Strange lack of knowledge about road in empire history

[theauthor]

From what i see on many empire is that roads seems to help maintain empire especially due to faster communication and army movement.

So why there wasn't much information about road in many empires? Many empire didn't seems particulary interested in heavily developing road system. I only know 2 roads in empires, the roman roads and the persian royal road.

And strangely enough i don't really see people talking about it considering the decision of empire to not focused on road when road system is something that would benefitted empire should be worth discussing.

 

[stratigo]

Many empires had a large and robust infrastructural system, just historic traditions don't tend to focus on it.

The Chinese for certain had a large road network.


But the truth is, road networks tend to be overemphasized in Roman historiography as a sort of "look how cool the romans were" type thing. The primary and vastly more important mode of travel for most empires is by water.

 

[theauthor]

Many empires had a large and robust infrastructural system, just historic traditions don't tend to focus on it.

The Chinese for certain had a large road network.


But the truth is, road networks tend to be overemphasized in Roman historiography as a sort of "look how cool the romans were" type thing. The primary and vastly more important mode of travel for most empires is by water.

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Huh yeah river is a thing and they definitely play a key role for empire not just for transport but also food produce.

Chinese would definitely have resources and incentive to maintain large road network and Chinese would probably have the most effective system since they have many navigable river.

Persian royal road though is a bit weird, their road went from Anatolia into Babylon but the road do not go beyond Zagros mountain. I wonder since land beyond Zagros mountain tend to be home/contenst for various nomadic group and building and maintain road in Iranian plateau would probably be challenging have something to do with it.

 

[Triggerhappy]

But the truth is, road networks tend to be overemphasized in Roman historiography as a sort of "look how cool the romans were" type thing. The primary and vastly more important mode of travel for most empires is by water.

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As a good reference. The cost of moving food by land contributed to a doubling in the price for every (IIRC) 100 miles transported.

This is part of why there tended to be a limited area of influence around pre modern cities where they would acquire local food. Anything else would typically have to be delivered by river or sea. Hence why Imperial capitals tended to be the first pre-modern cities to grow really huge.

 

[CrabMonarchy]

For a more detailed example of how good roads were still horrifically inferior to travel by river and by sea in terms of efficiency of food transport, we can take Diocletian's Price Edict, which set standard prices for various things, including transport. We'll use the cost of wheat grain to compare costs since some rates are measured by volume instead of by weight.

The cost of shipping 600 Roman pounds (equal to approximately 200 kg) in a wagon is listed as 8 denarii per Roman mile (1 Roman mile = approximately 1.5 km = 0.93 modern miles, making for a rate of 7.44 denarii per modern mile), so we'll use that to compare to sea transport, specifically from Africa (i.e. Carthage + surroundings) to Rome, which is given at 10 denarii per kastrensis modius (as per the translation, a Roman double bushel, equal to approx. 17.5 liters). While the density of wheat is obviously variable, a quick google suggests approximately 790 kg per m^3, which converts to 0.79 kg/L. 200 kg divided by 0.79 kg/L gives us roughly 253 L.

Using this, we can calculate the approximate cost of shipping 600 pounds of goods from Rome to Carthage to be 253 L * 10 denarii/17.5 L = approximately 145 denarii. Now consider that Rome to Carthage at the time is approximately 390 miles by sea, as per Stanford's ORBIS project, meaning that the rate amounts to 145/390 = 0.37 denarii per modern mile, or approximately 20 times cheaper (and remember, this is with the Roman road system already built!). This obviously isn't the most rigorous cost comparison possible since I am not a Roman scholar nor did I do the math for all the other routes, but this should at the very least be in the right ballpark.

Spoiler: giant images showing the prices

Translation source: New English translation of the Price Edict of Diocletianus

 

[PainRack]

China had the Imperial Highways.

China's ancient roads | New Civil Engineer

By the end of the third century AD the world had gained two great road networks. The 77,600 km of Roman roads which radiated out of Italy across the whole

www.newcivilengineer.com

The Chinese roads, on the other hand, were more akin to modern highways, being thinner and more elastic. They were built with a rubble sub-base onto which a layer of finely tamped gravel was added to produce a 'water- bound macadam'.



Planning of China's early urban and inter-urban road networks was also highly sophisticated. There were five types of inter-urban roads, classed in terms of width, and ranging from small pedestrian paths through larger ways for horses and handcarts to roads which could take one, two or three chariots abreast.

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How important this is...


Well, the 36 Strategems of war explicitly refers to repairing the road networks as a diversion to hide the actual offensive direction.


The Great Wall of China, at least in its original Qin and then Han iteration only make sense in lieu of the road networks. Chang An was the capital of early Imperial dynasties because it was easily fortifiable and dominated the road network (land within the 5 passes) that connected west china to the east.


This same network of roads and bridges would be described by Marco Polo.

Shudao - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org