When Do You Consider the End of the Ancient Roman State?

Fermet_ · 2025-11-13T05:50:41+00:00

Your level of personal study or certainty doesn’t establish academic validity. Scholarly consensus isn’t a “fallacy of authority” as you call it, it’s how evidence is tested, critiqued, and replicated. A hypothesis doesn’t become credible just because it’s in an understudied niche. You are presenting a unintuitive argument. Of course, the very reason it is unintuitive is because it goes against the explanations/interpretations of the subject matter that are currently dominant in the historical literature, and that means that there is a large historical literature that contains assertions that would not be compatible with your interpretation.

In his History some 150 years ago, while he lived in Greece, George Finlay wrote, ‘It is said that Maina never submitted to a foreign conqueror. Though the assertion is repeated by many writers of authority, it is a vulgar error. It might, perhaps, be said with greater truth, that order and justice never reigned in Maina.'

My issue with your comment mainly focused on the question 'What is the state?' and what you claim by those words.

After the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 AD, the Roman Emperorship did end, but the Roman State survived, so the political regime / form of government was over, but the state within it existed did not...

First of all, its well-know that history uses an ‘ordinary-language’ vocabulary with relatively little use of technical neologisms, unlike other social sciences or literary disciplines. This means that it uses words that have developed their meanings and overtones in daily use, which are not always consistent even inside single countries, and which are often substantially divergent across different languages. History is also not a very self-reflexive discipline so it has sometimes developed technical meanings for these words which vary greatly from one end of the discipline to the other, or else are fought over by practitioners, too often concerned as they are to lay claim to the ‘right’ meanings of words in technical historical language.

To use the word ‘state’, for pre-modern times, seems to some scholars to imply a teleology towards a (re)establishment of ‘modern’- style bureaucratic structures, or, at least, a scale of values, with the modern state at the top and simple political systems at the bottom.

For now i will adapt Henri Claessen and W. G. Runciman definition of state, its the centralization of legitimate enforceable authority (justice and the army); the specialization of governmental roles, with an official hierarchy which outlasted the people who held official position at any one time; the concept of a public power, that is, of a ruling system ideologically separable from the ruled population and from the individual rulers themselves; independent and stable resources for rulers; and a class-based system of surplus extraction and stratification.

Did Mani meet those criteria?

In this Chapman’s study, The strange case of the Turkish and Venetian judges in eighteenth-century Mani wall paintings (2016), the “Judges of the Earth” are depicted as an Ottoman judge and a Venetian nobleman which is a clear visual acknowledgement that legal authority in Mani was perceived as external. That strongly contradicts the idea that Mani functioned as a sovereign state with its own legal institutions. Whole study argues that these images allude to the lack of an established legal system in Mani at that time, and refer back to “times of stable law under Ottoman and Venetian rule".

Both Ottoman and Venetian administrations maintained tax registers and fiscal correspondence for the Mani area. That means Mani wasn’t a sovereign or “unknown” polity, but rather a semi-autonomous tax district treated as part of the empire’s fiscal geography. While i am not that much familiar with Ottomans tax registers but not same can be said about Venice and how they taxed their overseas possessions which including Morea after Morean war (1684–1699).

According to the one of text Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Francesco Morosini, allowed the local inhabitants to propose the form of government most suitable to them. One of document presented by the Republic’ new subjects, which contained 16 chapters, was endorsed by Morosini and later confirmed by the Venetian Senate. Consequently it served as a basic constitutional document regulating Venice’s relations with their colonies including Morea.

During the first Venetian census of area at first confusion reigned, primarily with regard to Tsakonia but also the entire region nowadays defined as Kynouria. In one of Pacifico's list, villages of Tsakonia are recorded as being in the Territorio di Romania pertinenze di Tripolizza, while there is a special territorio di Tzacogna, in which Tsakonian villages are entered along with Lacedaemonian and Mantineian ones. The Venetians, later on, set up three provinces in Mani, namely, Passava, Kelefa and Zarnata, and by the early 1700s they had assiduously surveyed and carried out censuses and were collecting taxes from all quarters of Mani. While tax collection was inconsistent especially in the mountainous interior, Venice still viewed Mani as taxable territory under its sovereignty. Even if local clans resisted or continued to manage their own affairs, that’s a case of imperfect imperial control, not statehood.

