evidence so that there can be more meaningful interpretations. The Nanyue ban is one such set of limited evidence that this last section of the paper will be concerned with. We will first describe the evidence, then approach it from what we have learned in the Roman-Parthian extrapolation.

The Kingdom of Nanyue was established by Zhao Tuo (趙佗), a magistrate of Longchuan in the Nanhai commandery who, during the tumultuous last years of the Qin empire, took control of Guilin and Xiang commanderies, and declared himself King of Nanyue.<fnref n="225" /> The Han emperor Gaozu subsequently recognized his claim to the title king but in the rites of a feudal lord, and according to Sima Qian dictated that he shall not cause disturbance to the kingdom of Changsha, which was the southern border of the Han empire.<fnref n="226" /> Then the ban came during the reign of Empress Lü. Sima Qian reported only that “officials requested a ban on the trade of ironware with Nanyue.”<fnref n="227" /> Sima Qian gave Zhao Tuo voice to respond in direct speech:

> 高帝立我，通使物，今高后聽讒臣，別異蠻夷，隔絕器物，此必長沙王計也，欲倚中國，擊滅南越而并王之，自為功也。

Emperor Gaozu established me as king and granted trade rights. Now, the Empress (Lü) listens to slanderous ministers, alienates us by designating us *manyi*, and cuts off the exchange of goods. This is surely a scheme by the King of Changsha, who wants to rely on China to destroy Nanyue and annex it, thus achieving personal glory.

In the aftermath of this diplomatic row, Zhao Tuo harrassed the border towns of Changsha Kingdom while the Han army from the north was languishing by an epidemic, and with the death of the Empress Zhao Tuo declared himself emperor. The new emperor Wendi restarted diplomacy and managed to have Zhao Tuo retract the claim to imperial status.<fnref n="228" /> At the conclusion of the affair, Sima Qian made no subsequent references to commerce or iron.

The account in Bangu's *Hanshu* gives even more context as well as more voice to Zhao Tuo, and warrants attention. Wendi's ambassador arrived with the imperial correspondence explaining why inappropriate policies were adopted under Empress Lü's last years (because of bad ministers), what measures Wendi took in addressing Zhao Tuo's grievances (getting rid of offending generals in the Changsha Kingdom).

<footnote n="225">²²⁵ Sima Qian, *Shiji*, 113, 2967.</footnote>

<footnote n="226">²²⁶ Sima Qian, *Shiji*, 113, 2967-2968.</footnote>

<footnote n="227">²²⁷ Sima Qian, *Shiji*, 113, 2969: 有司請禁南越關市鐵器。</footnote>

<footnote n="228">²²⁸ Sima Qian, *Shiji*, 113, 2969-2970.</footnote>
and how Zhao Tuo's family in northern China was taken care of. Zhao Tuo responded in kind, publishing a decree withdrawing his claim to imperial status and accepting Han vassalage. He also sent an official correspondence to Wendi, which Ban Gu may have transmitted in full, for it also retained the language of the ban in direct quotation. For clarity we include the full letter here.<fnref n="229" />

蠻夷大長老夫臣佗昧死再拜上書皇帝陛下：老夫故粵吏也，高皇帝幸賜臣佗璽，以為南粵王，使為外臣，時內貢職。孝惠皇帝即位，義不忍絕，所以賜老夫者厚甚。高后自臨用事，近細士，信讒臣，別異蠻夷，出令曰：『毋予蠻夷外粵金鐵田器；馬牛羊即予，予牡，母與牝。』老夫處辟，馬牛羊齒已長，自以祭祀不惰，有死罪，使內史藩、中尉高、御史平凡三輩上書謝過，皆不反。又風聞老夫父母墳墓已壞削，兄弟宗族已誅論。吏相與議曰：『今內不得振於漢，外亡以自高異。』故更號為帝，自帝其國，非敢有害於天下也。高皇后聞之大怒，削去南粵之籍，使使不通。老夫竊疑長沙王讒臣，故敢發兵以伐其邊。且南方卑溼，蠻夷中西有西甌，其眾半贏，南面稱王；東有閩粵，其眾數千人，亦稱王；西北有長沙，其半蠻夷，亦稱王。老夫故敢妄竊帝號，聊以自娛。老夫身定百邑之地，東西南北數千萬里，帶甲百萬有餘，然北面而臣事漢，何也？不敢背先人之故。老夫處粵四十九年，于今抱孫焉。然夙興夜寐，寢不安席，食不甘味，目不視靡曼之色，耳不聽鍾鼓之音者，以不得事漢也。今陛下幸哀憐，復故號，通使漢如故，老夫死骨不腐，改號不敢為帝矣！謹北面因使者獻白壁一雙，翠鳥千，犀角十，紫貝五百，桂蠹一器，生翠四十雙，孔雀二雙。昧死再拜，以聞皇帝陛下。

