Constantinople Survives

First of all there never was anything called the Byzantine Empire, it's a term invented about a 100 years after the fall of Constantinople, while it existed it was most commonly known simply as the Roman Empire.

I know that... i was just too bored to type Eastern Roman Empire...
 
What if somehow the Constantinople could linger on as a city state? How far back would the POD be for something like this to occur? How do you think this would effect Greek Orthodoxy, and even a Greece - assuming of course some independence struggle still occurs and is successful? Where would the Ottoman's capital per alternatively?
Impossible after the Ottomans form. Byzantium is in too good of a strategic location to survive as a city state. if not Ottomans than bulgarians or or someon else will take the city. To ensure Constantinople's survival their must be an empire. After 1204 it is very possible to create a strong empire. For example in my recent tl you have a byzantine revival. But for it to survive as a city state. yeah that wont happen its impossible.
 
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First of all there never was anything called the Byzantine Empire, it's a term invented about a 100 years after the fall of Constantinople, while it existed it was most commonly known simply as the Roman Empire.
It was, it's very survival - after the fall and subsequent modernisation by Barbarian and Roman interraction of the west Roman Empire - as the Roman Empire that doomed it to being archaic. The west was revolutionised by the Barbarians, the East was revolutionised by the Arab's.
The Roman Empire remained, unfertilised by the knew, guarding the old while the world around it moved on and devoured it.

Know back to what i wanted to throw into the ring, what if those cheeky, super modern Norman's had bought the balkan's into what by the standards of the day, was the modern world.
Lol Umm do you not know that the Byzantine beurocracy at its height was the most efficient system in the world. Even by modern standards it was quite perfect.
The byzantines modernized according to their times. They adapted to their enemies. When the arabs took egypt and levant the byzantines created the theme sstem to halt arab advance. When this system olapsed the Komenoi army was created which was one of the strongest and most feared armies in the world. it was adapted to fighting turks. Constantly the Byzantines would adapt to defeat their enemies.They weren't backward:rolleyes: The east was revoulutionized by Arabs who took most their information from the vast libraries found in Persia and Byzantium:rolleyes: As well as all the universities and information found in India.:rolleyes:The West was backwards until the renaisance. This came when the Rhomanoi fled after the fall of Constantinople and most left for Italy bringisng said ideas.It was the ERE that laid the foundations for the renaissance and eventual rise of Europe not the "Barbarians." In fact they weren't barbarians call them Franks, Germans, Hungarians, slavs, and etc but dont use the term Barbarian. Venice based much of its trade polocies along former Byzantine merchants. Venice and the city states took the concept of the Byzantine merchants to create their economies. It was from Byzantium that the baton was passed to the city states. So unfortunatly Byzantium was never backward. Even during the last years they created hospitols for the sick and the poor, believed in charity, and many other things. The reason byzantium didnt have cannons or modern technologies later on was because they couldnt afford them. In fact the Hungarian dude showed Constantine the cannons first i believe but because he couldnt pay for them the person left for the Ottomans. It was Byzantium that also kept open the silk trade route bringing ideas and technology from the east into Europe.

Hope this clears things up.
 
Lol Umm do you not know that the Byzantine beurocracy at its height was the most efficient system in the world. Even by modern standards it was quite perfect.
The byzantines modernized according to their times. They adapted to their enemies. When the arabs took egypt and levant the byzantines created the theme sstem to halt arab advance. When this system olapsed the Komenoi army was created which was one of the strongest and most feared armies in the world. it was adapted to fighting turks. Constantly the Byzantines would adapt to defeat their enemies.They weren't backward:rolleyes: The east was revoulutionized by Arabs who took most their information from the vast libraries found in Persia and Byzantium:rolleyes: As well as all the universities and information found in India.:rolleyes:The West was backwards until the renaisance. This came when the Rhomanoi fled after the fall of Constantinople and most left for Italy bringisng said ideas.It was the ERE that laid the foundations for the renaissance and eventual rise of Europe not the "Barbarians." In fact they weren't barbarians call them Franks, Germans, Hungarians, slavs, and etc but dont use the term Barbarian. Venice based much of its trade polocies along former Byzantine merchants. Venice and the city states took the concept of the Byzantine merchants to create their economies. It was from Byzantium that the baton was passed to the city states. So unfortunatly Byzantium was never backward. Even during the last years they created hospitols for the sick and the poor, believed in charity, and many other things. The reason byzantium didnt have cannons or modern technologies later on was because they couldnt afford them. In fact the Hungarian dude showed Constantine the cannons first i believe but because he couldnt pay for them the person left for the Ottomans. It was Byzantium that also kept open the silk trade route bringing ideas and technology from the east into Europe.

