The State and the Individual: Population Control and Taxation in Ancient Rome and Early China
By Zhengyuan Zhang, University of California, Berkeley
The paper contrasts the different modes in which the high Roman Empire and the early Chinese empires (Qin and Han, 221 BC–AD 220) organized and taxed their respective populations and discusses the consequences each mode had on its respective society. Furthermore, it seeks to explain why each polity came to develop its specific mode of population control and taxation.
Government without Bureaucracy? Empire and law in the Roman and other tributary empires
By Peter Fibiger Bang, University of Copenhagen
This paper probes the relationship between law and bureaucracy in the Roman Empire. Often law has been understood as a tool of bureaucratic dictate and central regulation. But Rome was a tributary empire, based on conquest, and with a miniscule state apparatus. It’s government was not that of an elaborate bureaucracy, but of a small number of aristocratic officials sent out to preside over provincial elite society. Tight control was far beyond their means. What they could do, however, was to serve as adjudicator in the conflicts of provincials.
Legal Treatment and Status Differentiation in Early China and Ancient Rome
By Yifan Zheng, University of California, Berkeley
In this paper, I investigate the relationship between social status and legal treatment in early imperial China, roughly from the third century BCE throughout the first century CE. I argue that on the one hand, the privileged groups received more favorable legal treatment than the remaining social members; on the other hand, the judicial discrimination contributed to the social distinctions through the application of perpetual stigma signifying criminality and degradation.
Standardization in the Athenian Empire and Beyond: Imperial Ideologies and the Creation of Common Knowledge
By Flavio Santini, University of California, Berkeley
This paper aims to revisit the meaning and purpose of the Athenian Standards decree (IG I3 1453; Osborne-Rhodes, GHI 155).
Processing with Bamboo and Wood: Information Technologies of Legal Writings in Early Imperial China
By Xunxiao Xiao, Princeton University
This paper offers a comparative perspective of information technologies in the classical Roman world—it forays into the techniques of collecting, organizing, and controlling administrative information and legal knowledge in early imperial China (221 BCE-220 CE). As the number of writings increased enormously under the imperial administrations, the practical issue for Qin-Han scribes of how to handle the huge number of texts became more urgent.
The Construction of “Labor” in Early China
By Trenton W. Wilson, Princeton University
What are the historical conditions for the idea of abstract labor? This paper will look at the Qin and Han (roughly 221 BCE-220 CE) statutes and institutions that created, used, and maintained the idea of “person-day” as a unit of labor. The unit of “person-day” was useful in shaping early imperial ideas of population, convict and corvee labor, and official service. As a term in widespread use, “person-day” could presume to organize the entire imperial realm.