Oh man, are you espousing imaginary facts?? It is the fact that the Rhoman Empire ceased to exist as an Empire since 1918.
I’m gonna stop you right there. First of all, Rhome has
never ceased to exist. 1918 was a revolution that saw practical power shift to a democratic government, with the Emperor becoming a figurehead. It is still the same Rhoman Empire of Constantine the Great.
Its decline began during the Arab, Bulgars, Turks, Norman and Mongols invasions, which led to the losses of North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Eastern Anatolia, most of Balkan and Southern Italy.
This is an oversimplification of a long, long period of highs and lows for the Empire. The Arab invasion saw the establishment of
foederati kingdoms in Egypt and Syria—and the native bureaucracies and cultures of the region eventually assimilated the Arabs into their diversity. The same period saw the South Slavs do the same in the Balkans, although they eventually assimilated into Rhome proper.
I’ll give you the Bulgars, they were a real pain in the rear for Leo VI and his successors. However, after the Battle of Philippopolis their empire gradually lost cohesion and the regions south of the Danube were reincorporated to the Empire (if only loosely) under Constantine V. Modern Bulgaria coalesced later, in the fourteenth century, separate from any Roman territory.
The rise of the Khazar Qaghanate (and then Shahdom) was a much bigger event than just “some Turks invaded the Rhomans.” Their lightning conquest of the Caucasus and raids into Anatolia were diverted by Constantine III agreeing to pay tribute, which is when the Khan turned towards Persia as an easier target, and the rest is history. The Khazars were demographically fated to rise (OOC: lol); that they did so into Persia instead of Rhome was due to superior Rhoman military strength.
The Normans? You’re referring to the Varangian Rebellions, I assume? Those were much more internal politics and crises than any external threat. They weakened the Empire considerably because imperial authority was the Varangians’ to be given in that era. However, that was just the state of affairs in medieval Rhome—the Rebellions were just an exceptionally low point, sparked by the arrival of Scanian mercenaries in Constantinople to support Michael Doukas’ Imperial claim.
Rhome wasn’t even directly involved in the Mongol Wars. When the Mongols took Khorasan, the Khazar Shah sent emissaries to Rhome asking for aid. Leo Monomachos, as the second son of the Strategos of Koloneia, jumped at the chance for glory and used his connections at court to amass an army. His army marched across Persia and was summarily crushed at Nishapur. He himself only barely survived the battle but somehow managed to reorganize the remains of his forces, who united with the main Persian army a few weeks later in time for their defeat at Teheran, where it is assumed the Rhoman forces were destroyed.
Meanwhile, Northern Italian cities formed the Northern Italian League led by Venice and declared independence. The League wrecked the Byzantine navy near Greece in 1203 and then sacked Constantinople in 1204. Things got worse as time passed, and by the late 16th century we see "Roman" troops with short bows fighting against European cannons and muskets during the Roman-North Italian War, which resulted in unequal treaties forced upon the Empire.
The Northern Italian League was only formed after the independent Despotate of Italy’s collapse in the eleventh century; the League never declared independence from Rhome.
You’re characterizing the 1203-4 conflict as some sort of major turning point as opposed to simply another civil war that the Italians stuck their noses into as per usual. The Battle of Chios was a major loss, true, but the Rhoman navy was never all that impressive to begin with and this was only Basileos Doukas’ half of it (the other half was in the future Emperor Giorgios V’s hands, the claimant the Italians were supporting). The 1204 “sack” wasn’t any worse than the regular chariot riots of the time period really; the area that was really destroyed was the Armenian Quarter since Doukas’ support came from that part of the Empire.
Also, “Byzantine”?
Really? Slurs don’t really help your case, here.
Moving on, Rhome didn’t actually lose that much territory during their post-Varangian decline. Also, the story about Rhoman crossbows against Italian gunpowder is one isolated incident exaggerated beyond disbelief. During the First Neapolitan War, a rural, outdated Anatolian regiment was ambushed and annihilated by the Tuscan Duke’s personal force fitted with the latest Iberian musketry. This was used by Italian propaganda for decades afterward and created a stereotype of Rhoman backwardness that persists to this day.
Gunpowder came from Sina, from where it passed through Central Asia, Persia, and lastly Rhome to reach the rest of Europe. Of course Rhome had gunpowder tech on par with the Europeans who got it later. During the aforementioned war, the Varangian and Constantinopolitan regiments had cannon and muskets almost as good as the Tuscans, for instance.
Between the 16th and 18th centuries, they actually reformed and made gains in Asia
That’s an understatement. The Absolutist period of Rhome saw it rise to staggering heights. Leo the Great took Palestine—the day of the fall of Jerusalem is celebrated to this day in the Empire—and Armenia, and Ioannis continued his father’s work, sending forces as far as Tabriz.