I, the Great Elder of the *manyi*, Zhao Tuo, humbly bow to the Emperor's throne: I was once a Qin magistrate. Emperor Gaozu granted me a seal and made me the King of Nanyue, designating me as a foreign vassal, sending regular tributes. When Emperor Hui ascended the throne, he did not sever ties out of a sense of obligation, and thus I was greatly honored. However, when Empress Lü assumed power, she befriended petty officials, trusted slanderous ministers, and alienated the *manyi*, issuing an edict stating that "the export of gold, iron, and tools to the outer Yue was forbidden; export of horses, cattle, and sheep were allowed, but only the males, not the females." My territory is remote; my horses, cattle, and sheep have grown old and unfit for sacrifice. I have been accused of committing a capital offense. To rectify this, I sent memorials through the interior minister Fan, the central minister Gao, and the high minister Ping for redress, but none were answered. I also heard that my parents' tombs had been destroyed, and my family and clan were persecuted and executed. My ministers debated, saying, "We can no longer rise under the Han, and we must assert our independence in the south." Thus, I took the title of Emperor for my own, not out of desire to harm the world, but because of these injustices. When Empress Gao heard of this, she became furious and had Nanyue's records erased, and communications were cut off. I suspected that the King of Changsha

<footnote n="229">²²⁹ Ban Gu, *Hanshu*, 95, 3851-3852.</footnote>
was influenced by slanderous officials, which led me to raise troops and attack his borders. The south is low and swampy, and within the barbarian tribes there are many smaller kingdoms. To the west, there is the kingdom of Xiyou, whose people are weak, and they call themselves kings; to the east, there is Min Yue, with a few thousand people who also claim to be kings; to the northwest, there is Changsha, which is partly *manyi*, and they too call themselves kings. That is why I boldly claimed the title of emperor, though it was merely for my own amusement. I have stabilized a land of hundreds of cities, with territories stretching over thousands of miles to the east, west, south, and north, with an army of over a million soldiers. Yet, I face north and serve the Han Emperor, why? It is because I dare not betray my ancestors. I have spent forty-nine years in Yue, and now I have grandchildren. I wake early and sleep late, my bed is uncomfortable, my food tasteless, I cannot enjoy the colors of my surroundings, nor the sounds of the bells and drums, because I cannot serve the Han properly. Now, Your Majesty, I beg for your mercy and compassion, to restore my former title and allow communication with the Han as before. Even in death, my bones will not decay, and I will no longer dare to assume the title of emperor. Humbly, I send a pair of white jade discs, a thousand kingfishers, ten rhinoceros horns, five hundred purple shells, a container of camphor, forty pairs of green silk, and two pairs of peacocks. I humbly bow and present this to the Emperor.

