Middle Kingdom

Has any civilization other than China considered themselves to be the center of the world, and everything outside of their borders to be barbaric irrelevances that should pay tribute to them? Why was China the only one to maintain this mistaken belief into the modern era?

>Rome
>Great Britain
>Probably the fucking Aztecs too

And the Persians, but the Chinese were the only ones to still be that deluded into the 1800s.

Mmmmmm... I think Imperialist Great Britain is still in the running, at that time.

Romans
Persians
Greeks
British
Chinese
Egyptians
etc

Yeah pretty much every civilization that ever existed.

byzantines refused to create alliance with hungary against ottomans because their nobles wore pants

Americans

It's just a name, everyone feels like they're in the middle in a time before gps and world maps, you look west and theres weird different people, look right and its the same.

Hmm. Their names are calming, soothing somehow. Well, except for Dying Fish Nets Place.

By that point Britain really was the center of the world and had earned it.

Israel

Mesoptamia with the Sumerian city-states
Akkadian Empire
Assyrian Empire
Babylonian Empire
Not sure about the Persians, they had this sort of pan-globalist urban civilization thing in their mindset, at least under the Medes and Achaemenids
Greeks definitely
Romans certainly/as well as Byzantines
Chinese certainly

Egypt

They remind me of the ship names in Halo-- Pillar of Autumn, Forward Unto Dawn, In Amber Clad

In Amber Chad

I still hold this view. The belt and road is a massive waste of money and should be abandoned.

Well great briton literally put themsel es slap bang in the middle of the most widley used map of the world

Good. Pant-wearing barbarians should be blinded.

Persian/iranian tradition is full of this. Under Sasanians, Persians divided the world between Iran and Not-Iran (and the king had the right to rule both, of course). Also iranian/zoroastrian tradition considers that there's seven regions or climates in the world, with Iran being the central one and most perfect. Tur and the brother that represents Rome (can't remember the name) killed their brother Iraj because he got the best part of the world and were jealous.

Because they finally got the chance to flaunt themselves after years of being on the periphery of Europe.

It's the best version though. Cutting in half the irrelevant and empty Pacific is more acceptable than cutting eurasia or putting the irrelevant Pacific "nations" in the middle wasting space.

To be fair, considering that Britain's power was in her navy and trade, having it in the middle would make most sense for the people who needed world maps (sailors)

>Persians divided the world between Iran and Not-Iran
You only have this half-right. Iranians in general, not just Persians, have divided their race from non-Iranians, not that this means actual superiority.

The belt and road is needed because of industrial overcapacity and a lack of domestic consumption.

Literally "Western" civilization.

>(and the king had the right to rule both, of course)

All empires from what I know did this. They never accepted the authority of other "emperors" because the emperor was supposed to be the highest ruler of the world. The only exception that I can think of is the divided Roman Empire.

Makes me think of when the Japanese wrote to the Chinese emperor and called the ruler of Japan an emperor. At the time it would have been like if a Christian Roman emperor, head of Christendom, protector of the church, and Gods Representative on earth and rightful king above all, got a letter from some king next door and the letter was all like 'hey man, so your the king of the earth? Cool, me too!"

中國 originally was a plural term better interpreted as "central states," referred to states (國) located in the central plains 中原, so-called because the plains were the center between the northern deserts, eastern sea, southern jungles, and western mountains.

If anything, the obsession with the mistaken belief that 中國 means "middle kingdom" is just the West projecting its own feelings of self-importance. Compare this "middle kingdom" interpretation to Han dynasty cosmology, which said that what 中國 controlled was merely one of nine corners of one of nine continents.

USA USA USA USA

>Myanmar
>Laos
lol

The B&R project was mainly the counter measure toward Americans' TPP. But turns out it works better than TPP in the end. So it cannot be abandoned now.

Rome was like that. Even until the end they believed their world was the entire world. Metaphorically speaking.

That periphery saved them a lot of grief though. Being on the west of europe where no barbs invade is easy peasy.

If you look it close, that sentence was talking about the sasanians who were persians. I guess you could say that sasanians believed what the rest of iranians believed tho. Anyways, there IS a sense of superiority, albeit more related to the land/people itself than to individuals, as seen in concepts like the Glory of the Aryans or the story of Tur, Salm and Iraj. Not like this is unique of them, of course.

Well, it's a bit more complex in the case of (late) romans and (sasanian) persians. They eventually accepted that the other was not going anywhere and had to co-exist. Khosrow Parviz said:

>God effected that the whole world should be illumined from the very beginning by two eyes, namely by the most powerful kingdom of the Romans and by the most prudent scepter of the Persian State. For by these greatest powers the disobedient
and bellicose tribes are winnowed and man's course is continually regulated and guided.

These same Khosrow later tried to conquer all Roman asia which he almost achieved, but his casus belli was to avenge his murdered emperor pal so it's not like he completely ignored this idea.

Educated Chinese didn't think so post-1860's desu

What farmers think is kind of stupid to reference. These people didn't even know what happened outside their village