Why did Europe split into dozens of small countries, but China has remained mostly a single country throughout its history? And why did it fail to take Korea and Japan, when it took so much else?
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Why did Europe split into dozens of small countries, but China has remained mostly a single country throughout its history?
A way higher degree of cultural and ethnic homogeneity.
>why couldn’t they take Korea
Their grip on the northeast of the country has always been shaky because of steppeBlack folk
>japan
Japan was a resource-scarce backwater for the vast majority of east Asia’s history. Whenever a Chinese dynasty was at its peak it’s attention was focused on Central Asia where all the money was. The Ming drew up plans to invade japan but discarded them in favour of conquering Turkestan instead.
Fpbp as always. Japan modernizing so fast was because of their shitty position too, once Russia found began to claim Hokaido before the Japs they went into full blown panic
>China has remained mostly a single country throughout its history
It hasn't /thread
compared to Europe? yeah it has
China is unified in 2024, I don't know if you've heard. Let's see how Europes doing on the other hand
oh man you're gonna freak when you find out what europe's been doing the last few decades
And it wasn't unified until 1954. You could make a case that Europe is more unified now than at anytime since Charlemagne, or maybe before Diocletian. What with the EU and the common currency and all that.
Byzantium and HRE were to weak to conquer everything. Because of that, the other kingdoms and cultures only became more entrenched with time, making unification of Europe even less likely.
The Chinese were not christcucked, Europe was most united in Pagan Rome.
>The Chinese were not christcucked, Europe was most united in Pagan Rome.
I think this is a big part of it. Christianity divided the Roman identity into Pagans vs. Christians, and later Christians vs. Heretic. The barbarians would convert into Christianity rather than Roman culture, and the Muslims, later on, remain loyal to Islam, such that the religious identity over ethnic identity and religious conflicts make it difficult to assimilate any group inside the country and to reclaim the lost territory. Also Christians came to kill each other too since the interpretations of Christianity are different.
Confucianism is a lot different. It's like a different universe. But it includes a Chinese identity in a package with rules about governing, ethics, and a way of life. Confucianism separates religion from politics so there's no base for a religious identity to replace the Chinese identity. Confucianists only differentiate between Chinese and barbarians. As long as you practice Confucianism, you're Chinese, and you kick out religion from politics and you have no need to adopt any official religion and to enforce it because Confucianists can manage the empire for you. The Roman version would be if the barbarians, Arabs, and Ottomans, Russians and etc. adopted the Roman culture and became Romans and defended Roman unity.
>united under Pagan Rome
>not plagued with constant civil wars and corruption
Also China is united cause they would just purge other ethnic groups until they are replaced and force them to follow Confucius ideas, unlike Rome
Europe splitting into dozen of small countries is unironically the best thing to happen to the continent
forceful assimilation, either be chinese or go somewhere else
European geography encourage many centres of power. Big state's have difficulty to bully smaller states because they are often protected by mountains, peninsulas, rivers etc. At the same time many have navigable rivers or coastlines that allows them to have independent economic cores. China, by contrast, is dominated by the Yellow and the Yangtze which allows the Chinese government to rule in a more centralised way.
europe was unlucky
I think Europe was lucky
Superstates are not nice to be in
geography
look at a physical map
>China has remained mostly a single country throughout
Only after the mongol invasion, it is a common theme, also see:russia
China is a large cultural continuum of a relatively homogenous race speaking similar dialects, and its geography lends itself to being ruled by a central authority over a large area. That being said, there were several times in Chinese history when it was fractured into warlord states.
Europe is far more full of peninsulas, rivers, forests, mountain ranges, islands, jagged coastlines and a variable climate. Look at the climatic difference of somewhere like Norway or Denmark compared to Sicily or Greece. Rome mainly unified the Mediterranean, it had to stop at the Rhine and Britain.
China proper pretty much is the extent non foreign dynasties controlled for the first 2k years of the dynastic cycle. Other sparsely populated territories it controls today were added by the last Manchu dynasty beginning not from China but from Manchuria. It's a lot smaller and more isolated compared to the giant oikumene from Ireland to Persia. Also the chinese rarely ever needed to engage in naval stuff like european powers had to do since antiquity.
forgot pic
china was better off as a collection of warring states
imagine china like asia's version of the roman empire. except it didn't really fall apart and went on, under different leadership with varying degrees of continuity, for thousands of years.
China split up and was reunified a bunch of times. This was attempted in Europe after the Roman empire many times, but none really were able to reunify the whole region, just parts.
Why wasn't Europe ever able to have an Empire like this after the Romans? China at its peaks (Tang, Ming, Qing) literally influenced half the world. They had a proper "Empire" before Europe even moved out of straw huts.
Well it helps that they were much, much more advanced than every other civilization on the planet at the time.
What?
Modern shit doesn't count. Everyone knows China fell behind in the 1800's. If they didn't, you'd unironically be speaking mandarin right now.
Lol, fastest goalpost shift of all time
lol. Do you think Taiwan is part of China just because China says so?
Wait I got more.
It took European civilizations a thousand years to get empires like this. Besides Rome of course. China has been consistently a large and influential power for like 2500 years. So have the Persians and the Turks.
Behold, the Empire of the Yuan Dynasty.
Maybe this is cope but this is really unfair praise to the British. It was barely an empire, before the 13 colonies got uppity the British barely ran it. Salutary neglect.
Modern Empires are simply soulless.