Emperor Claudius (41-54 CE) is one of the most popular Roman emperors. On the other hand, Shao Xinchen lived in China’s Han dynasty. Both men were decorated water-engineers. They carried out major water projects that impacted the lives of their subjects in different ways. According to Wiesner, much of the public works that Claudius completed were few but great and significant. Some of his works include the aqueduct started by Caligula and a drainage channel of Lake Fucine as well as the harbour at Ostia (Wiesner, 2002). Claudia also constructed cool and abundant springs of the Claudian aqueduct and New Anio channel. He distributed the springs into ornamental fountains with the water he drained from Fucine Lake. Emperor Claudia finished the three-mile-long canal by levelling the ground and making a tunnel through the mountain. This involving task took him over 11 years working with 30,000 men on a full-time basis (Wiesner, 2002). On the other hand, had vested interests in generating benefits for the people and made it his personal responsibility to complete the tasks urgently to benefit the people. He spent a significant amount of time in the fields encouraging peasants working on farming. He helped these farmers to build dams and opened up canals by digging ditches and building water gates and dykes to improve irrigation. This increased the irrigation area to five-hundred-thousand acres (Wiesner, 2002). He also checked on the waterways to ensure they were in good operational shape. Xinchen also came up with water use regulation which saw the introduction of scheduled and regulated irrigation in China for the first time. During his administration, Nan Yung became an agriculturally rich region with farmers reaping the benefits of expanded irrigation and surplus in their stores.
It is difficult to determine who was better between this two great water engineers. This is because of they both different times and different locations. As such, they faced different problems at the time, which means that their projects were driven by varying goals. For instance, food shortage might not have been a problem during Emperor Claudius projects, which is obviously the case in the case of Xinchen (Wiesner, 2002). Therefore, the project had a limited scope which only involved draining Lake Fucine. However, holding all factors constant, Xinchen cared more about the welfare of the local people more than Emperor Claudius did.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
No one can dispute that both of them helped their subjects. However, the difference lies in the way they did it. In Claudia’s case, he sought to solve the flooding nuisance of lake Fucine. As such, his project ought to have focused on creating more land for the locals. However, Claudia’s had sought to fulfil his own goals. As Wiesner states, Claudia’s attempted to drain Lake Fucine in the hope of gaining self-glory (Wiesner, 2002). At the time, people were willing to drain the land at their cost, as long as the land would be availed to them for their operations. Secondly, the end-product of his project had no developmental benefits to the people. The drained waters of Claudian aqueduct and the New Anio channel were diverted into his fancy fountains. From a personal perspective, this was not worth the millions of working hours that over 300,000 men contributed to the 11-year project (Wiesner, 2002). Finally, he was not involved on the ground level as he hired people to work on the two projects. He maintained his royal status throughout these projects. As such, Claudia sought to get the people to acknowledge him for his accomplishments as well as caring more about his legacy than the welfare of his subjects.
Xinchen, on the other hand, was the opposite of Emperor Claudia. It is important to note that Xinchen held a less powerful position. However, this did not stop him from helping his people. He encouraged the peasants to embark on farming. Moreover, he went further to help the farmers construct water dams and opened irrigations canals by constructing water gates and dykes to widen the irrigated land. Xinchen also inspected the waters and springs personally. In so doing, he expanded the irrigated area to about 500,000 acres (Wiesner, 2002). Besides solving the problem of water shortage, Xinchen formulated regulations that ensured equitable water distribution. This solved the existent disputes over water distribution and hence introduced scheduled irrigation. His water projects ended up increasing food security and instilling work ethics to his people as opposed to glorify himself.
In conclusion, a leader should make the need and the welfare of his subjects his or her priority. Leadership requires one to be a servant and not a master. It calls for one to go out of their comfort zone and get to the ground and find out what problems are facing the people. Emperor Claudia did not show much interest or concern in solving the problem his subjects were facing. He jumped on the opportunity not to help the locals drain Lake Fucine but to create fancy water fountains that do not have any other benefit apart from aesthetics. In addition, he embarked on mega project that used millions of manpower and manpower to solve an issue that had other simple and cheaper alternatives (Wiesner, 2002). On the other hand, Xinchen primarily focused on the issues facing his subjects. He made them a priority and spend many hours working on the ground with the people. Moreover, Xinchen went further to ensure that all his subjects were active and used their natural resources responsibly to avoid disputes. Under his leadership, all his citizens reaped enormous agricultural benefits that would not have been possible without his water projects. As such, Xinchen displayed better leadership than Emperor Claudia.
Reference
Wiesner, M. E. (2002). Discovering the Global Past-To 1650: A Look at the Evidence (Vol. 1). Houghton Mifflin College Division.