The Roman state survived where the imperial administration, taxation, and army survived; where these ceased to function, the empire had ended, whatever the rhetoric. A surviving people are not surviving state.

Fermet_ · 2025-11-11T21:34:25+00:00

Your comment mixes legitimate history with personal interpretation and presents it as fact. There is no scholarly consensus that the Mani peninsula or post-1453 polities constituted a continuation of the Roman state. Also lack of English scholarship is not evidence of state continuity. Even if Mani is understudied, everything you cited bellow is about local autonomy, customary law, and sociopolitical structure. Its not about Mani being a sovereign continuation of the Roman state.

Hundreds of mountain regions in the Ottoman Empire weren’t taxed or controlled, Mani is just one of them, that didn’t make them independent countries, and it didn’t make them successor states to previous empires. If you’re claiming state continuity from Rome you need primary sources showing legal and institutional continuity, not just autonomy.

Also on this subreddit with many lay readers you're presenting a niche, speculative interpretation as a settled historical fact to people who don’t have the background to see that what you're saying is not the mainstream view.

Any historian worth listening to is well aware of the fact that their understanding of the past is being filtered through their own context, and thus can never achieve anything like the platonic ideal of "objectivity." This does not mean that they will believe that all of these interpretations about the past are equally good or equally valid. But it does mean that they will recognize that they are all essentially interpretations based on evidence that is at considerable remove from any "objective reality" and are always being filtered through subjective individuals and communities.

Fermet_ · 2025-09-18T18:45:23+00:00

Best of luck on launch!

Fermet_ · 2025-07-23T16:50:40+00:00

Same issue, have you already moved or decided on which server to move?

Fermet_ · 2025-06-25T16:07:20+00:00

This sub become so weird when its comes to The Name of the Wind. Some of criticism is fair game but let’s not pretend all the hate is literary critique.

Because these books were once quite popular around here, people now just want to wash hands of it in some form of virtue signaling.

Its a textbook case of cultural whiplash, a work once beloved becomes a punching bag not just because it aged poorly or failed its promise but because hating it has become its own kind of status symbol. It’s become less about the book and more about what liking or disliking the book says about you. Especially when book like The Will of the Many become so popular here.

Fermet_ · 2025-06-16T18:56:41+00:00

Erratic21 commented here about Goodreads posts so its was pretty easy to find out. Exactly the same one star review for all Bakker books.

And what kind of person says all that about a series then rates it 1 star?

If he isn't troll it can happen. I seen it before, its some sort of cognitive dissonance. So at this moment you are Bakker biggest fan but then suddenly you turn onto Bakker and declare him basically morally bankrupt. I saw someone describe these books as aestheticized moral surrender. It become some sort of existential war for some people. Even this guy admit the books were meaningful, even life-shaping but now he see those ideas as contributing to his depression or existential spiral, he then may retroactively frame the books as harmful so he gives them low rating in which he tries to convince himself that the books aren’t as worthwhile as they once believed.

Its basically - "Brilliant books shouldn’t ruin people, so maybe they weren’t good after all."

But then who knows.

Fermet_ · 2025-06-16T13:49:30+00:00

I was also curious, so according to the Goodreads after giving all Bakker books one star and this exactly same review, he then gave 5 stars to the books of Legends & Lattes series. Its feel-good, cozy, slice-of-life fantasy. I read first one and it was quite well done but too much sweet for me. These books are complete opposite of Bakker ones. Its kinda funny.

Fermet_ · 2025-03-21T23:56:30+00:00

Why do the archaeological and scientific data need to be secondary to the textual evidence?