Ban Gu seems to have been eager in presenting Zhao Tuo as an rightfully aggrieved party, more so than Sima Qian, who left out information that Zhao Tuo's family in northern China persecuted and his ancestral tomb desecrated, and Zhao Tuo's account that the King of Changsha, supported by ministers and in particular military leaders, orchestrated the ban on iron and mares, cows, and ewes. It is striking to read Zhao Tuo designating Kingdom of Changsha as “partly manyi,” perhaps Ban Gu’s note of the competition between Zhao Tuo and the grandsons of the King of Changsha Wu Rui (吴芮).<fnref n="230" /> A the time of Empress Lü’s ban Wu Rui has long deceased, and the reigning king was his great-grandson Wu You (吴右)<fnref n="231" /> From all accounts, Zhao Tuo clearly had the upper hand in 180 BCE in terms of military preparedness, making it suspicious to believe that Wu You’s party would try to orchestrate a ban without preparation. But for our purposes, the most curious is Zhao Tuo’s focus on the inavailability to acquire mares, cows and ewes in his official correspondence to Wendi. He claimed that this ban had

<footnote n="230">²³⁰ At the time of Gaozu’s death, Wu Rui was the only vassal who did not have kinship relations with the imperial Liu family. Like Zhao Tuo, he also happened to have been a Qin magistrate of Fanyang south of the Yangzi River, before raising a militia force comprising the local *yue* ethnic group and sided with Han forces, then vassal king under Gaozu, see Sima Qian, *shiji*, 9, 396, Ban Gu *hanshu*, 34, 1894; 65, 3859.</footnote>

<footnote n="231">²³¹ Sima Qian, *shiji*, 17, 804-838. Ban Gu did not see anything notable among Wu Rui’s issues who succeeded him as the king of Changsha, merely that this line terminated after a few generations; Sima Qian on the other hand gave names and dates for those who succeeded him.</footnote>
devastated his herds and flocks to the point that only old male animals were left, while
making no mention of the effects of the part of the ban concerning iron implements.
We have no way to ascertain whether he was speaking in earnest; it may be obfuscation.
But obfuscation for the lack of ferrous metallurgical capability? Then the Han court
already knew by issuing the ban. Or was it obfuscation for a level of ferrous metallurgical
capability that exceeded the expectations of the Han court? At the heart of this inquiry is
the need to ask to what extent was Nanyue capable of iron production at levels that could
satisfy the Nanyue state.

Various types of iron metal tools, agricultural implements, and ironworking
artifacts discovered in Guangxi, Guangdong, and other regions dated to the Warring
States period lead to the question whether they were locally produced central plains
products, or they were imports.<fnref n="232" /> If the former, then large-scale local production of
iron tools with advanced forgin and casting techniques have grown root in Lingnan,
potentially round the time of the Qin conquest of the *baiyue* peoples between 219 to
218 BCE. Although there is also the likelihood of these being imported, discoveries
like the iron-footed bronze cauldron and iron double-headed axe in the Warring
States tombs at Yinshan in Pingle (平乐银山岭), Guangxi, which are distinct from
the Central Plains and Chu artifacts, suggest that iron production in Lingnan might
have begun to develop earlier, perhaps as a result of the expansion of the Chu state
into the Lingnan region.<fnref n="233" /> By that time, the well-established ironworking techniques
from Hunan, which were already advanced, may have started to spread gradually into
the Lingnan region, though not at a significant scale. In addition to local production,
the flow of Chu-made iron tools into present-day Guangxi and Guangdong was likely
widespread. Among the 199 iron tools (including 11 copper-iron composite tools from
Yinshan in Pingle) discovered in 110 Warring States period tombs across Guangxi,
including bamboo-leaf-shaped harvesters used for collecting grain.<fnref n="234" />

<footnote n="232">232 Huang 1996, p. 60; Bai 2005, p. 366-367: Since iron tools from the Qin and early Han periods typically lack inscriptions, we can rely on typology to identify tools (such as the hollow-headed axe, vertical chisel hoe, and straight-edged spade) and weapons (like the ratchet and forked halberd) produced in the regions south of the Great Wall. These artifacts are found at early Han sites such as Spider Mountain in Chifeng (赤峰蜘蛛山), Anzhangzi (凌源安杖子) in Lingyuan, and Xiaohuangdi in Jinxi (锦西小荒地). Similarly, items like the hollow-headed axe, chisel, and various types of swords found at the Wuyishan Chengcun (武夷山城村) and the Pingle Yingshan site in Lingnan, are all in the shape and style of tools made in the Central Plains.</footnote>

