摘要:
As recent trends in comparing the Han and Roman empires from primarily the point of view of literary evidence has brought forth new frameworks and opportunities of research, one asks how these developments could contribute to the comparison of governance behaviors, such as the administration of the iron industry. The paper first surveys the Han and the Roman literary sources regarding the iron industry governance, with which to establish parameters of the modus operandi in the respective imperial domains, and, when possible, identifies problems articulated by ancient authors. An interesting contrast is how Han sources showed particular concern for the impact of the iron industry on agricultural performance, while the primary concerns of Roman administrators were performances in leasing and taxation. Among the items known are mines, nails, and recycled iron. Both imperial administrations took a spatially oriented approach, establishing offices and bureaus across their respective domains to address their different concerns. Mapping iron production and administration sites in the Han and the Roman empires spatially further illustrate the governance behaviors identified above. Focused discussions on new excavations in the Martys (80km NW of Narbo) and Taicheng (90km W of Chang'an) further provide local frames of reference to interrogate the priorities and challenges highlighted. The preliminary results suggest that while concerns may differ between the two imperial governments, there are similarities in governance behaviors that are not technologically related, as some scholars suggest. Both imperial governments seemed to have been capitalizing on existing iron industry communities through managerial posts, at times bureaucratizing them. While the Han empire, in particular, attempted to bureaucratize iron production and distribution wholesale, the eventual scaling back of such mobilization marks the shared limitations of imperial control on the traditional culture of production and distribution of this basic commodity.