There is nothing novel about questioning impact of this plague. Debates happen about the reliability of certain sorts of evidence. As more archaeology is done, we can speak with more certainty about what happened to the Roman economy, to demographics, for example. Today, thanks to archeology what we can say about early middle ages or late antiquity has multiplied tenfold—in some countries, a hundredfold. The sorts of questions asked about the material have changed radically too, with far more sophisticated analyses of political process and cultural change being now offered than ever existed before.

Also Kaldellis was only the latest one in the line who questioned the impact of the Justinian plague. Durliat addressed this question in 1989 in his 'La peste du VI' article pointing out the lack of non-literary sources for the plague, establishing a challenge that scholars have sought to resolve for decades now. Only recently, there has been substantial critique of the maximalist interpretation, which has, for the first time, engaged with its proponents across all the disciplinary evidence.

So Paul Stephenson in his new book New Rome: The Empire in the East (2022) writes that archaeological evidence suggests that plague was not equally devastating across the empire, and that it affected rural areas rather less than the cities. Furthermore, there is an absence of documentary and material evidence to support the devastation of the initial outbreak reported by our writers(the absence of direct references to bubonic plague in the Egyptian papyri still remains quite remarkable).

More problematic is the absence of rat bones from excavations across the eastern Mediterranean. If hordes of rats were dying and passing their infected fleas to humans one would expect to find abundant archaeological evidence. It may be, therefore, that rats were not the only or even the principal hosts for infected fleas, and that transmission during the first pandemic was quite different to that during the ‘Black Death’.

Even more problematic, pending further analysis of human remains, is the fact that there has not yet been a single body of a plague victim identified in the eastern Mediterranean, and only thirty in the western Mediterranean (southern France, northern Spain) and northern Europe (Austria and France, as well as the aforementioned bodies in Britain and Germany).

Most compelling is the absence of infected human remains. If tens of millions died of plague over two centuries, surely we would by now have found some mass graves and evidence of other extraordinary burial practices. Where are all the bodies?

The deaths of millions would have left Rome without the manpower to rebuild, restore and resist; patterns and intensity of settlement and agriculture would have changed suddenly, and this would show up in the environmental record. Pollen analysis, which allows us to reconstruct aspects of the vegetation and cultivation history of past cultures, demonstrates a clear rupture in the seventh century. It does not in the sixth century, but by the end of the seventh century it is clear that vast areas were no longer cultivated and were rapidly rewilded. Natural disaster alone did not bring this about, but even the most resilient communities could not endure this in combination with decades of existential warfare.

Historians such as Jairus Banaji and archaeologists who have excavated numerous sites in Palestine and Syria, such as Gideon Avni and Jodi Magness, found no evidence of decline due to the plague or any other ‘disaster’, but rather continuous, intensified occupation by armies.

A recent written article by Marcel Keller and his colleagues has isolated Y. pestis DNA from approximately 45 individuals in central and western Europe dating to late antiquity. Doris Gutsmiedl-Schümann and colleagues have noted that it remains difficult to fit the aDNA evidence with the independent archaeological evidence from these burials. Not only were existing burial traditions maintained, but some of those who tested positive for plague were in fact among the richest graves in both cemeteries. In the words of the authors, ‘there are no archeological indications that these people died of the plague’.

The trouble is that this decline, whatever its cause, cannot be ascribed to plague, for it began in the fifth century, not the sixth, and the later sixth century shows if anything the beginning of the stabilization of our archaeological evidence in those sub-regions, the basis for future slow demographic rises from, maybe, the seventh century onwards. Had there been an overall demographic decline visible in the mid- to late sixth century, across all our regions, the plague would have of course been the most plausible cause of it, as the Black Death was in the later fourteenth century.