Hope this clears things up.

I am covered... ;)
 
Feudalism was very dynamic, it developed Western European technology industry, economy and culture on a scale that the Eastern Empire couldn't match.

It was technologically, culturally, economically and industrially backward, compared to the Catholic and Muslim worlds, that's why i call it archaic.

Name something in which it was backward. Armor? Building?

The ERE was not static.

You agree with me when you point out that up until the decline of the Thematic System of administration it was capable of raising and supporting fairly substantial armies, but it's ability to do so declines as the Theme system declines.

The Empire's ability to raise taxes, troops and money all decline after the early 1200s. The Empire relies increasingly on Mercenaries.
Disaffection becomes rampant in the Armies of the Eastern Empire, partly because they cant be paid.
Muslim culture had by then made heavy inroads into any coherent indpedent Byzantine culture, witness the growth of Iconoclasm.
The Empire after the early 1200s is struggling to hold off against invaders which are more powerful than the remnants that survived the 4th Crusade. Not the same thing as merely post-theme problems (the themes have stopped being a big part of the empire by the time of the Comneni).

As for relying on mercenaries...mercenaries are a step up from feudal levies, which is why your oh-so-dynamic Western states relied on them too. As for Muslim culture...what? Seriously, what?

Iconoclasm is centuries earlier and founded independently of Islamic tradition.

Remember the Normans persistently whoop the Byzantines way back in the
11th century.

Yes it was archaic, it's a term used commonly by historians to decribe the Eastern Empire's decline. It was archaic and surrounded by much more vibrant and dynamic societies to the east, west, south and north.
Remember that the Normans failed way back in the 11th century. Winning battles and toppling the empire are two extremely different things, and they didn't even win all the battles.

Frederick covered the issue as well as I can. Though I'm not sure I'd say perfect, it certainly rivals anything up to and including well into the early modern era for your oh-so-dynamic western states.

The "cheeky super-modern Normans" were anything but. All they were was exceptionally good heavy cavalry (with a few good generals) at a particularly low ebb of Imperial history, who temporally won a few victories but were not able to defeat or even (post Robert) seriously threaten existence of the Byzantine state. Compared to the Arabs? The Normans barely deserve mention on the list of threats to the empire's existence.


Using Byzantine out of habit, just as I use the latinized form of Alexios Komnenos instead of the Greek.

Being overwhelmed by superior force in the 15th century is not the same thing as being backward in the 11th, 12th, or even 13th.
 
Constantinople is in such a great position that it seemed doubtful that it would not attract the attention of someone. It was never designed to operate as a city state; it needed manpower and money to defend the empire. I really can't see it developing as a city state.
 

PhilippeO

Banned
What if Ottoman divided into two ?

Anatolian Ottoman at Bursa and Rumelian Ottoman at Edirne. the POD is Bayezid sons failed to re-unify Ottoman.

Can byzantine survive as buffer state ?
 
What if Ottoman divided into two ?

Anatolian Ottoman at Bursa and Rumelian Ottoman at Edirne. the POD is Bayezid sons failed to re-unify Ottoman.

Can byzantine survive as buffer state ?

Probably not. Constantinople, even if run down and worn out, is too desirable a city.
 
Probably not. Constantinople, even if run down and worn out, is too desirable a city.

Yeap ever since it was built everybody wanted a piece of Constantinople...
However things got serious after 7th century (Persians, Avars, Arabs, Rus, Crusaders, Ottomans)
 
Constantinople is in such a great position that it seemed doubtful that it would not attract the attention of someone. It was never designed to operate as a city state; it needed manpower and money to defend the empire. I really can't see it developing as a city state.

