Geopolitics and Historical Legacy

Hello everyone and welcome to the History of Byzantium Episode three hundred and fifty five You can't understand the modern world without Byantium As we reach the end of our journey, it's only natural to ask What have we learned? What was the point of all that? What is the real legacy of Byzantium? Several listeners asked variations on the question Why did the Romans survive for so long Yeah Why did they fall when they did I think the answers to those questions are fairly clear from the narrative and from my conversations with Anthony Calelles. The Romans had a very well ordered government structure that ensured both elite byy in and widespread obedience Taxes were collected in a manner most people considered fair and spent on an army that was visibly trying to protect the people who paid their wages courts and the church offered a means for ordinary people to complain and seek redress and the government actively supported the Christian faith which people held dear. Before the Battle of Manzakkurt, the court system really was an ingenious combination of meritocratic democracy combined with rigid autocracy could be Basil I F and come from nowhere and be accepted as the ruler of everyone. Or you could be Basil II a fifth generation child of the palace and still turn out to be a tough, disciplined soldier The shocks that brought down the Romans were all external They couldn't have prevented the rise of the Arabs, the Turks, or the Normans eachach brought a challenge. that the Byzantines found ways to cope with but they couldn't cope with two of them attacking at once So I don't want to reiterate any of that today. I'd rather do something a bit different Listener R R asks How do we benefit from studying Byzantium as opposed to popular history topics like ancient Rome or the Second World War and so on I find it difficult to explain to friends and family why I love this particular corner of human history So I was curious to know your answer two questions there One, why do we love this particular corner of history so much? to which I say, because it's fun It's a dramatic story, it's an underdog story The Byzantines are our favorite sports team and we enjoy the emotional journey they take us on through ups and downs to one final blaze of tragic glory They also left a civilization that's invisible to most other people today So it's our secret joy. It's our cool indie band that hasn't made it to the charts yet then the second question is why should people study Byzantians That's today's episode You can't tell your family and friends that this podcast is your soap opera and your sports team and your favourite band They just don't get it but they might nod sagely at an intellectual argument So how about this You can't understand the modern world without Bantium You just can't Hero Ten ways in which Byzantium create the world we live in Number one. Christianity I don't really need to explain to you how fundamental Christianity is to the modern world It shaped a civilization and that civilization the world the values, assumptions and institutions which Christianity created not only influenced the billions who live within its formal embrace They now unconsciously influence many who come from entirely different traditions If you haven't read Tom Holland's Dominion, I would strongly recommend listening to him explain how even modern atheists are still swimming in Christian waters Christianity is indelibly linked to the emmperor Constantine man who founded Constantinople H conversion set the Roman Empire on the path to becoming a Christian state And remember, the relationship between Christianity and the Roman world was not a one way street. Christianity transformed the empire The empire transformed Christianity as well As Christian theology moved into the mainstream It encountered Greek philosophy As the church became an imperial institution, it adapted to the bureaucratic logic of the Roman state, Churches were built where temples had once stood, absorbing existing traditions and customs as they rose The most important debates in Christian history took place in the Byzantine world the ecumenical councils that determined what Christianity was and what it wasn't. were held in Roman cities under the authority of the emperors Christianity was born in the Roman Empire, but Christianity that would conquer the world. was to a remarkable degree shaped in Byzantium Number two Islam. Again, no need to explain the world shaping impact of the Muslim faith And though its origins and development did not take place within the Roman Empire did take place in a world that Byzantium dominated The culture of Arabia itself was heavily influenced by the Roman world. they traded and interacted with as well as the Christian and Jewish beliefs which flourished within its borders Pages of the Quran absorb and wrestle with these traditions, excepting some rejecting others. Nor can the timing of these debates be ignored. Arab unity was forged in the decades during which the Romans and Susanids were laying waste to the certainties of the ancient world. What could an Arab army achieve in a landscape of abandoned fortresses and exhausted bureaucracies The core territories of the early Caliphate were all Roman provinces. The first capital Damascus. Naturally, the Arabs absorbed a huge amount of byyzantium as they went bureaucratic and logistical needs of running the former Roman territories to more profound questions of how a universal religion should function How do you gather believers What should a house of worship look like What institutions are needed to organize the faithful And how should we deal with theological disputes This new faith was born in Arabia. came of age in a Byzantine world Number three Gihad flash of civilizations Had Byzantium fallen and an Islamic government taken root in Constantinople The world today would look very different We don't need Gibbonian fantasies about the fate of Oxford and Cambridge to recognize that an Islamic Byzantium changes the fate of the Balkans and the easastern Mediterranean significantly But that didn't happen The Romans held the line of the Taurus mountains for centuries, forcing a clear separation Christian and Islamic worlds with enormous consequences. What that endless conflict did create was an institutionalized jihad The concept of an inner and outer struggle already existed, and Muslim armies still moved on other frontiers But would Jihad have become an idea that was still relevant in twenty twenty six without Byzantium without the annual raids into Anatolia without the sense that the House of war was just