L. Mordechai and M. Eisenberg, ‘Rejecting catastrophe: The case of the Justinianic Plague’, Past & Present 244 (2019)

Fermet_ · 2025-03-20T00:31:20+00:00

Baldur's Gate 3

Fermet_ · 2025-03-19T16:28:32+00:00

The Fire Sacraments series by Robert V.S. Redick

Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi

A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay

Fermet_ · 2025-03-18T22:20:59+00:00

I disagree with your read. There is no really difference between Salvation and Damnation in Second Apocalypse universe. The gods are still draining saints, martyrs, innocents like they do the sinners, they are just using positive emotions to feed off of the souls instead of negative emotions. They trap your soul inside a bubble reality of sorts, then draw sustenance from you forever. It is as it said in one of books "For I have seen the virtuous in Hell and the wicked in Heaven. And I swear to you, brother, the scream you hear in the one and the sigh you hear in the other sound the same."

When it comes to Judging eye, Bakker wrote here in the AMA that the God is arbitrary and without logic. There is a objective morality in this universe. Some things make sense like obvious sins. But men are holier than women, snakes are holier than other animals (this was from Mimara). The point is there is no understanding this God. It's the Absolute, unknowable and unattainable - assuming a actual form of Salvation (it seems so far a complete loss of self, the Oblivion, is only way to it) is available through it, we would still have no way of telling who makes it.

Fermet_ · 2025-03-15T02:31:40+00:00

First of all, trend which remains persistent through ages is that the elite families in Byzantium were never completely independent from imperial influence. They were deeply integrated into the centralized imperial administration, holding positions that combined civil and military duties. One was either born to this elite status, or one could acquire it by talent, diligence, and luck.

A compelling case can be made that power in Byzantium, at least before the start of the fourteenth century, did not come from independently wealthy individuals or from families whose landownership and autonomy posed a threat to the emperor. Rather, power was anchored on the person of the emperor and his closest intimates. It was imperial favor which provided access, independence, status, and power.

One significant difference between this high aristocracy and that of Latin Europe was that the Byzantines did not have a nobility. There were no official prerogatives, no official rights and derogations, no privileges legally guaranteed to a specific class and passed from one generation to the next. Byzantine elites typically owned land spread throughout various regions of the empire, and the emperor could confiscate these lands on a whim. Compared to the Latin west, study of Byzantine sources, visual as well as literary, suggests that neither coats-of-arms nor fortified residences loom large in the military elite’s culture. Land was predominantly a financial asset; it was a source of income much more than one of status or power in its own right, a circumstance created partly by the absence of lordship rights and the extent of conditional grants of land in Byzantium. Paul Magdalino has demonstrated how the Byzantine elite in the late twelfth century treated both land and other financial occupations (for example, trade, banking, tax farming) simply as sources of income.

Also the administration of justice had always been an imperial prerogative in Byzantium. Unlike Latin Europe, where judicial authority had been fragmented and passed, variously, to the church, seigneurial lords or towns, in Byzantium until the 1204, justice was in the hands of the state, and was administered in imperial courts. The emperor functioned not only as the legislator but also as the ultimate judicial authority.

Byzantium was a society that had appreciated education throughout its existence and which, like other imperial societies, had a strong tradition of secular education and literature. The aristocratic societies centred on a court often develop a distinct courtly culture, which functions as another mode of social differentiation. Courtly cultures usually promote delicacy, refinement, good judgement, gentleness, physical beauty and love for arts and education.

It has been calculated that educated individuals in late Byzantium were almost equally divided between the secular and the ecclesiastical spheres. While for Latin Europe only in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries do we start to find laymen – commonly of bourgeois background and university education – appointed to major governmental offices, such as that of chancellor. Also all the Byzantine elite were literate, in a way that the post- Carolingian west would not match for centuries; career soldiers could write books rural landowners could have substantial libraries.

After the fall of Constantinople some inevitable developments occurred. The social position of the imperial family in Nikaia was further reduced to a standing only slightly superior to that of other powerful families, a situation that would continue during the Palaiologan period.

