Deceptively-Sized Nations of OTL

Agreed. While the Roman succession system of "to the strongest" doesn't help its stability, it did mean that only competent Emperors reigned for long and established lasting dynasties (see the Macedonians and the Komnenoi).

Yeah. And it will never get old that Basil the Macedonian was an illiterate Armenian peasant. Never. :D

Talk about a meritocracy (okay, so being favored by Michael III helped, but he still got in a position to take the throne - and hold it - on his own efforts, not his birth). :D
 
Yeah. And it will never get old that Basil the Macedonian was an illiterate Armenian peasant. Never. :D

Talk about a meritocracy (okay, so being favored by Michael III helped, but he still got in a position to take the throne - and hold it - on his own efforts, not his birth). :D

That's an amusing historical fact, as much as one of the better Union generals was Virginian and the ruler of an increasingly autonomous Egypt was Albanian. ;)
 
That's an amusing historical fact, as much as one of the better Union generals was Virginian and the ruler of an increasingly autonomous Egypt was Albanian. ;)

Nuggets of weird history are always fun.

Speaking of Egypt, I wonder where it goes in this thread. The area that's worth anything hugs the Nile, but powers associated with "Egypt" tend to be a lot more than that.
 
Nuggets of weird history are always fun.

Speaking of Egypt, I wonder where it goes in this thread. The area that's worth anything hugs the Nile, but powers associated with "Egypt" tend to be a lot more than that.

The coast, the river bank, and more land. Of course no one will really bother about the "two camels and a goat" land.
 
I'd love to see an explaination of how the enterprise and leadership of Nicephorus Phocas was impaired by the governmental structure, or how going outside normal protocol was more of a benefit to one of the better emperors (how about Alexius I?) than the system operating as it was supposed to.

Or how he did so, for that matter.

Unconventional genius being successful is not the same thing as a rotten system, however .

You can point at individual Emperors but my point is that the bureaucracy didn't help the empire trundle along; its inefficiency actually aided the empire's decline through soaking up much-needed funds while perpetuating an outdated mode of government. You can point to individual emperors and call them successful, but their successes rarely survived their death because of the inflexibility of the bureaucracy and its inability to adapt.
 
The coast, the river bank, and more land. Of course no one will really bother about the "two camels and a goat" land.

This is as part of the Roman Empire, but I recall seeing a map where the coast really is basically the area within spitting distance of the sea.

It is such a thin strip its not even funny.
 
Bhutan.

Which was able to fight the British Twice and still keep independance. It is 868 times Smaller in Land Area and 22,900 times smaller in Population if we go by numbers from 1864.

Not to mention was able to defeat the Mongols and the Tibetans.
 
You can point at individual Emperors but my point is that the bureaucracy didn't help the empire trundle along; its inefficiency actually aided the empire's decline through soaking up much-needed funds while perpetuating an outdated mode of government. You can point to individual emperors and call them successful, but their successes rarely survived their death because of the inflexibility of the bureaucracy and its inability to adapt.

Your point, unsupported by any examples of it doing so, ignoring that the state 'trundled along" for almost nine. hundred. years. after Constantine, assuming 1204 counts as game over.

Nine hundred years against enemies that took down lesser states.

I'd say that's a sign of an efficient bureaucracy, not an inefficient one. So if you think otherwise, I'd like to see more "how" than you've shown so far.

As for an outdated mode of government: What would that be? Monarchy? :rolleyes:
 
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Actually, I'm going to expose myself to a lot of flame here and say that the traditional Roman state was weak because political power was vested in the generals. The bureaucracy was very weak for most of the empire's history because it was effectively a military dictatorship. Claudius may have had his public slaves but there was little standing bureaucracy outside the church and the army. Governorships were rotating, prone to corruption and purely political appointments made by military strongmen.

Now obviously Byzantine politics was complicated-it was, after all, rather Byzantine. However I'm saying that it's that complication which made the system so weak; Gibbon said it was the church which weakened the empire hugely and I agree with him; so do you I think, because it added a whole new layer of complexity to the political system.

As for the civil service keeping soldiers paid, I believe it was the generals who did that, in fact I believe that's what caused a lot of problems in the first place.

Elfine: your statement that the Byzantine Empire was the strongest state in Europe is self-fulfilling because by your definition it was the only state in Europe, i.e. a polity which didn't depend on one individual (like say Charlemagne) or on feudal ties of loyalty (like say the HRE) to survive. I'm saying that if you compare it to states similar to it in organization, like say early modern empires or Middle Eastern states of the period, it was very backwards and anachronistic.

The problem with noting that the ERE is weak is that it did last 1,000 years and was in one sense a more flexible government than the Chinese dynasties. The ERE's fall began with the loss of Egypt, but it also proved able to re-assert itself whenever the opportunity presented. There is a degree to which the bureaucratic flexibility of the state was a two-edged sword, but then that very flexibility gave the ERE its endurance in the first place.

Few states could survive the loss of their biggest agricultural province and of three of the key patriarchates of the state religion. Fewer could have re-invented themselves to shift to the Balkans and Anatolia, and ensuring that the ERE's military up to Manzikert was one of the most powerful in the region. Fewer still could have preserved themselves through the lead-ups to 1204 and 1453, respectively, while in one sense the Ottomans were a better claimant to be Roman Emperors than the Palaeologoi were.
 
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