I quite enjoyed this series of alternate history chapters, but if you will permit a newcomer to the board to raise a few quibbles, I have to say there are certain aspects to it I find highly implausible. It looks almost as though the writer, Basileus Georgios, is subscribing to Marx’ idea of a natural evolution of social and political organization, so that certain institutions are inevitable. He introduces a middle class and a pro-democracy movement for no other reason that I can see other than the notion that it’s time for these things to appear. But there is nothing inevitable about the rise of these things. On the contrary, certain conditions have to exist, and exist for a long enough span of time, for ideas like this to take root, and develop a kind of cultural inertia, and thus become strong enough to survive on their own when conditions may change. And I don’t think the Byzantine Empire was very fertile ground for some of these ideas to take root. Let me explain why.
Let’s start with the rise of the middle class. It took a certain set of circumstances to create the middle class in Europe, circumstances which were very different from those in the Byzantine Empire. It took a certain lack of centralized political control, the beginnings of free markets, and a big demographic shakeup provided by the Black Death in the 14th century. What part did the lack of centralized political control play? A significant one. You see, medieval merchant traders and merchant towns played an enormous role in the development of the middle class, and the rise of the medieval merchant traders and town was facilitated, if not actually made possible by a lack of strong central control. States like the Roman and Byzantine Empires had always exercised a high degree of control over trade within their borders, and they raked a lot of the profits off (some trades, [e.g. silk in Byzantium] were even state monopolies). In the more politically fragmented parts of Europe (which, not coincidentally, is where merchant towns grew up first) the lack of an all-powerful state to siphon off so much of the profits meant the merchants could grow much richer from their ventures. This not only made them more daring, and willing to sink their capital in riskier ventures (which promised higher payoffs), it made them far more able to create other jobs that contributed to the rise of the middle class. As the merchants grew in wealth, so too did the towns where they went to do their trading. These towns along the trade routes became richer and richer, and some developed into great cities (e.g. Paris). This growing wealth translated into the increased prosperity of the local merchants, and also of the farmers in the area. There was more of a need for their services, and more and more money to be made each day. Many wealthy trading towns became virtually independent states, and with their wealth and power (power always comes with wealth) they found it possible to exempt themselves from the feudal system, and become even more independent. So that they could be free and rule themselves, town leaders might arrange to buy a charter from the local feudal lord, or from the king himself, and they were rich enough to make this an appealing bargain to a lord or king, despite the fact that this would mean a wealthy and practically independent entity in his territory. In return for their hefty payment, the town became a "free borough," ruled by its own council and led by a democratically elected mayor. Nothing like this would have been possible in the very centralized Byzantine state. And this is crucial, for it was in these prosperous and semi-independent towns that the middle class grew up.
I just don’t think that the emperors, with the revenue of a vast empire to draw from, would have been as open to being bought off to allow what were, in effect, semi-independent and very wealthy city states to sprout up within their borders. Nor would the merchants (and towns) have been able to grow nearly so wealthy in the first place under the tight control the imperial government maintained on trade. This really cuts the legs out from under one of the necessary conditions for the rise of the middle class.
The Black Death facilitated the rise of the middle class by creating a labor shortage in the wake of a major population falloff, in the cities, sometimes more than 50%, and in a few very hard hit areas, as high as 70-80%. The enormous labor shortage resulting from such a major decline in population made it easy for serfs, formerly unable to leave their lands, to migrate in search of higher wages. Numerous laws were passed all over Europe to try and prevent this, but the practice was so widespread, and the labor shortage so acute that such laws were easily evaded – Feudal lords or city officials in desperate need of labor would seldom turn over serfs who had come to them seeking greener pastures. And the extreme need for labor meant the laborers could command much higher wages than they had ever been able to before. Additionally, the very basis of the economy was affected, as a great deal of land, that had traditionally been the primary source of wealth, became worthless. Much land returned to wilderness when the owners perished and/or the serfs fled. And as economies evolved away from relying on land as a primary source of wealth and toward money economies, those peasants and former serfs, now commanding higher wages, began to emerge as a nascent middle class.
All of these factors together played a part in the rise of the middle class, and the only one of them which really still obtained inside the Empire was the plague. Perhaps the plague, by itself, with its effect on the source of labor would have permitted the rise of a middle class, but I am not sure that that factor alone would have been enough. But if a middle class ever had a chance to rise inside the Empire, it would have to be then.
The pro-democracy movement is, in an Imperial milieu, also unlikely. When you look at the whole scope of human history, throughout the world, it strikes you just how incredibly rare democratic movements are. You see such a movement in ancient Greece, and on a rather more limited basis in Republican Rome (the Roman Republic was really more of an oligarchy), and then not again for over a thousand years, and only in the West. I confess to less familiarity with Asian history than I should have, but I am not aware of any democratic societies developing outside the West, apart from, possibly, some independent “republics” in India from the 6th-4th centuries BC. But the evidence for these is sparse, and like the Roman republic, they were probably oligarchies far more than anything like real democracy.
A sentiment for democracy doesn’t just spring up spontaneously. It seems to require a certain set of conditions, and does not occur overnight. Athens’ democracy appears to have taken a couple of centuries, a least, to realize. And, of course, it still featured slavery – one of the reasons the citizens of the polis had so much time to devote to public affairs was that they had slave labor to take care of the drudge work of maintaining their city state.
