Trade and Conquest of Nations

Already Romans considered themselves the rulers of the whole world, and not just the world around the Mediterranean Sea. There was no point of extending their rule westward into Europe; there was hardly any revenue, it was dry and cold with no resources. But conquest of Egypt added riches to the Roman Empire and increased the surplus wealth of the population that could be invested in buying the riches from the east – India and China.

Romans wanted to conquer India and China too so that the wealth of these nations would pour into Rome. Horace, that popular Roman poet, who lived (65-8 BC) during the time of Emperor Augustus, wrote of the imagined Rome’s mastery of the entire world, including India and China. This involved moving against Persian Empire which lay in between and it became a preoccupation of the Roman Emperors to plan expeditions against Persia, which was the heart of the world.

Emperor Trajan led a huge army against Persia in 113 AD, and speedily captured Mesopotamia and other Persian cities like Babylon, Seleucia and Ctesiphon quickly fell into the Roman’s hands. Coins were minted and issued declaring Persia has been captured. He went up to Basra at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and looked wistfully at a merchant ship that set sail to India. Unfortunately, he couldn’t become a second Alexander the Great and march up to the shores of India, for on the heel of these victories, Trajan passed away of cerebral oedema! Hearing this news revolt spread quickly starting with Judaea, all over the conquered lands.

Roman Emperors did not give up their dreams so easily. Successive Emperors kept fighting the Persian Empire. In 260 AD, Emperor Valerian, in his skirmish, was taken a prisoner by Persian army and was humiliated. He was used as a human footstool for the Persian ruler to mount his horse. His body on death was flayed; skin stripped off the flesh, stuffed, dyed with vermilion and placed in their temple as a trophy.

Persia itself flourished as a land lying in between the rich and fabulously wealthy lands of China and India on one hand and the Roman Empire on the other. Trade passed through the Persian land and it added revenue to the government. Glazed pottery from Persia headed to India and Sri Lanka during the first two centuries AD. A new ruling dynasty named Sasanians emerged in Persia around 220 AD, who centralized the administration and gave power to their officials to record their decisions and stamp on them their seals.

Guilds were organised for producers and traders, specific areas allocated in bazaars, which made it easy for the traders to be inspected and to ensure quality and quantity standards set and collect tax and duties. Countless new cities were founded and urban development blossomed all over Central Asia, Iranian land, Mesopotamia and the Near East. Large scale irrigation projects were taken up in Khuzistan and Iraq, to boost agricultural production. Meticulous records were maintained of all transactions and many of these records and seals have survived and dug up in archaeological surveys.

As Persia soared Rome tottered. By 300 AD, Rome became a victim of its own success. The barbaric and violent tribes and nations living beyond its borders started to attack it on all sides. Cost of defending the long borders skyrocketed, while the tax revenue dwindled. During the reign of Diocletian, Roman tax inspectors spread throughout the land, assessing the cost and price of everything from shoe lace to sugar to collect tax. Diocletian divided the Roman territory into four and ruled it along with another Emperor and two junior Deputy Emperors named Caesars. They just about managed to keep the Empire intact.

You will be surprised to know that in the so-called Roman Republic, it was the soldiers and the Praetorian guards (the elite units of the Imperial Roman Army whose members served as personal body guards to the Roman Emperors), who really elected a promising general as the Emperor and the Senate was forced to ratify the selection. Hence people of obscure origins could by sheer dint of hard work and distinction in the military service, come to occupy the highest post in the Empire.

On coming to be vested with the Royal Purple, the Emperor’s first act was to bountifully reward the soldiers, his benefactors, with Roman gold and wealth. Doesn’t it sound similar to our politicians offering money to cross over, and Chief Ministers offering plum ministries to their supporters and defectors from the other parties? Well, Romans have done it earlier! Why, don’t all empires thrive on bloodshed and bribe and corruption?

When the elected Emperor fell short of their expectations, the soldiers mutinied and killed the Emperor and massacred their supporters. Military might was able to make and unmake the Emperors in the Roman world. I feel sometimes that a hereditary ruler from a dynasty is far better than these unruly soldiers making an Emperor.

Diocletian was followed by Emperor Constantine. His father was Constantius, who had served as Deputy Emperor, Caesar, under the Tetrarchy of Diocletian. After his father’s death, Constantine overcame the others in the civil war and became the sole Emperor of Rome. He successfully guarded the Empire from the tribes on Roman frontiers, the Franks, Alamanni, Goths, and Sarmatians. He brought in many improvements in administration.

