact today, you would probably consider Rome's invasion of Carthage just Rome vs Rome. China, however, stayed intact, so it's understandable that one would consider Han vs XiangYu or Qin vs Chu as China vs China, even though it is far from the case. Each state of the Warring States had their own style of warfare, and the most powerful state changed over the yrs due to constant war that many call China's military industrial revolution. Each war consists of battles that drained the population enough to cause starvation. By your reasoning Han barely had any enemies due to that its entire boundary is within present day China. The few enemies outside present day China such as the XiongNu, Vietnam and Korea were formidable as well. XiongNu for their speed, Vietnam for their guerilla tactics, and Korea for their rivaling technology. And then there's the Oasis kingdoms, in which each state has a different way of warfare. Thus, it is only reasonable to say that the Han dynasty had to deal with just as many enemies as any 400 yr period of Rome.