It’s instructive to look at the development of democratic institutions in England, to see just how long it took, and just how fortuitous much of it was. England owes much of its democracy, in a great historical irony, to the rule of two very bad kings, who were both, of course, autocrats who would have regarded the idea of representative government with disdain, if not horror. The first of these was Richard I (the Lionhearted). Richard, magnificent soldier though he was, was a very bad king. He cared not a whit for England, except as a source of money with which to pay for his military adventures in France and in the Holy Land. He, spoke not a word of English, made his permanent home in Aquitaine, and spent just six months of a ten year reign in England. But this was fortuitous for the development of English democracy for two especial reasons. First, and perhaps most obviously, Richard’s absence from England allowed the nobility to grow more independent and more powerful than they might otherwise done. They got used to this sort of power and independence, and they liked having it, which meant, when a more active king came along, they were reluctant to give it up.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, Richard, since he couldn’t be bothered with governing himself, like a king was supposed to do, simply allowed his father’s excellent administrative apparatus to continue (after all, it was effective in running the country, and gathering the tax revenues he wanted to finance his campaigns). Had he taken a more active role in ruling over his kingdom, he might well have drastically rearranged Henry II’s administrative machinery, or swept it away entirely and replaced it with his own, as was common enough for kings to do in those days. But he allowed it to continue, and this allowed this proto-civil service to become entrenched. Most particularly, Henry II is the one who is generally considered to have laid down the basis for the English Common Law – a crucial development, as it not only curbed the power of church courts, but judge-made common law formed the basis of law before the existence of a parliament that created statutory laws. And most importantly, this also established the precedent in English society for a source of law other than the king himself – a significant development. Again, as I said, Richard, in his apathy for England, allowed this to continue, where a more active king might well have abolished such arrangements in favor of his own.
Then, in 1199, Richard was killed while besieging a castle in France, and his brother John took the throne. John wasn’t actually as bad a king as most people think. (His unenviable status in the popular imagination probably comes, as much as anything, from his being a villain in so many Robin Hood stories, where he’s usually depicted as being borderline insane.) But even if he wasn’t as bad as most people think, he was still a bad king, and whatever good qualities he possessed were more than balanced by his hot-tempered, treacherous, and vindictive character, that led him to tread on the rights of his barons, and overreach his authority (and his conspicuous lack of military success throughout most of his reign, in an era when the warrior king was the ideal, and battlefield successes could trump many other faults, led his contemporaries and successors not to overlook his severe flaws, as they did sometimes in other, more militarily successful bad rulers). John’s overreach, and his treacherous nature, led the nobility of England (who, remember, were already used to more freedom and latitude, thanks to Richard’s absence) to rebel, and they forced him to sign Magna Carta in 1215. Magna Carta, often heralded as the very foundation of English democracy, was indeed a remarkable document in its time. It didn’t extol the rights of the common man, or anything like that, but it did delineate definite limits on royal authority, and that, for that age, was indeed something extraordinary. It was also a pivotal first step in the evolution of a democratic, constitutional monarchy.
But it’s important to note that John signed Magna Carta only under duress, and never considered himself bound by it. He attempted to abrogate it the instant he felt safe in doing so, prompting his nobles to rebel again. They then invited Prince Louis of France (who had a claim to the English throne by virtue of his marriage to a granddaughter of Henry II) over, with the full intention of overthrowing John for him. John’s death in 1216, and the succession of Henry III put an end to that rebellion. But then the fact that Henry was a child, and didn’t reach his majority for another decade, again allowed time to grant legitimacy to Magna Carta, allowing it to become an accepted institution. When Henry III did reach his majority in 1225, the young king was constrained to acknowledge and confirm Magna Carta. If Henry III hadn’t been a child, and had he been able to exert his authority sooner or more strongly, the Great Charter, which became the foundation of England’s constitutional monarchy, might have been discarded, and relegated to the status of an historical footnote. And if John had been a better king, it might never have existed in the first place.
Just look here how many opportunities there were for things to play out differently, resulting in an outcome with no Magna Carta to establish limits on royal power in England. Then, of course, it took still more struggles in later centuries, including a civil war in the 1640s, and the overthrow of the monarchy to make still further inroads on royal power. Then still another civil war in the 1680s, to replace yet another would-be divine-right king, who wanted to rule as an absolute monarch, with no checks on his power, the way Louis XIV was able to do in France. (the comparison with France is interesting too, as back in the 12th century, when Henry II was ruling in England, the French king, Philip II was very far from an absolute monarch like Louis XIV – he succeeded, where John later failed, in increasing his power at the expense of the nobility, and where England was set on the path to constitutional monarchy, France was set on the road to royal absolutism). The urge toward autocracy died hard, and it took constant struggle, over centuries to strangle it, and keep some power in the hands of the people. Even in a land with a long tradition of limits on royal power, kings kept on believing they had a divine right to rule, and trying to throw those limits off.
This is why I just don’t see much chance for a democracy movement in the Byzantine Empire, with its thousand year-long history of autocratic rule by an emperor regarded as God’s vice-gerent on earth. Look at monarchs in 18th century France, and 19th century Russia or Austria-Hungary, who lived in ages when democratic popular sentiment was widespread and ever-growing in Western society, and who yet resisted democratic reform tooth and nail. Can you really imagine a Byzantine Emperor, every bit as convinced that God Himself ordained that he should rule, just up and deciding to cede power to the people in the Middle Ages – the pre-Enlightenment, pre-Renaissance Middle Ages, when divine right monarchy is almost universally considered the natural order of things. I just can’t see it.
Still, these objections aside, this was a fascinating alternate history, and I greatly enjoyed it.
