Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [49]
Whatever their imprecisions or caricatures, these accounts of Byzantium and Islam reflect the spirit of confident curiosity, as well as the effort to gain an understanding of foreign cultures, characteristic of the Tang. While these accounts may sound unsophisticated to the modern reader, they display far more knowledge about the outside world than, for example, the records of the Manchu Qing emperors, who ruled a thousand years later (1644-1912). Despite world advances in communication and technology, the Qing emperors were stunningly—almost willfully—ignorant about the rising European powers, whom they preferred to lump all together as “barbarians that send tribute.” In an imperial text from the mid-eighteenth century, the following confusions can be found:
Italy presented tribute to China in 1667 (it was actually Holland), and the Pope came to do so in 1725 [not the case].
France is the same as Portugal.
Sweden is a dependency of Holland.
The Spanish in the Philippines are the Portuguese who took Malacca and Macau.
Sweden and England are shortened names for Holland.
As late as 1818, the powerful empires of Britain, Russia, and France—then on the verge of taking over China—were listed in Qing imperial records as Chinese “vassal states” alongside Kelantan, Trengganu, and other tiny kingdoms on the Malay peninsula. Indeed, some historians cite the Qing rulers’ profound ignorance of the West as a factor contributing to China's inability to resist European domination.27
Was Tang China in its golden age world dominant—a hyperpower of the same magnitude as Achaemenid Persia or ancient Rome? What makes this question difficult is the fact that seventh- and eighth-century China was surrounded by kingdoms and tribal alliances much smaller than itself yet strong enough to pose serious military threats—indeed, strong enough even to defeat Tang forces when the latter were deployed at less than full strength, as was almost always the case in an empire so vast. In 678, a Tang army of some 180,000 was beaten by Tibetans at Lake Koko Nor in a contest for control of western lands. In 751, a much smaller Tang army lost the battle of Talas to the Abbasid caliphate near modern-day Samarkand—although the battle was probably no more than a border skirmish and the Arab troops far outnumbered the Tang contingent.
Complicating matters further is the frequently deployed Tang strategy of subduing rival kingdoms through shrewd diplomacy backed by the threat of force rather than by bloody conquest. This strategy was enormously successful, but it left the Tang vulnerable, its dominion dependent on the loyalty of foreign kings and subjects who were often held in contempt by the Chinese and who reciprocated these sentiments with undisguised hostility toward China.
Despite this vulnerability, the global preeminence of Tang China is hardly open to serious doubt. Indeed, the extent to which the Tang towered over its contemporaries is breathtaking. Consider the “great powers” of post-Roman Europe. The mighty Frankish Empire was arguably the greatest Western European power in the eighth and ninth centuries, boasting perhaps five to ten million subjects under the rule of the celebrated Charlemagne. Ming Huang ruled sixty million. At roughly the same time, the Byzantine Empire probably had a population of no more than ten to thirteen million. Even the Umayyad caliphate of the Middle East—by far the most populous and powerful empire after Tang China—ruled at most thirty-six million subjects. Taken altogether, the Tang army of roughly 500,000 to 750,000 professional soldiers dwarfed the Umayyad forces. In