<footnote n="233">233 Zheng 1996, p. 54.</footnote>

<footnote n="234">234 Zheng 1996, p. 52-56.</footnote>
What these suggest is that, under the early years of the Nanyue Kingdom under
Zhao Tuo, several key technology transfers and capacity expansions must have occurred
before Empress Lü's issuance of the ban, though scale is a problem. If we read Empress
Lü's ban as a proxy, it seems reasonable to assert that Zhao Tuo imported iron and
metal tools in large quantities from the Changsha Kingdom before the ban, and this
would still make sense, given the considerable number of ferrous instruments and tools
that look like northern imports. Scholars also propose reading a spike in activity during
the time of Empress Lü's ban, even though the vast majority of iron items can only be
assigned general dates and cannot be precisely dated. That said, since accounts were
likely true that Nanyue had the upperhand militarily and were actually in control of
the southern borders of the Kingdom of Changsha, and if the Kingdom of Changsha
had ferrous metals to commerce and transact, it seems more likely that cross-border
trade of iron would continue, though under the Kingdom of Nanyue's terms. With the
Kingdom of Changsha's defenses having been tested and defeated in the aftermath of
Empress Lü's ban, and with certain demand for ferrous if not also non-ferrous products
produced elsewhere, it seems reasonable that the flow of ferrous goods would continue,
and one suspects that personnel trained in smelting and working with cast-iron would
have been targeted for extraction by the Nanyue troops. The combination of early
development under the Qin empire, followed by continued imports and interests
of ferrous goods before the ban, and even following the ban as the southern border
defenses were dismantled, meant that there were indeed multiple factors that could be
mustered to explain the growth of the Nanyue iron industry.

Narratives on the Nanyue region gaining metallurgical capacity tend to seek
out corroboration with historical sources.<fnref n="235" /> One narrative is that Zhao Tuo led
developments in agricultural economy and the corresponding iron industry, laying a
solid foundation for responding to the iron and husbandry ban under Empress Lü,
in turn accelerating the mastery of advanced forging techniques within the Nanyue
Kingdom.<fnref n="236" /> The overall sentiment may be hard to quibble with, but when one asks
just what were the circumstances that enabled an acceleration in the mastery of

<footnote n="235">235 Lam *et al*. 2019, p. 126; but authors noted that while funerary iron tools from the late Warring States to early Western Han periods in the Guangzhou region, sample size remains small.</footnote>

<footnote n="236">236 Zheng 1996, p. 54: 估计在南越国以前,该遗址已经采矿冶炼,但规模不大,吕后关市铁器之后,才迅速扩大发展起来 [It is estimated that before the Nanyue Kingdom, mining and smelting had already occurred at this site, but on a small scale. It was only after the establishment of the ironware market during Empress Lü's reign that it rapidly expanded and developed]. Huang 1996, p. 60.</footnote>
techniques, the narrative would be in need of an answer. There is also a narrative that points to Zhao Tuo's sending of three ministers to negotiate the dropping of the ban being a sign that Nanyue was being starved of all the iron products it used to import, and found it a top priority to continue the iron trade. However, in the actual letter reported by Ban Gu, Zhao Tuo's complaint was focused on mares, cows and ewes, not to restore access to ferrous products from the central plains region.<fnref n="237" /> The argument may be that it was haphazard, and iron was intended. Alternative interpretations can perhaps be also inviting. By not referring to the iron ban, Zhao Tuo may have been projecting strength, now that he might have scored three goals: Changsha's production of iron products (if any were left) may continue to be acquired through commerce; Changsha's productivity in terms of personnel and technical knowledge base have now been acquired through recruitment or capture of skilled smiths and smelters; the influx of talent and resource have lifted Nanyue's productivity to levels that may lower pedencies of iron production elsewhere.