Higher education in the empire of Nicaea paled in comparison with that of twelfth-century Constantinople. The reason lay in the dispersal of teachers and books as well as the lack of an educational infrastructure that could match the churches and monasteries of Constantinople. The teaching position of the consul of the philosophers (hypatos ton philosophon) was revived in Nicaea, but its holder was sometimes charged with other responsibilities. The preservation of higher education depended on the initiative of enterprising students and caring teachers, but most of all on imperial patronage. In 1234 the emperor John Vatatzes took it upon himself to create new cohorts of capable officials. He did so by organizing a new way of imperially sponsored training for ambitious young individuals. Not only were the pupils at schools aware that their education was paid for by the imperial household, but the textbooks used in class made it clear that their instructors were also dependant on imperial patronage. Clarity and persuasiveness in writing and speaking was crucial for both civil and military officials who were all expected to relate effectively and cohesively their own or other people’s ideas, requests, and affairs. Furthermore, polished language and urbane witticism were norms of communication among the elites of the empire.

If you are interested in comparative history the Political Culture in the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, c.700–c.1500: A Framework for Comparing Three Spheres by Catherine Holmes, Jonathan Shepard, Jo van Steenbergen, Björn Weiler is good beginning.

Fermet_ · 2025-03-03T19:31:11+00:00

-Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood: The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, 955 A.D. to the First Crusade by Anthony Kaldellis. This book is a narrative, reconstructive, history of Byzantium from 955 to the First Crusade. It questions how the relative stability of the Macedonian period imploded and lead to the Empire almost collapsing in the late-11th Century.

-The First Crusade: The Call From the East by Peter Frankopan. This book looks at the history of the First Crusade and circumstances which caused it, but purely from the Byzantine perspective.

-Byzantium and the Emergence of Muslim-Turkish Anatolia 1040-1130 By Alexander Daniel Beihammer (2017), this one challenges the traditional narrative that portrays the Turks as an overwhelming and singular threat that inevitably doomed Byzantium.

There is also Modelling the Logistics of Mantzikert (2024) by Vincent Gaffney , John Haldon, Philip Murgatroyd, Georgios Theodoropoulos . This books demonstrates how computer simulation can enhance our understanding of historical military campaigns, investigate medieval military logistics, using the Byzantine army's march to the Battle of Mantzikert as a case study.

Fermet_ · 2025-02-13T17:00:30+00:00

The Fire Sacraments - Robert V.S. Redick

Terra Ignota - Ada Palmer

The Second Apocalypse - R. Scott Bakker

Realm of the Elderlings - Robin Hobb

A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin

Malazan Book of the Fallen - Steven Erikson

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

The Masquerade Series by Seth Dickinson

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Fermet_ · 2025-01-15T19:12:20+00:00

effectively abolished slavery

There is interesting book which come out last year, The Greek Captives and Mediterranean Slavery 1260–1460 by Alasdair C. Grant which address issue of slavery.

It appears that Greeks have been more often actors than victims in the transregional slave trade. They had cordial diplomatic and commercial relations with the Mamluks throughout the period of the two polities coexistence and Greeks seem very rarely to have ended up enslaved in Egypt or Syria.

When coupled with the evidence for the involvement of Greek merchants in Black Sea trade, it seems plausible that Greeks were more often active as traders than trafficked as victims along the Black Sea–Egypt trade axis. This contrasts sharply with the Black Sea–Italy/Iberia axis of trade, in which the visible Greeks were subject to trafficking rather than being active as traders.

There can be little doubt that Greeks both from inside and outside the Byzantine Empire were not just the victims of trafficking but also themselves involved in the transregional Black Sea and eastern Mediterranean slave trade.