He had a new vision and built a brand new capital city on the site of the old town Byzantium, on the banks of Bosporus and named it Constantinople, exactly on the midway, the point where Europe met Asia. He built huge palaces, Hippodrome for chariot races, and other parallel institutions as in Rome. It became the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire that came to be known as the Byzantine Empire.  It survived for another 1000 years, until it was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 AD. What an Empire, the longest to survive in human history!

This is the same Constantine who changed the course of the history of Christianity from a persecuted religion to a state-sponsored religion. He issued the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, declaring tolerance to the religion of Christianity. He also convened the first council of Nicaea in 325 AD, where the Nicene Creed was formulated and had become the watchword of Christian faith, being recited even today in the churches. He himself was baptized only on his death bed.

His mother was a devoted Christian and under her influence he built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on the site of Jesus’ tomb in Jerusalem. This stands even today as an important place of pilgrimage for Christians from all over the world. I had the privilege of visiting this place in 2015.  

Imagine, 2000 years back silk made by the Chinese was being worn by the rich and powerful in Carthage and the other cities of Mediterranean; pottery manufactured in southern France was found in England and in Persian Gulf; spices and condiments from India was used in the kitchens of the Romans; buildings and edicts in Afghanistan carried inscription in Greek, and horses from Central Asian steppes were being ridden in far east, including India. Trade had built bridges that connected the east and the west and a flourishing economic transaction flowed through them all.

It was a vibrant, competitive, efficient society that operated this world-wide net work of trade and commerce interconnecting the world, the east and the west, following the opening up of the silk route through the conquest of the world by Alexander the Great.

Is it any less than today’s globalization and neo-colonization and faint taste of imperialism? Nations fought each other to have control over trade and resources as it is today. What Romans couldn’t do, the British succeeded in doing by conquering the whole subcontinent of India, establishing the East India Company and the riches of Indian and trade of the surrounding areas filled their coffers, leaving India poor and denuded. Opium wars that British fought against China opened the gateway to China and its riches too.

Only in the 20^th century colonialism ended after the World War II and countries like India which won freedom are still struggling to come to their former glory. China, we can vouchsafe has almost come to its former greatness and economic power. When would India match up to that? If the Lord tarries, may be one day!    

Hellenisation and opening up of the Silk Trade

Death of Alexander might have brought an end of his dreams of establishing a worldwide Greek Empire, but it could said that his desire was accomplished by the spread of Greek culture and philosophy from the West to the East, with the ideas, themes and symbols from ancient Greece being introduced to the east, the regions in between serving as the connecting bridge between the two.

Greek language became the lingua franca of the Roman world by in the first century AD. It would be recalled that the whole of New Testament, including Paul’s letters, was written in Greek. Greek language can be heard all over Central Asia and even in the Indus valley. It was in vogue in Asia, for more than a century after the death of Alexander. Maxims from Delphi, the oracle of Apollo in Delphi, Greece were found carved on a monument in Ai Khanoum in northern Afghanistan, a city founded by Seleucus. Tax receipts and documents regarding the soldiers’ pay from Bactria around 200 BC were written down in Greek.  

Mauryan Emperor Ashoka, who ruled in 268 BC, propagated his Buddhist tenets through his edicts, which are found in the north west of Indian subcontinent, had parallel Greek translations for the benefit of the local population. Buddha statues started to appear around the time when the cult of Apollo started to be established in Gandhara valley and western India. Buddhism till then had no visual representation of Buddha.

In southern Tajikistan images of Apollo and miniature ivories depicting Alexander have been found. Homer and tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides were studied and taught in Persia and Asia. It may not be far fetched to say that Indian epic poem Ramayana was influenced by Iliad and Odyssey, epics of Ancient Greece, where the elopement of Helen with Paris of Troy triggered the Trojan War. In Ramayana abduction of Sita by Ravana triggered the war! Mahabharata, another epic of Indian subcontinent is said to have influenced Aeneid, a Latin epic poem written by Virgil in 29-29 BC. The cultural influence thus flew from both the sides enriching each other.

China was rising in the east, pushing its frontiers to include the northern steppes, during their dynasty of Hans, 206 BC – 220 AD. Their territories extended up to Hindu Kush. There was a vibrant trade up to tens of thousands of head of cattle head, which the Chinese bought from the steppe tribes, including Scythian in Central Asia. Chinese required horses to keep vigilance over their territory and tribal chieftains of the region of Xinjiang made a fortune selling horses to them. The Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, who died in 210 BC was buried with 80 of his favored steeds, along with some 8000 terracotta soldiers, recently excavated in Xi’an.