over the mountains In response to Byzantium's refusal to submit caliphs created entire frontier districts dedicated to holy war with institutions to house and fund volunteer fighters who came from all over the Islamic world Some came to live there permanent winning renown. serervice on the frontier acquired some of the prestige and spiritual rewards normally associated with pilgrimage The Jihad developed its own formal rules, prayers and rewards. as with Islam and the Calipate Byzantium did not create Jihad, but by surviving, it gave Jihad a permanent stage upon which to be performed and helped shape the form it would take for centuries afterwards Number four, the law The law surrounds us today in ways we barely even notice. I'm sitting in an office building whose every feature has been sculpted by rules and regulations. from the materials used in its construction to the number of fire exits and the position of parking spaces I drove here in a vehicle built to satisfy thousands of legal requirements on roads governed by an equally complex web of rules I could go on and on The law is one of the invisible foundations of modern life. And many of the building blocks of that legal world were refined and written down. in Byzantium And yes, Justinian gets a lot of the credit His collection of legal works are the ones which preserved existing Roman law pass it on to future generations. Vital concepts such as contracts, property rights, corporations, inheritance, and the need for evidence. preserved within those texts Centuries later, when medieval scholars and lawmakers began constructing The legal systems of Europe Justinian's compilation was their starting the civil law tradition that governs much of Europe, Latin America and large parts of the world emerged from that process. and even the common law systems of the Anglosphere though they developed along a different path, absorbed many of the same underlying concepts Number five, the rise of the West. in twenty twenty six As I speak Western Europeans and their descendants still dominate the global conversation theirir economic and military predominance may be fading. But most of the planet still lives among institutions, ideas, and assumptions that originated in the West No one understood the origins of this dominance more intimately They aided it, profited from it and were eventually destroyed by it. When the first Crusaders arrived in Constantinople, Western Europe was still seen as something of a backwater great cities, wealth and learning of the Mediterranean remained concentrated in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds by providing the logistical support that made the conquest of Jerusalem possible Alexi' Komninos unwittingly opened the easastern Mediterranean to Western expansion To keep Uramia supplied, the Latins innovated. building bigger and better ships and expanding their trade networks Western Europe became increasingly outward looking and self confident. The sack of Constantinople in twelve oh four was a culmination of these early trends Crusading ideology could now be turned on fellow Christians in good conscience. The tactics the Latins use to destroy Byzantium would be echoed centuries later T Och Titlan Chris car interfere in local politics backack of use up sack the place anyway the origins of colonialism can be found in Byantium The Venetians and Genoese moved in, occupied territory, but never became Cretan or cypriot. Their fleets allowed them to rule at a distance theirir new bases existed to enrich the Mropole new homelands. It was a potent experiment. one that encouraged Western Europeans to look beyond their own shores. and provided a model that would later be carried to the New world and then on to the rest of the planet number six the origins of modernity If the Justinianic legal corpus is the cornerstone of modern law then the Renaissance is the starting point of modernity The intellectual movement that we called the Renaissance insisted on a return to original sources rather than relying on inherited interpretations Scholars wanted to read the ancient texts for themselves. this desire to investigate and verify pins true scholarship journalism and criticism to this day This inquiry pushed forward all sorts of other ideas. that human agency is as interesting to ponder as divine planning that history is not static. that intellectual monopolies are dangerous and that skepticism towards authority can lead to valuable discoveries consequences have been far reaching, to say the least Where did these Renaissance scholars get those original texts from Byzantium, of course the works of Plato Homer and countless other authors had been copied preserved and debated by the Romans throughout their history While Western Europe largely lost the ability to read Greek Constantinople remained connected to the intellectual inheritance of the ancient world As the Latin West grew richer and more powerful, Byzantine scholars increasingly tralled west to teach while others trained Latin students closer to home Finally, as the power of Constantinople waned, many joined the new intellectual movements emerging in Italy, bringing their expertise manuscripts with them Modernity did not begin in Constantinople couldn't have developed the way it did without it Number seven the Orthodox world. And this is the one we're probably the most familiar with Millions of people today still pray in churches descended from Byzantine traditions They write in alphabets rooted in Greek and developed by Byzantine missionaries. Their cities are filled with domes inspired by the churches of Constantinople Their saints, liturgies, and religious calendars all emerged from the same world the very division of Europe into eastern and western halves is due to the influence of Constantinople New Rome gave the people who settled within its orbit a distinctive cultural identity one that maintained its own customs and worldview despite centuries of pressure from the Latin West Byzantium helped create an entire civilization which has outlived the empire itself Number eight The First World War In nineteen fourteen, a Bosnian Serb student shot an Austrian duke The result was that millions and millions of people died Why? For centuries, the Ottoman Empire ruled over a patchwork of peoples whose identities had been forged in the Byzantine world Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians and many others retained their linguistic, religious and historical traditions even as they became subjects of a Muslim empire The Ottoman conquest of the Byzantine lands had taught them that Christians made ideal second class