## Conclusions

This paper addressed the methodological challenges of the comparative approach through two angles of attack. The first is to locate the pragmatic and utilitarian angle, which is described as the creation of modeling domains to facilitate a structured, yet flexible, use of evidence to build specialized worlds. In the case of the present paper, the worlds built up consisted of generalized rules and frameworks elicited from literary and archaeological evidence, paired with two sets of diachronic, fragmented landscapes that aimed to represent the progressive acquisition and integration of lands with established metallurgical traditions. In the process, the co-option of metallurgical traditions into the *Romanitas* and the later imposition of new rules and norms by the *imperium Romanum* offered a concrete domain that can then be “paired” with its Qin-

<footnote n="237">²³⁷ Huang 1996, p. 60: 赵陀与汉廷关系恶化的一个重要原因史吕后“禁南粤关市铁器”，实施对南粤的金铁天气禁运，为此迫使赵陀连接派遣内史藩、中尉高、御史平三次上书汉廷请求解禁，南粤渴望得到中原铁器的迫切心情于此可见。[One important reason for the deterioration of Zhao Tuo's relationship with the Han court was Empress Lü's "ban on the ironware market in Nanyue," which imposed an embargo on the export of metal and iron tools to Nanyue. This forced Zhao Tuo to send the Interior Minister Fan, the Middle Lieutenant Gao, and the Censor Ping three times to petition the Han court to lift the ban. This reflects the urgent desire of Nanyue to obtain iron tools from the Central Plains].</footnote>
Han counterpart, again from the ground up, with the Warring States in the background and imposed upon by conquests, migrations, feudalisms, and monopolization.

Reaching this step is not enough. Each domain may seem at first to be closed systems, but with importation of additional parameters and even an “external” dimension, with domains increasingly an aggregative set that relates with others, depending on available evidence. Outside the Roman Mediterranean there is always some other domain necessary to be described, such as the Roman-Parthian case, which involves two empires with distinct cultural, political, and geographical characteristics but with shared anecdotes of trade and commerce that necessarily devolve into manifold forms of relations. Then there is the Han-Nanyue case, which involves the Han court based in Guanzhong and a peripheral kingdom with questionable claims to vassal status and cultural and historical ties. The more detailed the external description, the more observations and extrapolations one can make. When taken to several degrees forward, however, domains become less apparently relevant, even when each domain would be open by intent. The distancing effect necessarily requires particular caution in cross-domain discussions. The way forward can be ironically backwards: systems are best to be compared within their own distinct historical and social contexts while also being examined through the lens of shared phenomena, such as the evolution of metallurgy or the imposition of imperial control over local traditions.

What is observable of the comparable approach is that as domains increase in distance, extrapolations from any two domains with degrees removed necessarily decrease in efficacy; but conversely, increasing distance between domains further highlights the importance of historical and social specificity. For example, Roman imperialism and Han imperialism may share overarching themes of centralization, but their specific manifestations—driven by cultural, political, and geographical factors—would become too distinct to allow for overly simplistic or deterministic comparisons. In other words, the comparative approach may in its advanced stages may increasingly require domain modelling to grow in specificity and dynamism, even as comparisons lead to recognizably shared phenomena, like the evolution of metallurgy or the imposition of imperial control. There is no end result to speak of in comparative exercises, because it drives the comparisons to compete for something that the other is lacking.

To conclude, this paper aims to show that the comparative approach to the Qin-Han and Roman Mediterranean industries ought to be by design ever expanding, from technologies and hierarchies to geographical and chronological scopes. Arguably,
such projects are meant to be discoveries of kind not necessarily focused on resolving
any specific issue or reaching any sort of concrete proofs. The comparative approach
affords no certain teleological ending but rather seeks to set up concrete ways in which
the understandings of multiple dimensions of specific domains can be discussed and
“paired” in ever increasingly comprehensive manner.

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