IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/eurrev/v24y2016i02p306-324_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Diverging Legacies of Classical Empires in China and Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Blockmans, Wim
  • De Weerdt, Hilde

Abstract

The memory of classical empires has been prominent in both Chinese and European history but it has had a different imprint in each culture. The Han territories were periodically reunified in part and were more consistently ruled as unified empires from the 13th century onwards. In medieval Western Europe the Carolingian and the Holy Roman empires boasted of being renewals of the glorious ancient models but they developed in a different environment, were no longer built on the Roman scale, and only borrowed selectively from the Roman repertoire. In this essay we examine how differences in power relationships, fiscal regimes, and territoriality help explain both the peripheral impact of the classical model in the European context and the enhanced prospects for it in Chinese history from the 12th century onwards.

Suggested Citation

  • Blockmans, Wim & De Weerdt, Hilde, 2016. "The Diverging Legacies of Classical Empires in China and Europe," European Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(2), pages 306-324, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:eurrev:v:24:y:2016:i:02:p:306-324_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1062798715000654/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marginson, Simon, 2021. "One country, two political cultures: What way forward for Hong Kong’s universities?," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    2. Yaguang Zhang & Sitian Yu & Shengyi Zhang, 2023. "The political economy of imperial power successions in ancient China," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 197(1), pages 137-166, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:eurrev:v:24:y:2016:i:02:p:306-324_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/erw .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.