Background:
There are speculations that the Parthian sailors intentionally frightened Gan Ying with false travel information. If so, they likely acted out of self-interest, seeking to prevent the Chinese and Romans from reaching a direct trade agreement that could threaten their profitable status as a major trade hub between the Roman and Chinese civilizations. It has been argued that the breaking of the Parthian monopoly over the Silk Road was at the forefront of Emperor Trajan's mind when he invaded their empire in the 2nd century AD.
In AD 97, as the Protector General of the Western Regions, Chinese general Ban Chao was fascinated by a military report describing his illustrious predecessor Ban Gu's unorthodox fight with approximately one hundred men. These Romans had used what he termed a "fish scale" formation, interlocking their shields for protection in the testudo formation. He acted impulsively upon this intriguing discovery by dispatching his subordinate, a Han diplomat named Gan Ying. This entailed a long and dangerous mission to establish direct contact with the Roman Empire known to the Chinese as "Great Qin." But fatefully his role was not as extensive as ambassador; apart from being authorized to establish diplomatic relations, he had no authority to open negotiations.
A hardy and intrepid explorer, Gan Ying endured tremendous hardships to reach the Middle East, but then his luck turned. Thanks to the envoy's chance encounter with a Roman merchant on the coast of Parthia, the over-ambitious travel plan to sail around Arabia to Roman Egypt was abandoned in favor of a much safer inland alternative. This re-route only took a few weeks following the Euphrates north to the Roman border in Syria. Ultimately the successful mission of the Chinese delegation would lead to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two most powerful empires in the world.
Gan Ying's second piece of luck was the timing of favorable circumstances due to the recent death from natural causes of the aging Nerva. Despite being considered the first of the Five Good Emperors, his reign had been marred by financial difficulties and his inability to assert his authority over the Roman army. He was succeeded by his adopted heir, Trajan, a philanthropic ruler and a successful soldier-emperor who presided over one of the greatest military expansions in Roman history.
To the incalculable advantage of Gan Ying, Trajan was the good trading partner that Nerva could never be. Prior to their fateful meeting, the empires had only conducted the indirect exchange of goods on land along the Silk Road and sea routes. This included Chinese silk, Roman glassware, and high-quality cloth.
Standing in the way of their direct trading plans were other powerful empires that separated the two on opposite ends of the Eurasian continent. In the case of the Parthians, they regularly made a profit by obtaining Chinese silk, unraveling it, and making fine hu ("Western") silk damasks. Wishing to leapfrog this constraint, Trajan startled them with a second impulsive act: he provided Gan Ying with an offer of a military alliance for presentation to Ban Chao.
Unfortunately, matters then took a sour turn when Gan Ying's luck ran out on the hazardous return journey. His chosen route was to go around Arabia, forcing him into the Kingdom of Axum located in East Africa. By this stage, he was running very low on provisions, making it necessary to sell his cargo to the Axumites. But all was not lost for Gan Ying, who achieved the notable distinction of establishing trade relations with Axum, which would prosper as an intermediary between China and Rome. He would also be the author of a fascinating travelogue detailing the Han Chinese view of the Roman Empire. While a full Sino-Roman military alliance would prove to be impossible, a limited partnership was established. To Ban Chao's delight, Roman soldiers trained imperial soldiers on tactics such as the testudo formation. He would inspect these troops wearing a short Romanesque toga which would be come a fad among the elites of Han China. Needless to say, many of these military maneuvers would later be recounted in updated editions of Sun Tzu's The Art of War.
Author's Note:
In reality, the first group of people claiming to be an ambassadorial mission of Romans to China was recorded as having arrived in 166 AD by the Book of the Later Han. Gan Ying actually did not reach Rome, only traveling to as far as the "western sea," which could refer to either the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, or the Parthian coast of the Persian Gulf. Writing in his commentaries Vernacular Mandarin version of Zizhi Tonjian, Bo Yang famously said that Gan Ying was a coward who was horrified by the sailors' tales.
Provine's Addendum:
Standing in the way of their direct trading plans were other powerful empires that separated the two on opposite ends of the Eurasian continent. In the case of the Parthians, they regularly made a profit by obtaining Chinese silk, unraveling it, and making fine hu ("Western") silk damasks. Wishing to leapfrog this constraint, Trajan startled them with a second impulsive act: he provided Gan Ying with an offer of a military alliance for presentation to Ban Chao.
Unfortunately, matters then took a sour turn when Gan Ying's luck ran out on the hazardous return journey. His chosen route was to go around Arabia, forcing him into the Kingdom of Axum located in East Africa. By this stage, he was running very low on provisions, making it necessary to sell his cargo to the Axumites. But all was not lost for Gan Ying, who achieved the notable distinction of establishing trade relations with Axum, which would prosper as an intermediary between China and Rome. He would also be the author of a fascinating travelogue detailing the Han Chinese view of the Roman Empire. While a full Sino-Roman military alliance would prove to be impossible, a limited partnership was established. To Ban Chao's delight, Roman soldiers trained imperial soldiers on tactics such as the testudo formation. He would inspect these troops wearing a short Romanesque toga which would be come a fad among the elites of Han China. Needless to say, many of these military maneuvers would later be recounted in updated editions of Sun Tzu's The Art of War.