This brings up a good point-you can't create a viable city state that consists of just the city. If you want it to be a viable state and not just a short-lived vassal of the regional power, the city has to control its own hinterland or a very large part therof so it can feed itself and fund itself. Constantinople is not in a position to control that hinterland by the 15th century-If memory serves, at that point it was a bit of an outpost from a greece-centered Byzantium.
Come to think of it, if we set the goal as "a recognizably Byzantine state survives longer", the Empire of Nicea being somewhat of a model, instead of demanding that Constantinople last longer, later PoDs are possible if the empire shifts its capital to someplace like Thessaloniki and really focuses on building a state centered on Greece, the Agean, and parts of the Balkans, if only because that was where the center was shifting anyways and it's not quite as valuable real estate as Constantinople and its surroundings.
 
This brings up a good point-you can't create a viable city state that consists of just the city. If you want it to be a viable state and not just a short-lived vassal of the regional power, the city has to control its own hinterland or a very large part therof so it can feed itself and fund itself. Constantinople is not in a position to control that hinterland by the 15th century-If memory serves, at that point it was a bit of an outpost from a greece-centered Byzantium.
Come to think of it, if we set the goal as "a recognizably Byzantine state survives longer", the Empire of Nicea being somewhat of a model, instead of demanding that Constantinople last longer, later PoDs are possible if the empire shifts its capital to someplace like Thessaloniki and really focuses on building a state centered on Greece, the Agean, and parts of the Balkans, if only because that was where the center was shifting anyways and it's not quite as valuable real estate as Constantinople and its surroundings.

I'm not sure if shifting the capital would really help - Constantinople is a good place for a capital, in the sense of very secure.
 
All i was trying to say was that the Eastern Empire's social relations of production remain based on slavery, The middle class - merchants, artisans are taxed to death. In the west fuedalist relations of production allow for the revolutionising of the Means of Production. Witness the spread of Watermills then Windmills in Western Europe. Domesday records 4800 watermills in England alone, 1 for every 50 people.
Industrial changes in the West are vast by comparison to elsewhere, some historians now think in terms of a medieval industrial revolution.
True many processes came from china - steel - but in the west the Fuedal division of europe, provides the ground for independent initiative. By both lords etc and labourers. Consider the agricultural revolution, revolutions in metal working, cast iron, glass making, clock making, leather working, tanning dyeing, cloth making and spinning, paper, printing and a huge amount more. Many ideas and much knowledge comes from china but, its in the fuedal west that they become a common and widespread part of the economy.

Witness western devolpment of banking and finance, Merchant banks, credit mechanisms, Foreign exchange contracts.....
Developments in shipbuilding and construction.........

Witness the development of western Knights and how emperor Manuel I Komnenos, for example, re-equipped his elite cavalry in the style of western knights. Witness also how Armour disapears from Byzantine cavalry, and how much of what they have comes from the west.

Why does Byzantium fall, because the local populations welcome the Arabs as liberators from the horribly oppressive huge Byzantine
state, that taxes them to death and is religiously intollerent. Witness the uprising in syria, prior to the Arab liberation - NOT CONQUEST.
Witness how the armenians welcome the seljuks. The arabs and seljuks, as with the germans, 100s of years earlier , have no state beuocracy to fund.

You cant understand the destruction of the Roman Empire with out understanding the Arabs were liberators, they were welcomed, yes by christians as liberators, theres more going on in history than battles.

Granted in the 6th 7th 8th centuries the East Roman empire maybe the richest and most advanced empire in the world, granted it produced a high culture, granted people from the west were awe struck by it's wealth, granted for a time it's armies were superb. But you have to understand it's decline and fall, it's more sophisticated and complex than being unlucky in a few battles.
 
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So basically you say that after 8th century ERE was crap and obsolete while Western Europe became suddenly a super power?
Decline of ERE started after 1204/1261 (and still was slightly possible to be reversed even at that point)... However the introduction of some sort of Western feudalism in the Empire sadly disintegrated any remaing foundations the Empire had and the end was inevitable... Feudalism was the tombstone of ERE...
Secondly you mention iron working, tan dying,clocks etc in western Europe... These were known to ERE ages before Europeans knew about them... For instance Constantinople had mechanical clocks since 9th-10th century (writers mention the mechanical clocks in Hagia Sophia and the Palace) while the first mechanical clock in Europe was set up in Sens in 1176... And this clock in Sens was inspired by the ones in Constantinople...
 
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