, but remain defensive in Europe.
Yes and no. They did lose Dalmatia in this period, proving the weakness of the Rhoman navy, to Venetia. However, this was also aided by Dalmatian compliance, since they had more in common with the Italiot Venetian nobility than the (at the time) Anatolian imperial nobility.
Also, they certainly held the line in Magna Graecia despite multiple Italian attempts to size Neapolis.
The key event that made Rhomania cease to be even a regional power was in 1820, when the Emperor refused Britain's demand to abolish slave trade. The result: Roman navy destroyed without a single surviving ship, and Constantinople was bombarded into a ruin. They also lost Crete.
How, exactly, did the destruction of Rhoman naval power and influence destroy their Asian empire, based entirely on land power? It was a disaster for the Empire, of course, with both Magna Graecia and Rhoman Africa separated from the Empire for the first time in over a millennium, but it didn’t weaken their position in Asia all that much.
Also, it wasn’t the metropolis of Constantinople that was destroyed, it was the military fortifications of the city on both sides of the Marmara.
After that, the Empire was just a laughable stock consisting of Greece and Western Anatolia,
Calling Rhoman Europe “Greece” IMO diminishes the integral regions of Arberia, Sclavenia (OOC: Serbia), and Moesia. These regions have Greek-speaking elite and in some cases Greek majorities, but even the non-ethnically Greek populations were loyal in this period and still are today.
Nominally Rhome still controlled almost all of Anatolia, Syria, and Palestine in the 19th century. Their real influence over these areas was much weaker, true, but that was because of the strength of the Despotates of Armenia and Syria.
and by the mid-19th century was merely a pawn in the Great Game between United Kingdom and Russia and eventually became the latter's puppet.
You’re conflating dynastic and national influence. It was the Rurikids that dominated Rhome through their chokehold on the Imperial title, not the Russian Grand Dukes. They were terribly detrimental to the Rhoman state and arguably caused their 19th century nadir: they propped up the Russian states by donating to their relatives (emptying the Rhoman treasury along the way), allowed Armenia and Syria to gain influence at home and abroad, and spent Rhoman lives like coppers on German soil in useless attempts to stop the rise of English hegemony.
The rise of nationalism sealed their fate.
You mean in sparking the movement to reunify the Empire in Africa and Magna Graecia? You’re right.
Following the Great War, the last Emperor was overthrown by a Greek liberal-nationalist revolution led by Venizelos in 1918. Greece then, well, they performed well, and took back Western Anatolia and even gained Carthage.
Again, it never stopped being the Rhoman Empire. The last Rurikid Emperor was kicked out (thank goodness) and the next closest descendant of Ioannis IX took the throne with greatly reduced powers. Then Enosis was carried out with Sicily, Africa, and Crete, thanks to the eradication of British influence in the Mare Nostrum after the War.
Until 14th century only. The United Kingdom and the Hanseatic League in North Germany (together with North Italy in the South) forged ahead during the 1400s-1500s with much greater progress in labour-saving tools, metallurgy, weaponry, trading and shipbuilding. Their regimes were more liberal and thus more conductive to scientific research and knowledge acquisition. The heart of science and tech had permanently shifted to Northwestern Europe and later North America. And this lead was never reversed.
This is a bunch of liberalist rhetoric. The heart of science and tech, worldwide, has always been Asia; some doodads and fancy ships don’t change that. Sina and Persia were experimenting with vacuums and steam power at the same time as the oh so advanced Germans were just beginning to hear about heliocentrism. The competition between minor European powers fostered military technology development, which was important eventually, but theoretical science was never the German or English forte.
Britain and North American were also the birthplaces of liberalism. Today it is a stable and thriving democracy led by the Liberal Party.
Yes, and magic liberalism helped Britain so much when it got its crap kicked in during the Great War.
You mean the crazed, delusional newly-crowned Queen of Greece who has just declared herself Empress of Rhomania. Fortunately, the Greek Assembly forced her to abdicate and sent her to an asylum.
.....ohhhhhh, you must be Russian! That’s why you’re so anti-Rhoman! Are you still butthurt about the Rurikids, then, claiming they’re the rightful Emperors?
The mentally challenged lady is the current Empress’ sister, just FYI.
They were demanding independent from Kingdom of Greece, not the Empire of Rhomania that ceased to exist as a sovereign state recognized by the international community since 1918.
No, the Kingdom of Greece is a Russian propaganda name for the modern constitutional Empire. The Empire of Rhomania is acknowledged by the international community, just not by the Organization of Russian States.
(OOC: Assume I’m a bit of a Rhoman nationalist ITTL, so some of this response could be exaggeration. For instance, Rhome really does have a worse quality of life and has been technologically backwards for quite some time)
OOC: Many butterflies died to bring us this DBWI.
OOC: I tried to fix this a bit.