Author's Note:
In reality, the first group of people claiming to be an ambassadorial mission of Romans to China was recorded as having arrived in 166 AD by the Book of the Later Han. Gan Ying actually did not reach Rome, only traveling to as far as the "western sea," which could refer to either the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, or the Parthian coast of the Persian Gulf. Writing in his commentaries Vernacular Mandarin version of Zizhi Tonjian, Bo Yang famously said that Gan Ying was a coward who was horrified by the sailors' tales.
Provine's Addendum:
Gan Ying's mission turning into two-fold contacts with western powers changed the scope of the world. Axum, which had already established trade relations with many of the Indian states, found itself in the key position of maritime trade between China and Roman Egypt. Capitalizing on the wealth, Axum eclipsed the nearby Cush kingdom already in decline due to conflict with the Romans. With control of the Nile headwaters, Axum brought valuable African materials into the growing global trade network.
The Parthians found themselves in a difficult position as an alternative route to the Silk Road threatened their monopoly. With Axum as a Roman ally, attempting to cut off the maritime trade with a naval war would be costly as well as potentially disastrous with a three-front war if the Han in China decided to invade from the east. Instead, the Parthians dedicated themselves to economic warfare by improving the Silk Road to attract overland merchants and drive down transportation costs so that they could still enjoy a healthy profit as middlemen. They also worked to attract maritime trade up the Persian Gulf and Euphrates, drawing traders from the Indian Ocean northward rather than going through Axumite ports. With northern Syria as the confluence of both land and sea trade heading west, cities like Dura-Europos and Antioch became some of the most metropolitan and wealthiest in the world, establishing a secure border between Rome and Parthia ensured by economic forces that would collapse if war erupted in the region.
This Parthian investment in Mesopotamia while Trajan was distracted with the Dacian Wars discouraged him from invading in the Middle East. Instead, he improved relations with Axum to counterbalance Parthian economic power and undertook massive engineering projects to ease the difficulty of maritime trade being interrupted by merchandise needing to switch from ships in the Red Sea to land travel in eastern Egypt and then back to ships in the Mediterranean Sea. After years of surveying and documenting silt flow, smaller canal projects were abandoned to focus on a Great Canal through the Isthmus of Suez. In centuries to come as the Roman Empire faded due to northern incursion, emperors would move the capital to Alexandria.
Han China, too, profited from the expanding trade. While the Silk Road continued to be an important route, Empress Dowager Deng ordered merchant fleets to trade more directly with Axum, encouraging economic growth in southeast China. Wealth from the sea trade balanced the power of local landowners in the west, maintaining imperial authority in the face of rebellions that encouraged reforms. With sea traffic rounding the peninsulas of Southeast Asia, a region of loosely connected states the Chinese collectively termed as "Funan," numerous ports sprang up to foster trade with local supplies. The Cham peoples of Austronesian background established a seafaring empire that rivaled the Khmer and expanded eastward through the archipelagos of the South Pacific, adding numerous spices and valuable woods to the global trade network. In India, the Kushan Empire attempted to gain a foothold in the trade coming up the western coast, but they were eventually replaced by the Tamil Empire stretching across the northern shores of the Indian Ocean.
Along with the material goods, ideas traded swiftly over the routes from east to west and readily intermixed. Christianity mixed with Confucian ideals in Axum, while Daoism attempted to find balance in the dichotomy of Zoroastrianism, and Hindu gods such as Ganesh gained followers in Rome. Roman engineering improved aqueducts in the Pacific bringing water from windward sides of islands to leeward fields, and Chinese inventions like paper and printing improved libraries as far as Timbuktu in the southern Sahara tracking the goods of overland African traders.
Han China, too, profited from the expanding trade. While the Silk Road continued to be an important route, Empress Dowager Deng ordered merchant fleets to trade more directly with Axum, encouraging economic growth in southeast China. Wealth from the sea trade balanced the power of local landowners in the west, maintaining imperial authority in the face of rebellions that encouraged reforms. With sea traffic rounding the peninsulas of Southeast Asia, a region of loosely connected states the Chinese collectively termed as "Funan," numerous ports sprang up to foster trade with local supplies. The Cham peoples of Austronesian background established a seafaring empire that rivaled the Khmer and expanded eastward through the archipelagos of the South Pacific, adding numerous spices and valuable woods to the global trade network. In India, the Kushan Empire attempted to gain a foothold in the trade coming up the western coast, but they were eventually replaced by the Tamil Empire stretching across the northern shores of the Indian Ocean.
Along with the material goods, ideas traded swiftly over the routes from east to west and readily intermixed. Christianity mixed with Confucian ideals in Axum, while Daoism attempted to find balance in the dichotomy of Zoroastrianism, and Hindu gods such as Ganesh gained followers in Rome. Roman engineering improved aqueducts in the Pacific bringing water from windward sides of islands to leeward fields, and Chinese inventions like paper and printing improved libraries as far as Timbuktu in the southern Sahara tracking the goods of overland African traders.
