Sima Qian's Use Of Barbarians In Julius Caesar

In Sima Qian’s records, he presents the Xiongnu as a hostile barbarian tribe that “have no walled cities, fixed abodes, or agricultural occupations.” Sima Qian continues that “they have no written documents, and they use spoken words to seal pacts” and that “during crises their men practice warfare and invade and plunder. Further, he attributes these traits to the Xiongnu’s “inborn nature” stating that “they do not understand ritual propriety and benevolence” From this quote, it can be seen that the Xiongnu was a nomadic tribe that did not have a strong centralized government and trade structure. Given their lack of producing goods, Yu mentions that economic dependence may have been a factor that led the Xiongnu to conduct frontier raids against

Taking Julius Caesar’s Gallic War, the Roman conquest of Gaul was driven by individual benefit and search for glory. However, from Caesar’s perspective in 58 B.C., Roman invasion of Gaul was necessary since someone may unify Gaul and attack Roman territory in the south. This statement raises the question of border security. When looking into potential threats from barbarians on the Gallic border, the chance of an invasion was slim since Rome had no foreign policy to exercise coercive power and impose cultural uniformity in Gaul during the Republic. By invading Gaul and invoking the security narrative of a supposed barbarian invasion, Caesar would appear victorious over the unstable political situation in Rome and garner support from the people. When exercising soft power, Caesar allied himself with other Gallic tribes and took advantage of the separated barbarian tribes. Thus, he did not have to fight all at once. Although Caesar’s model of expansion was based on personal ambition, he set a pattern of expansion that would be crucial in securing Rome as the dominant power in the Mediterranean. As mentioned in the section about Han China, securing dominance in trade and expansion was important when exercising hard power. Turning to the Imperial and Late Antiquity periods when the barbarian threat was critical to the fall of the empire, barbarian threat became hostile and violent after the Rome’s northern expansion in the second century stopped abruptly along the Rhine-Danube line. Heather attributes this halt to a “major fault-line” in Europe’s socio-economic organization. He further mentions that this fault line fits in the case of Han China’s expansionist policy as well. He describes the fault line as a tendency for the extent of the frontier to stabilize when it reaches a part-arable part-pastoral zone where the local economy cannot support the empire’s military force. It may be argued