WI: Gan Ying goes to Rome

[Night Gaul]

In 97 CE, a Chinese military ambassador named Gan Ying was sent on a mission to Rome. But he never managed to reach the empire.

What if he had?

 

[Icee]

hmm i dont think much would change,i guess it depends how they go abut it

 

[A Repentant Heretic]

The Weilue description of the Roman Empire becomes less fantastical, I suppose.

 

[Alexander the Average]

As I understand it he got as far as the Persian Gulf before deciding to go back after trying to charter a ship to take them to Rome and hearing that it would take them between three months-2 years to reach Roman Egypt. The real kicker is that they were just 40-days march from the Roman-Parthian border which would have brought them to Syria and from there they could get a ship straight to Rome itself.

 

[Black Prince of Britannia]

Probably wouldn't result in much beyond a more concrete appreciation of each other (as both viewed each other under shrouds of intense mystery), but the Han from Gan Yin's accounts already had viewed the Roman Empire as a near-equal, naming them the "Qin" (so-named for their "like-ness"/civilness to China with respect to other barbaric entities).

Direct trade would still be difficult, and the Han were overly concern with the Parthians and later conflicts with the Kushan Empire. If the Han doesn't consolidate Central Asian and Bactria, there's little need for them to be involved in Parthian affairs (and thus would not even think to have political relationships with Rome).

I mean the Eastern Han did receive a Roman mission in 166, but nothing concrete came out of it. Of course the Han influence in Central Asia had certainly waned a lot more by then, it shows that the court wasn't overly concerned with something that's even further than the gratuitous Central Asian lands