citizens forced to pay the Jizya and unable to penetrate the halls of power without invitation In many ways, Ottoman rule preserve those identities During the nineteenth century, nationalism swept out of Western Europe And it was the combination of this new ideology with the gradual collapse of Ottoman power that transformed the Balkans into Europe's most dangerous region The great powers came stumbling in for their own reasons Austria, Hungary feared its subject peoples would rebel Russia felt drawn towards its Orthodox allies. while Britain and France worried about the wider consequences of Ottoman collapse The First World War is the most cataclysmic event in recent history and the spark which ignited it came from a region whose religious and cultural landscape is impossible to understand without Wh is an't you Number nine Greece and Turkey Though the Western Front fell silent in nineteen eighteen W would soon break out between the Greeks and Turks Much blood was spilt over the following years boundaries between the new states were settled Millions would eventually be uprooted from homes their families had occupied for centuries in an effort prevent further violence. modern Greece and Turkey incomprehensible without Byzantium As we discussed with Anthony Coldelles two episodes ago Greece rebranded itself to gain Western assistance And modern scholarship still struggles to cope with the reality The ancient Greeks became Romans and then became Greeks again Needless to say the people, institutions and resources of the newew Greek state have been profoundly shaped. by its Byzantine past For Turkey, the story is even more complicated The Ottoman Empire was always a multiracial affair And with its disappearance, the Turks needed a new National story But Anatolia is a place of competing memories remembered Byzantium. Armenians remembered greatreater Armenia. Kurds had their own traditions Even the landscape itself preserved firm reminders of the non Turkish past Byzantine place names survive in Turkish forms Greco Roman ruins dot its many hills while Istanbul. is often admired precisely because of the depth of its past The result has been described as a kind of defensive nationalism one acutely aware that other peoples can claim deep roots in the same land bothoth Greece looking to its deep past and Turkey trying to forge a new future Live with the shadow B Santium Number ten Cold War It can seem baffling to a Western audience why Russia is so prickly Why has the Russian state felt so vulnerable throughout its history Why are its leaders always seemingly concerned by threats that are physically hundreds of miles from its borders One answer is, of course, geography the Rus and their descendants made their home in a vast never ending plane. vicious steppe tribes to the south biting cold to the north No mountains or vast rivers to offer shelter. their violent neighborss But another answer is the fate of Byzantium The Rus chose Constantinople to be their north star. Their wealth emerged from their ability to bring goods to the Black Sea, and New Rome was by far the richest port connected to that body of water It was only natural then that as the rus looked to create civilized living, they would adopt the Byzantine model Centuries after their conversion to Orthodox Christianity, Russian pilgrims Still headed for Sagrad to visit the great churches and venerate the bones of saints And the Russians never forgot the fate of the Romans bullied and betrayed by the Latins Orthodoxy diluted and downgraded by Church union They beautiful city sacked. and then left to be conquered by the Muslims To some, Moscow became the third row ideologically at least, the new resting place of true civilization and true Christianity Right up until the First World War, Russian dreamers would discuss liberating Constantinople from the Ottomans, of restoring it to the center of the Orthodox world In the Russian historical imagination, the West has never stopped behaving the Men of the Fourth Crusade where Dandalo and Bonnyface arrived. to enforce pap' supremacy Later generations brought nationalism Capitalism Liberal democracy The idea has changed Their certainty didn't. pressure for Russia felt very familiar. Subordination to Western ideas point of a sword or even a nuclear weapon The Cold War is often presented as a clash between capitalism and communism fault line ran far deeper than economics to understand the true division of Eastter and West You have to go back Byzantium. I hope that gives you all some ammunition the next time you have to explain Your strange hobby to a friend So Ladies and gentlemen, we have come to the end of the podcast It has been an extraordinary privilege to be the host of the history of Byzantium A listener once asked me what's the best part of your job And it really is when I get to sit down and read about a new period of history that I've never studied before I've always had a rough idea of what was coming next, but only when I get to that episode Start doing the reading Do I get to fill in the blanks and discovering that new information It builds upon all I've learned and thinking about how I'll communicate it to you has been an utter joy I am so grateful to all of you who haveve listened to each of these three hundred and fifty five episodes Your attention has made the podcast possible and has utterly transformed my life It's been an incredible gift to me So thank you all Whatever I do next, I will announce it on this odcast feed and on social media please stay subscribed to something so we can stay in touch. If you would like a piece of merchandise to remember the show by, then do go to imperialwares. com. W A R E S. You can get a shirt with the podcast logo on it, as well as all sorts of other Byzantine images, emperors and circus factions And I should make it clear that two parts of the history of Byzantium will continue indefinitely. I will carry on hosting Zoom calls for subscribers on Patreon so that new listeners can say hello and ask questions So if you want to stay on there, even at one dollar a month, you can still talk to me from time to time And of course the tours will continue as long as there are people who want to see the pieces of Byzantium that remain above ground. and even some of which are below it Email me at the history of Byzantium at gmail. com to join the mailing list At present we visit different sites across Turkey, but if there's enough interest, I'm sure trips to Greece and Italy will be possible. For now though, I will just say farewell Thank you again for listening Best of luck for whatever you're doing next By everyone.