u/TT-Adu

At various times in history, China and Byzantium (or earlier, Rome) were two most centralised states in Eurasia with bureaucracies, taxation, standing armies etc, yet while mass peasant revolts were a mainstay of Chinese dynastic history, it's almost unknown in Byzantium.

Was the govt in Constantinople simply better at dealing with them (enough so that they wouldn't spiral into empire-breaking events)? Were they just uncommon in the Byzantine Empire or do the histories simply not mention them?

One main driver of the dynastic cycle seems to have been the issue of the upper classes of the dynasty consolidating land and wealth and then refusing to pay taxes which were then put on the peasantry leading to revolts during times of bad harvest.

Was there ever a 'permanent' solution to this problem? Did a dynasty ever try some ingenious solution which seemed to have solved this problem (until some other factor toppled the dynasty)? Or was this problem simply unsolvable before the advent of industrialisation?

Also, if you were emperor, how would you solve it?

Since the scholar-official class seemed so contemptuous of the eunuchs, were there any attempts to remove them and abolish the practice altogether?

Why did eunuchs seem so integral to the dynastic system? Could they have been replaced with another class of imperial servants?

I'm listening to the History of China Podcast and life of officials in the Ming court seems so jarring after listening to the history of the Song. Officials are regularly beaten at the Ming court, tortured, executed and humiliated in ways that would've been unthinkable under the Song. And the Ming govt seems to only function when there's a micromanaging strongman like Hongwu or Zhang Juzheng, otherwise everything falls apart. Like how the state was always broke even though the empire as a whole was booming because they couldn't find a strongman to reform the tax system. I could be wrong but the Song dynasty always felt more proactive and faster to resolve problems.

I've often heard it explained that this is because the Hongwu emperor set up a dictatorial system to function this way. But what i havent heard explained is how exactly he did it. Did he abolish certain offices or make new ones that made Ming govt so dysfunctional? And why couldn't any succeeding emperors reform the system?