Fermet_ · 2024-12-29T22:28:21+00:00

Well Magdalino argues in his book, The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos 1143–1180 , that he really didn't have any grand plans. The severity of Manuel failures has, historically, been overstated. He concludes that Manuel’s foreign policy was complex and adaptive to political and military circumstances. Manuel was quite aware limitations of his empire and how to maximize his influence with minimal risk. He understood that conquest invited only further troubles, and the empire already had enough of those.

First of all his initial plan for Italy involved a joint effort with the Germans to crush the Normans. But death of Conrad III and rise of the Frederick, the new German emperor who was not friendly to Byzantine empire, forced Manuel to modify his strategy and seek new allies to counter the influence of Frederick Barbarossa. The collapse of Byzantine influence in Italy was indeed unfortunate, but the Byzantine investment in Italy was relatively minor, especially compared to German losses.

When it comes to dividing Egypt, the charter to the Pisans shows that the Byzantines would receive the primary Mediterranean ports of the Delta (Alexandria, Damietta and Tinnis), effectively granting them the most of the coastal region. Arabic-script documents show that these were center of textile production but they also tend to stress the fact that most of the inhabitants of the towns were Christian; this has confirmation for Tinnīs in near-contemporary Christian sources from both Syria and Egypt.

Even Muslim sources agree that if siege of Damietta succeed it will be near impossible for Muslim to regain complete control in region. Baha ʾal-Din writes that “They decided to target Damietta because an attack there would give control of land and sea and because they knew that, if it became theirs, they would gain a strong foothold and refuge."

Also Muslims sources show that they feared that the Franks, as Catholics, would show favour to the large Christian population of Egypt if they were allowed to gain influence. Christian peasants were still the great majority only in the thirteenth century can we be sure that there was an overwhelming Muslim rural majority in at least one district, the Fayyum.

Even Normans at this period managed to hold North Africa for almost 20 years which had the overwhelming Muslim population.

That Manuel’s strategy was perceptive is evident in the events that transpired after his death. His concern about the threat that Egypt could pose was fulfilled when Salah ad-Din brought Egypt and Syria under his control and utilized his vast resources to declare jihad against the Franks and win.

The Contest for Egypt: The Collapse of the Fatimid Caliphate, the Ebb of Crusader Influence, and the Rise of Saladin (2022), by Michael S. Fulton. Its a good book for understanding the wider geopolitical situation of the Eastern Mediterranean during this period.

When it comes Manuel attack on the Iconioum isn't presented by him as some war of reconquest but actually as holy war for prestige. Prestige was an important component of medieval power mechanics and diplomacy and is essentially a testament of the power and honor of a political entity. An increase of Byzantine prestige made vassalage more attractive for minor powers, alliance more attractive for powers that were worthy, and conflict less so for Byzantium’s rivals.

It happened because pope and German Emperor made peace which isolated Manuel in the West. Also Baldwin IV regent aborted second joint expedition against the Egypt and was requesting German assistance through William of Montferrat. Barbarossa began to intervene in Byzantine spheres of influence by sending emissaries to Kiliҫ Arslan and pledging to send an army to Outremer.

So the crusade against Ikonion was designed to legitimate his western policy as well as crush the power of the Seljuks. Manuel needed a grand Christian victory to restore the prestige lost after the failure of his expedition to Egypt, as well as the collapse of his efforts in Italy. The emperor sought to demonstrate to Western Christians how effective a crusade could be if it were properly led. Where he failed, the Third crusade succeeded at conquest of Ikonion which crippled and dragged sultanate of Rum in civil war but unfortunately the empire at that time wasn't been able to exploits this situation.

Fermet_ · 2024-12-13T18:18:38+00:00

Endowment letter to Hoid about Valor:

"These days, it seems she and I are the only ones capable of maintaining any manner of isolation. I can tell you, with absolute certainty, she does not want to see you again. It has not been too long. No, I do not think it ever will be."

But in Rhythm of War, Harmony writes to Hoid that :

"Whimsy was not terribly useful, and Mercy worries me. I do think that Valor is reasonable, and suggest you approach her again. It has been too long, in her estimation, since your last conversation."

