654 RENAISSANCES

witnessing in the Far East, not the consummation of the Pe Ch6u
Dynasty's reunification of the North in A.D. 577 through Sui Wen-ti's
unification of North and South, but the undoing of the local achieve-
ment of A.D. 577 in the North through a relapse of the North into the
state of political disintegration in which it had been languishing before
A.D. 577 since the break-up, in A.D. 534, of the 'Wei' empire in which
the North had been reunited circa A.D. 4IO/4391 as a result of the To Pa
Eurasian Nomad barbarian principality's success in progressively swal-
lowing up all the other barbarian successor-states of the Han Empire
which had come to the surface in the North since the beginning of the
fourth century.2

If we may assume that we have now taken the full measure of the
difference between the respective courses of post-Han history and post-
Roman history that has to be taken into account in order to see the
equally evident points of likeness between the same two stories in their
true perspective, we may now go on to inquire into the causes of this
partial diversity of two lines of development that are at the same time
partially similar. We shall find ourselves able to identify one geographi-
cal cause and one political.

The geographical cause is to be found in a physiographical difference
between the Sinic and the Hellenic World which is reflected in the
respective structures of the Han and the Roman Empire.

The Sinic Civilization3 was a continental culture, and its geographical
expansion was carried out overland up to 'the natural frontiers' of an
East Asian sub-continent which was delimited by the southern shore
of the Eurasian Steppe, the western shore of the Pacific Ocean, and the
eastern escarpment of the Tibetan Plateau almost as definitely as the
Indian sub-continent was delimited by the southern escarpment of
the Tibetan Plateau, the eastern escarpment of the Iranian Plateau,
and the northern shores of the Indian Ocean. In the expansion of the
Sinic Civilization, the extirpation or assimilation of the sedentary bar-
barian highlanders previously inhabiting the northern fringes of the
latter-day provinces of Shensi and Shansi had brought the Sinic World
into immediate contact with the Eurasian Nomad World; and the risk
of being invaded by the Nomads, to which the Sinic Society had thereby
laid itself open, was not effectively parried by the expedient of re-
inforcing a 'natural' frontier in this quarter by the construction of those
artificial fortifications that were eventually consolidated by Ts'in She
Hwang-ti into one continuous Great Wall.4 Yet, though this rather
wantonly incurred peril from a seething pot towards the Norths was
not counteracted by these immense anti-Nomad defensive works, it was
discounted, as the sequel was to show, by a vast overland extension of
the Sinic Society's domain in another direction, A progressive subjuga-
tion of the sedentary barbarians beyond the south-western fringes of
the Sinic World of the third century B.C. was initiated by Ts'in She
Hwangti and was carried to completion rather more than a hundred

i See Herrmann, A.: Historical and Commercial Atlas of China (Cambridge, Mass.
1935, Harvard University Press), p. 29, Map IV. * See V. v. 356, n. 6.

J See Maps 25 and 26 in vol. xi. 4 See II. ii. 119-20 and V. v. 142.

s Jer. i. 13-15. Cp. iv. 6-7; v. 16-17; vi. i and 22-25; *. aŤ; xsv. 9.