I think that the point was that these areas would have lost eventuelly anyways or in wider sense that having rich areas on your perifery with a distinct and different culture isn't exactly beneficial to your stability.
Rome survives like China
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Optical_Illusion
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@Pedersen, I guess I would highlight that, it seems like the more important point in China is, well, who are the analogies to the Arabs who are going to take the empire from them? It's not like in the Roman case, the people of Syria or Egypt took it back, or resisted particularly meaningfully.
South China or the Sichuan Basin as a "tribal backwater" in texmex's comment seems overdone though. The Sichuan Basin had the Sanxingdui Civilization for heck's sake - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanxingdui, and the Jinsha society - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinsha_site. These are state level entities, although there may be a temporal gap between them and Sinicization, true. Even the Yangtze has Liangzhu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liangzhu_culture - a likely Austronesian speaking state with complex advanced goods).
South China or the Sichuan Basin as a "tribal backwater" in texmex's comment seems overdone though. The Sichuan Basin had the Sanxingdui Civilization for heck's sake - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanxingdui, and the Jinsha society - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinsha_site. These are state level entities, although there may be a temporal gap between them and Sinicization, true. Even the Yangtze has Liangzhu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liangzhu_culture - a likely Austronesian speaking state with complex advanced goods).
The closest equivalent I can think of would be the Eurasian Steppe peoples.
However, China didn't really have a major regional rival equivalent to Persia. Well, unless you count the rival dynasties following a split.
Optical_Illusion
Banned
Pretty much, but they weren't placed to take the south of China and leave the north untouched.
Historically, China wasn't really fixed around one single city - the capital would move around depending on which territories any given dynasty held. Nanjing could have worked perfectly well as a capital, for instance.
However, assume that the Yue people managed to form a large, centralised kingdom. That could be a significant threat to southern China.
tex mex
Banned
The reason why they lost the Golden Lands of Egypt and Syria was that the local population was very restive and cooperated with the invaders.
Mostly Because both Roman Rule were terrible for them and the Caliphates were a massive improvements, especially the Ummayd one
A big reason for that was due to the nature of Christianity. Egypt's Christian population was Miaphysitism where Jesus was fully human and divine in one nature. This was in contrast with the view of the Imperial Church that said Jesus is one person with two natures, one fully divine and one fully human. Hopefully I got the Christology right. Anyways point being that difference was enough to persecute them in Egypt, where the largest Miaphysits lived. The Arabs, and particularly the Umayyads were much less oppressive to them then the authorities in Constantinople, hence the massive improvement.
This is not the case with the polytheistic emperors who patronized the Temples, be it Greek, Egyptian, Imperial Cultus, and so on. This doesn't mean that there was never unrest, because of course there was, but by and large the same sort of treatment of the populace after christianization wasn't there before Christianization. Without Christianity likely would have kept things the same way. Which would have helped to clamp down on some of the factors of unrest.
Though at the time of the Arab conquest (and with discussions earlier in Justinian's reign, if my memory of my reading serves), we see an attempt at finding theological compromise - not persecution - by Constantinople.
Not a particularly welcome attempt, but I think it's a bit messier than "constant imperial oppression". On the other hand, Rome's tax collectors were never welcome.
That would not change with non-Christian emperors.
Not a particularly welcome attempt, but I think it's a bit messier than "constant imperial oppression". On the other hand, Rome's tax collectors were never welcome.
That would not change with non-Christian emperors.
Not really this is myth I hear all the time but modern scholarship has cast doubt on this I did a review of some sources and they mostly agree the locals were not in any way that hostile to the point of corporation except the Jews it simply is thar the regions were devastated as the empire nearly collapsed just a few years prior
This is simply not true by the 7th century as heraclius was big compromiser if anything he caused more issues in the west than he did east also arba relationship of the Umayyads and the locals were not the greatest as seem by the minor revolt of in Syria after Constantine IV landed a force there and the series of Coptic revolts from 717 onward
Optical_Illusion
Banned
I'm not so sure it was embroiled in rebellion, rather than mostly the invaders side of things.
EDIT: I mean, we could insist that the invaders were merely the agent used by the local restive people, and in China, if they'd had such invaders in South China, nothing would've happened in terms of breaking fealty towards the invader and their new religious and social system... But since there's no actual case where we can test this, and its rather more the complicated model, it's simpler to think that the fact of the invaders was sufficient on its own.
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We've an example when the vietnamese tried to expand north ,the south Chinese were defacto seoarated still considered themselves as one of china
Coivara
Banned
Have a large post-roman barbarian state unify most of the Western Roman Empire. The Franks seem the best positioned to do this, they pretty much did this but it lasted like five minutes. The Huns and Visigoths are also good candidates.
Then have a local dynasty or another group of barbarians replace them.
A "No Islam" scenario is ideal for this, because it means the Mediterranean Trade Chains of antiquity have not collapsed under Muslim Piracy and the two sides of the Med aren't religious enemies to each other.
Then have a local dynasty or another group of barbarians replace them.
A "No Islam" scenario is ideal for this, because it means the Mediterranean Trade Chains of antiquity have not collapsed under Muslim Piracy and the two sides of the Med aren't religious enemies to each other.
Thing is, Shang and a early Zhou are probably as different from Han dynasty civilization as Mycenaean is from 1st century Rome so arguing they are the "same" is highly debatable.
Most people consider China "proper" as starting from the Qin/Han dynasty.
中华人民共和 translates as Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo which in turns becomes the People's Republic of China. Notice that Zhou right there in the beginning?
And of course the court of Yu of Xie or You of Zhou would bear little resembelance to the court of Gao of Han - in the same way that the 1st century Roman republic would bear little resembelance to the Byzantine empire under Basil. That is kinda because things tend to change over the course of a millenia.
Of course, you have a point in that all national identities are to a large extent constructed, so how come China ends up with the myth of them being one nation for millenias and Europe ends up with a different myth. Or said in a different way: If we had a Roman Europe, would we have talked about the kings of Troy as a precussor to Rome?
And Bronze Age Greece as Troy was seen as a part of the hellenic world in the Illiad until they all turned against them
Probably not. But they seem to have been especially unwelcome at that point in time in these circumstances.