No Crusades... effects on Byzantium?

I doubt it would have been for the better for the ERE

Anatolia is where most of its money came from

The most money were coming from custom dues in Constantinople, the biggest port at that time and probably the biggest trade hub in the "Mediterranean world".

A big part of Anatolia was sparsely populated and produced little: crusaders going through it had been suffering from shortages of food and fodder and excesses of a bad weather.


IMHO what most likely would happen is what happened after the Latin Empire - a rump centre, and successor states in Greece and the Balkans. These would be unable to come together and open to attack from the Muslim East

This more or less assumes that the Ottomans were inevitable, but were they, really? Their raise was a byproduct of (a) Mongolian defeat of the (already falling apart) Sultanate of Rum followed by (b) eventual fall of Il-Khanate with a complete disintegration of the Sultanate of Rum and (c) raise of the Osmans out of an obscure beylik to a major power thanks to creation of (anything but inevitable) innovative military system. With any of these factors going "wrong" that attack from Muslim East may not happen: the "Muslim East" was routinely engaged in the fights between various Muslim states.

The Latin Empire is a questionable parallel because it was a completely foreign entity in a region. And, rather ill-managed on the top of it.
 
This more or less assumes that the Ottomans were inevitable, but were they, really? Their raise was a byproduct of (a) Mongolian defeat of the (already falling apart) Sultanate of Rum followed by (b) eventual fall of Il-Khanate with a complete disintegration of the Sultanate of Rum and (c) raise of the Osmans out of an obscure beylik to a major power thanks to creation of (anything but inevitable) innovative military system. With any of these factors going "wrong" that attack from Muslim East may not happen: the "Muslim East" was routinely engaged in the fights between various Muslim states.
Not to mention that the Ottomans got extremely lucky because absolutely everything that could go wrong for the Romans in the 14th Century did go wrong. Plague, a massive pointless civil war, the Roman navy being essentially non existent, using the Turks as mercenaries to fight in the civil war, an earthquake destroying the major fort in Gallipoli etc.
 

trajen777

Banned
I doubt it would have been for the better for the ERE

Anatolia is where most of its money came from

That the Emperor called in Western aid is an admission of need, and if it is not answered, it is an admission of weakness

Reinvention as a Balkan empire requires sorting them out enough to get enough funds to survive as an empire

IMHO what most likely would happen is what happened after the Latin Empire - a rump centre, and successor states in Greece and the Balkans. These would be unable to come together and open to attack from the Muslim East

With no imperial navy, whilst it might be possible to protect Constantinople as a last resort, we could see Muslim take-overs of Crete, Athens etc, whilst other successor states fall to adventurers from the West (aka Normans)


Actually under Manuel they had a 275 ship navy and pretty much dominated the seas. They were by far the wealthiest nation in the med. and per Treadgood they were at the height of their wealth in 1204. If no 1204 by 1265 the Turks were crushed by Mongols who basically then withdrew from Anatolia. So in this time period they should have had a pretty easy conquest over the fragmented Turks
 

trajen777

Banned
So let's look at the Comm dynasty. Alexus had to fight hard to defeat the Normans in the 80's. Then in the 90's he destroyed the Pechings. They rolled the Turks back from the islands in the late 90's.
1. Assume that the crusade did not happen but Mercs came in in the late 1090's.
2. By 1096 Alexis was stable and controlled the Aegean and some land in Anatolia
3. Alexis really consistently defeated the Turks in virtually every encounter, by the end of his reign he would have taken back at least to Nicea
4. Without the endless diversion of Antioch he would have taken valuable coastline. The coastline was really where most of the revenue came from
5. John would have continued the success and taken more coastline and prob Trebizond, as well as Icon.
6. Manuel began ( in real world) his reign by defeating the Turks, forcing the Seljuk sultan to come and become a vassal in Constant. However he then became distracted in useless wars in Sicily (he was offered peace right away but the distraction of Antioch again!!!). Here he would continue on and reestablish control over the Taurus and ant Taurus mts.
7. In a disunited Arab world he also takes some land in northern Syria .. Ie Antioch and Trib.
With the Balkans and coast being the main money areas and the mountains protecting muslim raids , he would have left tremendous wealth, a strong army and navy, peace in the west and a divided Muslim world in the east.
8. Manuel had also started the successful rebuilding of the thematic forces for anti raids in the east. In this case he would have much more time to rebuild these forces on a greater scale
 
The crusader kingdoms weren't colonies in the modern sense of word, true a lot of second and third sons of the aristocracy came to settle in these states and formed the ruling class. However they assimilated into the local culture, rather than they assimilating the local population in their culture. This what happened in the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, much the same process would have occurred in the Crusader states.

