DBQ on differences in Han and Roman attitudes towards technology

The Chinese attitude towards technology was that it should be useful to and help the common people. The Roman attitude towards technology was that it was it was of little prestige and didn’t relate to the upper classes and was therefore of less importance. Documents 1, 2, 3, and 4 all have a positive attitude towards technology and that it should be useful to and help the common people. In document 1, it talks about preventing flood prevention, selecting a person as chief hydraulic engineer, ordering inspections of the waterways, and supplying enough workers to those who are to carry out the repair work.

This shows that the Han cared about the common people. In document 2, it talks about the tools and how when they were produced by the families they were well made, but when they were produced by the state using convict labor, they were more crude and not very functional, showing that the Han cared about how well the tools are working.

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In document 3, it talks about the technology and how its improved.

In document 4, it talks about Tu shih and how he loved the common people and wished to save their labor. It talks about the water-powered blowing-engine and how it helped the common people, showing how the Han wanted the technology to help the common people. In documents 5,6,7, and 8 the all had a negative attitude towards technology was that it was of little importance and didn’t relate to the upper classes so it was therefore of less importance. Keep in mind before that all these documents are written by upper Roman officials and leaders, therefore losing the voice of the lower classes and how they felt about technology.

In document 5, it shows a negative attitude towards technology and says that the craftsmen’s occupations are vulgar and unbecoming.

In document 6, it talks about how a Roman political leader in the second-century B.C.E and how he was anxious about road building, and paying attention to detail, and the person who wrote the passage was a high official from the first century C.E. In document 7, an upper-class Roman philosopher talks about how he doesn’t care about what inventions came first and that they were invented by people with a nimble and sharp mind, but not great or elevated, showing how they thought that using technology was beneath them.

In the hans point of view, they care about the common people and the technology, and the Romans point of view (without the common people’s input) is negative towards technology. Out of these documents, I would like to have a journal from a roman commoner in the first century B.C.E. or C.E. to fully understand how the majority of the people in Rome felt.