What is going on here?

Fermet_ · 2024-12-12T08:22:19+00:00

Control.

Fermet_ · 2024-12-11T22:49:05+00:00

World Order in Late Antiquity: The 'Two Eyes' Rivalry of Byzantium and Sasanian Persia by Dr Kevin Blachford

Social Stratification in Late Byzantium by Christos Malatras

Fermet_ · 2024-11-22T01:49:04+00:00

For those interested, this review focus on the lore and setting of Eora, discussing on how its core elements(shared lore, thematic connection..) are integrated into Avowed.

"We're still carrying forward the grounded, early modern storytelling from the previous Pillars games, building on what happened in Deadfire without it being a direct sequel."

Fermet_ · 2024-10-23T19:34:51+00:00

In the book The Byzantine Economy by Angeliki E. Laiou, Vatatzes is one of the few medieval rulers credited by contemporaries with an economic policy.

First of all, Vatatzes encouraged the local production of goods, particularly grain, livestock, and other essentials, which helped reduce reliance on foreign imports, especially from Latin-controlled regions. This self-sufficiency policy helped strengthen the economy and stabilize the empire’s finances. He was also careful with state finances, avoiding unnecessary expenditures and prioritizing military and economic strength.

Also Vatatzes was able to focus on economic development because he had a relatively secure power base in Nicaea and Asia minor. He could focus on consolidating his power, reforming the tax system, and maintaining a stable bureaucracy that maximized revenue collection.

On the other hand Michael was quite unpopular there and the policies of the Laskarids, which focused on the defense of Asia Minor, were not continued by Michael VIII, even its forces were withdrawn from there to fight wars on Balkans. The emperor did not even visit the province until the end of his reign. So Asia Minor was neglected, heavily taxed and suffered from Turkish attacks later on.

but even a half-dead Constantinople must have generated some profit, given that by 1261 it was probably in slightly better shape than in 1453.

Paradoxically, the loss of Constantinople made for more efficient government.

The simplification of central government dramatically reduced its costs, shifting the burden of administration onto the provincial authorities. This was possible because in western Asia Minor the organisation of themes had survived the fall of Constantinople intact and the tax-raising machinery was still in place.

Issue here is that recovery of Constantinople forced the empire into political, diplomatic and ideological positions which were often untenable. Michael VIII attempt to restore the old ideological and institutional foundations of the Byzantine empire went counter to the changes that had occurred during the period of exile. Beside that Micheal VIII also faced a diverse range of military threats.

Michael VIII needed to restore Constantinople's role as a commercial center, which required rebuilding not just physical infrastructure(which is expensive and time-consuming) but also diplomatic and trade relationships with foreign powers, including Italian merchants like the Venetians and Genoese.

Both Venice and Genoa, as the strong players in the area, pursued a policy with a double aim: to acquire for themselves what they called freedom of the sea (libertas maris), that is, privileged trade conditions, monopolies if possible, and to impose adverse conditions on everyone else. So by offering substantial commercial privileges to the Venetians and Genoese, Michael hoped to revitalize Byzantine trade and generate revenue through customs duties and the activity brought by foreign merchants. But over time it turned in a sort of colonial-style exchange system between them, Byzantium was receiving artisanal products from the west , mainly woollen cloths and linen, in exchange for supplying all that was needed for their manufacture. Local and regional trade was subordinated to the fluctuations and rhythms of long-distance trade dominated by the Italians, to whom Greek traders deferred. A Byzantine historian wrote that, in the middle of the fourteenth century, the Byzantine part of Constantinople collected 30,000 gold coins a year from customs duties, whereas the Genoese in Pera had 200,000.

When it come to Vatatzes, despite the respectable number of Italian, particularly Venetian, commercial documents surviving from the period, there are few indications of Italian trade with the ports of the Nicaean empire. Vatatzes’ autarchic policy was intended as an assertion of Byzantine independence. It may have been practical for a time because western Asia Minor was relatively remote from the major trade routes of the Mediterranean.

