A number of Byzantine coins discovered in China and Japan indicate that there was a trade link between the Byzantine Empire and China.
Four Byzantine copper coins depicting Constantine I, also known as Constantine the Great (r. 303-336 AD), the emperor who established Constantinople as the seat of the Byzantine Empire, were found during excavation at Katsuren Castle on Okinawa Island, Japan.
Archaeologists have been perplexed by this strange recovery. The coins belong in the 4th or 3rd century AD, a time period in which travel was not easy, especially between Byzantium and Japan, with a distance of 6,000 miles between them.
Japan Times reported that the coins measure 1.6-2 cm (0.6-0.8 inches) in diameter. The designs on the coins are hard to see due to abrasion, however by using x-ray analysis, the researchers found depictions of a soldier holding a spear and the emperor Constantine I.
Officials think that the four coins were taken to Japan some time in the Middle Ages, when trade between China and the West was taking place. At the time of the Roman Empire, Japan was a tributary nation to China and this explains the presence of the Byzantine coin in the Far East.
Byzantine coins in China
In a study published in Chinese Archaeology journal in 2005, author Chen Zhiqiang wrote that by that time there were 56 gold Byzantine Empire coins found in China. They belong to the times of 14 different emperors of Byzantium.
Specifically, there is one piece for Constantine II, one for Constantius II, one for Theodosius I, three for Theodosius II, three for Leo I, two for Zeno, seven for Anastasios I, seven for Justin I, four for Justin I and Justinian I, seven for Justinian I, two for Justinian II, one for Maurice, three for Phokas, four for Herakleios I, and one for Constantine V; also included are nine pieces unidentified as regards to the years of manufacture and the era of the emperor they belong to.
However, there is very little evidence on how these coins traveled to China and, more importantly, when. Very little is known about the ways these far-flung regions interacted during the Early Middle Ages. The distances between them were huge, nearly impossible for either side to cover, much less to trade on a regular basis.
Trade between the Roman Empire and China was conducted from the 2nd century BC, during the Han dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) via the Silk Roads. The Silk Roads was a vast interlocking trade network, with Rome at the western end and China at the eastern.
However, indirect trade via intermediaries, mainly the Parthians and the Kushans who wanted to control the lucrative silk trade, was also important. Later it was the Mongols who controlled the route.
Trade between the Byzantine Empire and China
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, the Eastern Roman Empire (the Byzantine) became the most important destination for merchants traveling west. During the reign of Emperor Justinian I (527-565 AD) Constantinople had become a cosmopolitan city that served as a hub of commerce and culture along the Silk Road. It was Constantinople that maintained the ancient connection between the Romans and the Chinese.
Despite strains such as Justinian’s creation of a domestic silk production industry, and the Justinian Plague, Constantinople and China maintained an important relationship at the western and eastern ends of the Silk Road throughout Justinian’s reign. Trade, particularly in silk, dominated the connection between the two civilizations during his reign.
In addition to silk, the Byzantines imported other luxury goods from China, such as pepper, cinnamon, perfumes, incense, furs and iron. On their part, the Chinese imported gold and silver, other precious metals, precious and semi-precious stones, coral, and various forms of glass and glassware from Byzantium. According to the Book of the Later Han, China also imported fighting cocks, rhinoceroses, gold-threaded and multi-colored embroideries, woven gold-threaded net, polychrome silks painted with gold, and other products from Byzantium.
Constantinople’s geographic location facilitated both land and sea trade, creating a “halfway house” for China. During times of peace, the land route from Constantinople to China passed through Sassanid Persia, while the sea route passed through the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean to modern day Sri Lanka, which Persian merchants also controlled.
Byzantine embassies in China
After the reign of Justinian I the trade between continued, albeit with some difficulties. In spite of the challenges, Constantinople established embassies in China.
Chinese histories for the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) record contacts with merchants from “Fulin”, the new name used to designate the Byzantine Empire. The first reported diplomatic contact took place in 643 AD during the reigns of Constans II (641–668 AD) and Emperor Taizong of Tang (626–649 AD).
The Tang histories record that Constans II sent an embassy in the 17th year of the Zhenguan regnal period (643 AD), bearing gifts of red glass and green gemstones. Traveler and author Henry Yule asserts that the additional Fulin embassies during the Tang period arrived in 711 and 719 AD, with another in 742 AD that may have been a visit by Nestorian monks.
Historian S.A.M. Adshead lists four official diplomatic contacts with Fulin in the Old Book of Tang as occurring in 643, 667, 701, and 719 AD, the latter being a full embassy sent during the reign of Leo III the Isaurian.
The last diplomatic contacts between China and Byzantium are recorded as having taken place in the 11th century AD. According to Chinese historian Ma Duanlin (1245–1322), it is known that the Byzantine emperor Michael VII Doukas sent an embassy to China’s Song dynasty that arrived in 1081 AD, during the reign of Emperor Shenzong of Song (r. 1067–1085 AD).
