this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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I think that's kind of a common misconception that occurs when you're implementing ideas like race, nationality, or ethnicity to historical people who didn't really know them or understand them in the same way.
In regards to China, are we talking about the ethnic han? Well they displaced and settled land from other Chinese ethnicities. If we're just talking about the ethnicity held within a single nationality. Well, see there's a place in China called Inner Mongolia.....
In regards to Egypt, it's not an ethnicity, it's a nationality. You obviously have the ptolemeic dynasty, who were just some Greeks. You had the Persian dynasty for a while, then the nubian, then the meshwesh(Libyan), you even had the Hyksos who were proposed to be from the Levant. It's all over the place.
My point being that the ancient world was more connected than most people originally think, and ethnicities tended not to stay in one place for thousands and thousands of years.
You may know better but continuing to use China as the example - weren't they also repeatedly conquored and resettled by steppe people? Like, not only have they not had a 5000 year historic settlement but they have had as chaotic history of conquest and resettlement as just about anyone in history.
Eh, I guess it depends on who you consider to be Chinese, and what period of history you're talking about?
For the most part the steppe people like the Turkic or the Mongolians did the majority of what we consider conquering in China in the 13th-14th century.
Before that they didn't really comprise a large threat unless you are going much further back in history. If we are examining the Han dynasty, who shares a piece of history around the same time as the Romans, then yes. We don't exactly have a bunch of primary sources, but we can tell a lot by the distribution of dna and language that they historically occupied large aspects of northern China, and are related to modern Manchu people's, and those who hail from Manchu people like the modern Koreans.
If we are speaking of the migration and conquest carried out by the Han, it's not even really been hundreds. In the 19th century during the Taiping rebellion the Han started a civil war/genocide that killed around 30 million people. You get some pretty contextual quotes that kind of put into perspective the ethnic conflict native to China ""China is the China of the Chinese. We compatriots should identify ourselves with the China of the Han Chinese."
The Manchu people also known as the Jurchens, are descendents of the mongol and Turks.
Yes.... Which were both tribes of steppe people from the eastern han dynasty, which is what I claimed in my post.
The Qin dynasty is a bit more complicated as it was multi ethnic, but was originally founded by people who would one day consider themselves Manchu. But this is prior to the han dynasty and really before conflict in the area stratified into mostly ethnic based conflicts.
I already covered the Taiping rebellion in a separate reply.
Lol, I'm Korean, a descendent of the Manchu people.
I think the problem you are having is that in Europe transitioned away from classical imperialism much sooner than Eastern Asia. So most you tend to have a hard time separating nationality with ethnicity, as that is typically how you guys divided empire into nation states
So when you use vernacular like mongol, you don't realize that it's interchangeable with things like steppe people, Manchu, or Jurchen depending on what era or dynasty you are talking about.