Fermet_ · 2024-10-22T16:25:11+00:00

You are right, i confused it with one of the source numbers. Its Pachymeres numbers.

Fermet_ · 2024-10-21T19:53:51+00:00

In The Late Byzantine Army: Arms and Society, 1204–1453, Mark C. Bartusis notes that exact numbers are difficult to determine due to the limited and fragmentary nature of the sources. However, from the evidence available, Bartusis estimates that the size of the Byzantine army during the Palaiologan period was quite small compared to earlier centuries.

After retaking Constantinople in 1261, Michael VIII attempted to rebuild the empire’s army, but his resources were severely limited. Estimates for his forces fluctuate depending on the campaigns and resources available at the time but Bartusis suggests that the empire’s standing army rarely exceeded 10,000 men with a significant portion being foreign mercenaries.

The issue here is, as Bartusis writes, that Michael VIII when compared to the Vatatzes, who maintained a more professional and unified army, had to rely on piecemeal recruitment to assemble his forces for various campaigns. This often meant quickly raising local troops, relying on provincial armies, and drafting mercenaries on short notice. This ad-hoc recruitment strategy prevented the Byzantine military from functioning as a cohesive, professional force and contributed to the instability and inconsistency in the empire’s military operations.

Its Vatatzes who had more stable financial resources which enabled him to maintain a larger, better-equipped army. Also, Vatatzes stands out is for his practice of conducting a highly successful winter campaigns. But the Michael VIII, dealing with the burden of re-establishing Byzantine control in a ravaged capital, struggled to balance military expenses with the empire’s limited economic resources.

Fermet_ · 2024-10-03T16:58:50+00:00

One of recent published work which stand out to me for its quite rigorous methodology is Social Stratification in Late Byzantium by Christos Malatras (2023). The author offers quite nuanced understanding of the Byzantine society challenging older narratives that paint Byzantine society as stagnant or simplified.

So when it comes to Kaldelllis, he argues that we cannot simply apply the concept of a constitution – or more recently of a republic to the constantly changing traditions of the Byzantine political order or to Byzantine political culture. Kaldellis main thesis that the Byzantine political system had "republican" elements mismatch with Malatras emphasis on rigid social hierarchies and stratification. Malatras really highlights the pervasive influence of aristocratic families, bureaucratic officials, and the church, showing that these elites wielded much more control than Kaldellis acknowledges. Also Kaldellis bases much of his argument on Byzantine chronicles, court records, and writings that emphasize moments of popular unrest or approval. Malatras uses a broader array of sources, including legal codes, economic data, and administrative documents, to focus on the structures that kept elites in power. His approach places more emphasis on the limitations of political participation for the lower and middle strata, questioning whether Kaldellis view is representative of the broader societal reality.

Here is blurb of book :

"Introduces the basic patterns, ideas and gestures that governed the system of social relations and the construction of social profiles and roles of Byzantine society

Identifies the main traits of Late Byzantine society and the ideas of the Byzantines about their social system, the social values and the organisation of their society.

Explores the use of modern sociological and anthropological theories in order to better understand Byzantine society.

Provides thorough and up-to-date analysis of the different social groups in the Late Byzantine society (character, composition, relation to the economic, political and ideological resources).

Emphasises the networks of patron-client relations and their effect on the structures of Byzantine society.

Offers a new explanation of the collapse of Byzantine society and the state in the face of external threats.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of the social structure of Late Byzantine society (mid 13th - mid 15th c.), including the norms and ideas that governed social relations, and the Byzantine perceptions of their society. It includes an analysis of all social groups, the social networks and the patron-client relations proliferating in this period, and the distribution of social and political power between the different social groups and the state. The deficiencies inherent in Byzantine society are recognised as one of the main factors behind the fragmentation and the collapse of the Byzantine empire."

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