The feared tribes of the steppes of Mongolia, Xiongnu, were kept in good humor by the Chinese Emperors, through a formal system of tribute of rice, wine and textiles, mainly silk. Chinese silk soon became the symbol of political and social power among the rulers of the steppe and elsewhere. In 1 BC, Xiongnu were given 30,000 rolls of silk as peace offering! China tried to deal with these tribes once and for all, by pushing them up to Pamir mountains and beyond where lay a new world. China had opened a door leading to a trans-continental network for trade. The Silk Roads were born.

China sent explorers to find out about the culture and economics of the countries of Indus valley, Persia and Central Asia. The nomads displaced by the Chinese had descended on the Central Asia, they observed. Military strength of these countries was poor, but trade flourished in the capital Bactra. Trade between China and these regions soon started to develop, but slowly. They had to navigate treacherous places like Gobi desert, Taklmakan desert, passes of Pamirs and other mountains. The route was dangerous and deadly. To weather the sand storms in the region, Bactrian camels were found to be useful.

In spite of the dangers of the route and death of animals and traders, luxury items like silk started to flow along these routes. Under Hans dynasty silk was used to pay troops along with coins and grain. Bolts of raw silk were regularly used as currency. Very soon silk became international currency and also a much sought after luxury product.

Chinese controlled the traders who were entering their territory and leaving, by maintaining exhaustive records on bamboo and wooden tablets. Visitors had to stick to designated routes, issued with written passes and were regularly counted by Chinese officials to ensure all those entered the country went back! Sounds a bit like communist regime, isn’t it? But the thing to note is globalization is not a modern phenomena, it was there in the world even in 2^nd Century BC!

By the 1^st century AD Rome, established in the shores of Italy, came to dominate Mediterranean and their demands stirred up the flow of luxury items from the east. With a highly disciplined and trained army, Rome soon took up the reigns as a world power. Conquest of Gaul in the now central Europe brought gold into Roman Empire. But the real profits for Roman Empire came from its conquest of Eastern Mediterranean and the regions beyond.

Egypt under Ptolemy was fabulously rich and Alexandria had become a great city of wealth. Food grains left its shores by ships for distant lands and brought in wealth. This rich Egypt was conquered by Octavius in 30 BC and on return he was bestowed with the title Augustus by the Senate and Rome itself had became an empire.  

As the wealth of the rich Nile river poured into Rome, its economy got transformed. Rome ruthlessly expropriated Egypt’s tax revenue and its economic resources, a repeat performance by the British Empire in India, many centuries later. A new poll tax was introduced, which was payable by every male member of the age between 16 and 60, who were registered in a census. This census was for taxation purposes.

The sucking of the resources was extended to Judaea too, and births and deaths were recorded, to increase the revenue by taxing each male member of the society. In one such process Jesus’ parents traveled to Bethlehem to be enumerated in a census ordered by Quirinius, who was the Governor of Syria.

The east, especially Asia was seen as a rich and fabulous place with reputation for lazy luxury and fine living. In 1 BC, Augustus ordered a detailed survey of both sides of Persian Gulf and the trade in the region along the sea routes. He also investigated the land routes leading deep into Central Asia through Persia. His officers recorded the important locations from the Euphrates up to modern Kandahar in Afghanistan in the east. Trade exploded with India, but some Romans would moan that the Asian decadence destroyed the old fashioned Roman virtues.

Ports in western and eastern coasts of India served as the market place for goods brought from all over eastern and south-eastern Asia, shipped to the Rome. Similarly Kushan Empire established in the north western India became so rich by serving as the market place for the goods secured from all over India, Central Asia and China, and trading it with the Romans.

 Chinese silk was increasingly available in Mediterranean and the wealthy resorted to using it as their attire. Pliny the Elder would complain that the Roman coffers were being emptied in this effort to adorn the rich women of Rome. He indicated that 100 million sesterces per year were pumped out of the Roman economy to provide for such luxuries, which amounted to 10% of the annual budget of the Roman Empire.

No wonder Rome wanted to extend its empire to India and beyond to China. The country of Persia lay in its way, so the Roman emperors waged war against Persia time and again, sometimes to win and other times to lose.

More of this in the next blog; hope you are enjoying what you are reading.