Byzantine Victory at Manzikert

What if the Byzantines managed to win at Manzikert (Read: Arslan is taken Prisoner, Seljuks are routed)?
 
The frontier holds for a time but the endemic problems with the Byzantines remain. It only would take one major successful incursion to bring down the whole of the empires Anatolian structure. The east was poorly run and the military and administrations ongoing rivalry/insane dysfunction wasn't getting any better...
 
It would spare Byzantium from a major invasion for at least a generation. It would bolster Romanus IV's prestige and hold on the throne.

Despite the relative weakness in Byzantine institutions at this time, it is not fated to inexorable decline. Byzantium would go through several cycles of decline and recovery. What doomed them were several repeated failures at key times.

The Byzantines have a very good chance at holding onto Anatolia for the forseeable future, and even if a setback occurs later, the subsequent period might not be as bad for them as it was in the immediate post-Manzikert era.
 
To be honest, Seljuks chose worst (read- best for them) moment. Succession squabble, resettlement of Armenians (they were protecting eastern border), peak of Anatolian magnates influence...

Surprisingly Byzantium fared- in general- pretty well at this time. It was at the peak of it's medieval (after Yarmouk) influence and size. Diogenes wasn't greatest emperor ever, but he's been skillful active and brave one and it's been treason that he surely didn't deserve that thwarted his plans rather than his own incompetence. Would Komnens managed to snatch throne, I think we'd see continued expansion (after internal reforms of course) rather than decline. After all Turks were last (save Timurids- but they hardly were most stable) real danger for the empire. Without them in Anatolia, empire would most likely took their place, conquering Levant and Egypt earlier. And because it's been still Christian power, I guess they'd meet a bit smaller opposition at the gates of Vienna and in Italy... Which makes world considerably different.
 
The endemic issues were many: the transformation of Anatolia into more feudal structures, the loss of defense of depth fostered by the Theme system, and the widening rift between the civilian bureaucracy in Constantinople and the land-holding military elites, an economic downward spiral, and as a consequence, a further degeneration of the military.

In addition, there are always more Turks and pressure along the Empire's periphery on most fronts.

Sure, a victory at Manzikert would provide short-term relief, but all of the above still remains. There are no easy short-term solutions and strong leadership would be required to implement what might be possible. I'm not sure Romanus would be that man.
 
The endemic issues were many: the transformation of Anatolia into more feudal structures, the loss of defense of depth fostered by the Theme system, and the widening rift between the civilian bureaucracy in Constantinople and the land-holding military elites, an economic downward spiral, and as a consequence, a further degeneration of the military.

A couple of these issues I can agree with, but I think others are a bit dubious.

The Themata were certainly moribund by the later eleventh century, but they had been slowly fading out of the picture from the 750s onward as the Empire returned to a system of paying professional armies in the form of the Tagmata and foreign contingents. Seen from the perspective of the time, there was little reason to change this: the professional armies could and did defeat Turkish incursions, and the Seljuks themselves were no more scary than the Fatimids or Buyids.

The rift between Constantinople and the East I think is certainly an issue, but there's no real reason why it shouldn't be possible to close it. The rift had its origins in the tenth century, as the (Constantinople based) Macedonian Emperors struggled to contain the ambitions of their (largely Cappadocian based) warrior aristocracy. It was carried on into the eleventh century because the Emperors of that period explicitly tried to model their system of governance on that of Basil II- again, not unreasonable seen from the contemporary perspective. The breach could have been healed fairly easily if a Cappadocian took power and brought the interests of court and Dynatoi together again, as happened (after a few false starts) IOTL with Aleksios I.

Economic downward spiral- yes, but that's not necessarily unsurmountable. What really began the process IOTL were the opening up of Byzantine markets to Italians, and there's no guarantee this'll happen ITTL. And of course even then, the process was not really apparent until the Fourth Crusade, which will certainly be butterflied in the absence of a major Turkish incursion into Asia Minor. The big problem is overcoming the distaste felt by Byzantine elites for any form of market capitalism that IOTL allowed the empire's trade and economic dominance to be "hollowed out" by the enterprising Italians.

As for feudalism, not sure I agree with that for this period. Byzantine power up until the Fourth Crusade was based on the holding of offices awarded by Constantinople, not independent landholding: this is true even for the Komnenoi. To finance those, a well organised tax-gathering system was needed, staffed by a literate and self-perpetuating bureaucracy. Neither of these facts about eleventh century Byzantium are conducive to the emergence of a feudal society.
 
As for feudalism, not sure I agree with that for this period. Byzantine power up until the Fourth Crusade was based on the holding of offices awarded by Constantinople, not independent landholding: this is true even for the Komnenoi. To finance those, a well organised tax-gathering system was needed, staffed by a literate and self-perpetuating bureaucracy. Neither of these facts about eleventh century Byzantium are conducive to the emergence of a feudal society.

I should have said, "pre-feudal" or "on the road to feudalism" to be more precise. I was referring to the evolving change in ownership and land-usage patterns in Anatolia that were occurring during the Macedonian Dynasty. Larger estates owned by elites pushing out the free peasantry that helped make up the military levees in the region.
 
I should have said, "pre-feudal" or "on the road to feudalism" to be more precise. I was referring to the evolving change in ownership and land-usage patterns in Anatolia that were occurring during the Macedonian Dynasty. Larger estates owned by elites pushing out the free peasantry that helped make up the military levees in the region.

These things may have been going on to some degree, but there's clearly an ideological preference by a lot of historians (and, indeed, the Macedonian Emperors themselves) to villify the large landowners when set against the noble peasantry. In actuality, we shouldn't be too surprised to discover a pattern that's considerably more nuanced than this: yes, the Dynatoi were expanding their landholdings, but a hell of a lot of this was in territory conquered in the 900-1050 period, and yes, they were getting richer compared to the rest of the populace but again that's another fruit of conquest and economic growth.

Also, let's remember that the frontier regions of the eighth century were generally hundreds of miles away from the frontier by 1070. Cilicia and northern Syria had been Byzantine territory for a century at this point, and the frontier had been creeping eastwards in Armenia and *Kurdistan for generations. It's little surprise that central Anatolia should have lost a lot of its former military vigour.
 

Redhand

Banned
The ultimate problem was the displacement of Greeks is Anatolia as well as the lack of firm defensible borders combined with poor rule. A victory would see the population problem go away assuming the victory is massive and the Turkic invaders slaughtered, and there would be no crusade in 1095. As for rulers, it's hard to say as Romanos Diogenes never had a chance to shine, but his traditional ties to the Anatolian interior may serve the empire well.
 
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