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And how many other Bronze Age state of that approximate period were mustering a million troops for its campaigns? Offhand I can think of Xerxes and Darius, if you accept certain numbers given for their forces. But they were troops of an empire already. Qin was still just one among 7 divided kingdom...

No, it is not. For there is nothing really ethnic about being a subject of "ruler A" during that time. That people try to claim past glories is also not something that is borne out of nationalism. For example, one can easily be a member of public grouping A without being born a member of ...

In that context the rebellions of the Jews, celts etc. were all evidence of nationalism. Which is preposterous. When the rebellion is aimed at the creation or re-creation of their own ethnic state, then yes it is a form of nationalism. It is acknowledgement of their ethnic identity with their natio...

If "transitioning from a feudal system" into another one is the only criteria then a) one would have to define "feudal system" and b) one would have to explain why one would chose the Qin instead of more closer systems, like for example the Chinese civil war. Which Chinese civil...

The states mentioned earlier as struggling were the Habsburgs and France, not Rome! Again what is with this constant bringing in of the unified empire. This has never been about Qin dynasty or Rome but pre-unification era states. Trying to compare Roman Empire to the kingdom of Qin, not the dynasty...

This doesn't mean a lot either, because nationalism =/= revolts and attempted continuation of the past. The attempted resurrection of their old states is evidence of nationalism. People saw themselves as different from Qin and wanted their old independence and nations back. The hatred towards Qin p...

Stereotypes do not equal nationalism. You ignored the following bit, that there was enough support to attempt a revival of the old states after Qin's fall. The Qin Emperor before had tried to eliminate national identity by forced mass migration of commoners and nobles. All this attests to an unders...

Good thing that nobody claimed that then. Actually someone did in a fashion: I don't believe that China's subdivisions were equivalent to the European nationalisms of 1700, just as the local parochialisms of the late Roman Empire were not equivalent to the European nationalisms of the same places i...

The issue the author looked at originally was why Qin succeeded in not only transforming itself from its position of weakness to one of strength and ultimate success in conquest. Other Warring States were engaged in the same sort of struggle so why did Qin succeed and they didn't? Or why did their ...

I would appreciate if you use sources other than wikiepedia, but even then you are talking about the early warring state period. The state of Qin that conquered the 6 states was a vastly different animal from the state of Qin in 413 BC. Given that the numerous other state constantly tried to build ...

My isssue is that ancient kingdoms and medieval kingdoms and renaissance stater are so dissimilar that comparing them is already a pain. It makes no sense to me to compare vastly different cultures in vastly different times. In what way would you argue that their cultures played a role in the diffe...

If you are deliberately avoiding comparing the Qin with a superpower in the west, then shouldn't you have an answer as to why no state can unify Europe? Especially when the state of Qin was very much a superpower during the warring states period. That is a pretty unfair comparison don't you think? ...

But you have be aware of how huge a difference is between a bronze age civilisation and a pre-modern civilisation. You would be better off comparing the Ming dynasty to the Hapsburg empire under Charles V than the Qin dynasty with 17th century France. From the author's reasoning, the circumstances ...

This fails to explain why antiquity was not chosen as all of that is also present in antiquity. What systems would you have chosen to compare then? Because it seems essentially you are saying you can never examine different cultures alongside each other in any sense because "Duh, they're DIFFE...

The contention made by the author is that there are similarities sufficient for comparison between the two multi-state systems: As the early mdoern European system did, the Zhongguo system experienced disintegration of feudal hierarchy, prevalence of war, conditions of international anarchy, emergen...

Nobody with a grasp of the history of ancient immigration into Thrace would claim the Thracians to be similar to the greeks. There was no idea of a common culture or common identity among Thracians, Greek and Egyptians, nor did it really develop until it was forced on all three of them by the Roman...

Yes, it can be argued because apparently nations with no knowledge of the local culture thought it to be more efficient than just building up their own tax apparatus and financial administration until the Romans came and instituted a financial administration so efficient it survived well beyond the...

I mean the OP shows a clear agenda. The book (or the summary of the book, which I assume to be accurate for now) seems like a bit of "TOUGH CENTRAL RUTHLESS STATE(tm) GOOD, SMALL STATES WITH REGIONAL VARIANCES BAD" stuff, yeah. The author actually makes no moral pronouncement on either on...

Well Tron is a carry over from the previous grid and he had the grey/white outfit there. In Legacy he is in black. I don't see what the issue is. There is a scene that appears in both Legacy and Uprising, specifically the bit where Clu revolts. In Legacy, Tron is wearing black. In Uprising, the sam...

Well the Qin and Taiheng are both on the border of the central plain rather than bisecting it, and while the Taiheng do separate it from the western plateaus, the Yellow River seemed to have helped with connecting the two more than it hurt it. I'm also curious how much the Qin mountains were a barr...

I think the point is slightly drifting. It's not so much a why the Roman Empire fell and why the Chinese Empire didn't (or re-formed), but why Qin could unite in the first place, and why no post-Roman kingdom succeeded in doing so? Well as Thanas said it pretty much did, so the question really is w...

If we were to bring technology into it, another the reason for maritime transport in Rome was also partly due to their inefficient throat-girth method of harnessing horses, which severely limited how much they could pull, and also their utility for plowing. This would have also limited total agricul...

How much did geography work into it? China's largely a basin surrounded by massive mountains, jungle, desert, and Siberia, and with only Sichuan of the core regions being isolated geographically, whereas Europe and the Mediterranean is more broken up by peninsulas and mountain ranges. From my under...

This is not about Chinese Empire vs. Roman Empire. This is about Qin kingdom during the Warring States vs. post-Roman Europe, and why the former was able to overwhelm its rival kingdoms to form an empire, whereas no post-Roman state was able to consolidate Europe into one state. Both were multi-sta...

Won't you be better off comparing the Hellenistic and Roman empires with the Qin dynasty? If you are serious about answering the prospect of a democratic china, it makes little sense to compare an ancient empire with early modern Europe. I've created a similar thread to yours a while ago, and I've ...