If these states had survived, the aristocracy despite being for the great part of French descent would be totally assimilated into the local culture, which would have become a Christian one speaking a form of Levantine Arabic although with a number of loanwords from Occitan and French.

Well it is arguable as to how much Aramaic had survived up until that point, considering that Aramaic still lives in Northern and Southern Syria, and Northwestern Iraq. You could potentially see the Aristocracy adopting Aramaic when nationalism comes around.
 

Ibnyahya

Gone Fishin'
Well it is arguable as to how much Aramaic had survived up until that point, considering that Aramaic still lives in Northern and Southern Syria, and Northwestern Iraq. You could potentially see the Aristocracy adopting Aramaic when nationalism comes around.

That is a fair enough question,

However I would argue with Arabic, Greek and Latin being used in the chancery. A situation occurred in the Norman Kingdom of Sicily OTL. Sicily being close to the Italian mainland ensured that the Romance Sicilian language replaced Greek and Arabic on the island. However in the Outremer the local Levantine variant of Arabic would become the state language and the language of the people especially in the major urban areas.

Although when nationalism comes around, the local Arabic dialect is going to be quite distinctive in comparison to other dialects. The sort of development i would be arguing would happen to this dialect of Arabic, happened to Maltese which descended from Maghrebi Arabic dialects, it is written in the Latin script and has a huge amount of Italian loanwords.
 
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OP said that Byzantines don't lose Anatolia so I would say no. Retaking some parts of it was the only undebateably beneficial thing the crusaders did for the Byzantines and that was also the start of were that relationship went south.
 

Toraach

Banned
Many more ancient books would have survived to times when they might be translated and published in the Latin West. Many books perishe during the IV crusade. We know that in X and XII century eastern Romans had acces to books which now are lost. It is very important. It would have been wonderful if we had had more ancient sources.
 
Not to mention that the Ottomans got extremely lucky because absolutely everything that could go wrong for the Romans in the 14th Century did go wrong. Plague, a massive pointless civil war, the Roman navy being essentially non existent, using the Turks as mercenaries to fight in the civil war, an earthquake destroying the major fort in Gallipoli etc.

And later, the Ottoman defeat by Tamerlane could result in a complete destruction of the growing Ottoman state but it did not because Tamerlane did not bother to finish the job. OTOH, not sure if it was not already too late.
 
People are either too negative (Byzantium falls) or too positive (Byzantium can retake Anatolia easily).

No First Crusade means no direct help to retake Nicaea. But as I understand it the Byzantines retook the Black Sea coast themselves anyway, and they also defeated Chaka Bey at Smyrna. I have seen it argued that Byzantine gains in Anatolia therefore did not exceed what they could have achieved alone anyway.

This becomes all the more plausible when one notes that several places on the Crusaders' route were taken during the Crusade but not held by the empire (e.g. Konya, Ceasarea), possibly because it lacked the manpower to do so.
 
People are either too negative (Byzantium falls) or too positive (Byzantium can retake Anatolia easily).

No First Crusade means no direct help to retake Nicaea. But as I understand it the Byzantines retook the Black Sea coast themselves anyway, and they also defeated Chaka Bey at Smyrna. I have seen it argued that Byzantine gains in Anatolia therefore did not exceed what they could have achieved alone anyway.

This becomes all the more plausible when one notes that several places on the Crusaders' route were taken during the Crusade but not held by the empire (e.g. Konya, Ceasarea), possibly because it lacked the manpower to do so.

The main question is an existence or absence of a regional competition strong enough to destroy Byzantine Empire. If such a competition (the Ottomans in OTL) does not materialize, then the next question is a continued survival of the Empire (in some sustainable borders) all the way to the modern times.

The first 3 Crusades did not do any substantial good for the Empire while the 4th did it a lot of damage. None of them resulted in a raise of the unified Muslim power having a goal destruction of the Empire: most of the military activities happened far away from the Empire's borders. None of them (AFAIK) drastically changed the economic situation closely related to geographic position of Constantinople and the trade routes.

So, what were the main objective reasons for its economic (and military) decline?
 
Byzantium's problem was internal. It was being ruled as a family business by the Komnenoi. Their system worked for a time because it generated stability. But in the long run it wasn't sustainable, nor did it necessarily produce good government. In fact it probably produced the opposite: a complacent, parasitic ruling class who were appointed based on birth rather than merit, and whose main goal was to spend wealth as extravagantly as possible while doing little or no work in service of the empire.

Corruption undermined Byzantium from within. Justice was not being administered fairly, and government offices were bought and sold. All this would have alienated the people from their government.

The expanding wealth of the empire led local families to amass increasing power, leading to local separatism in Trebizond and in Greece and Cyprus, not to mention Bulgaria.

The military of the empire was heavily centralised and relied on the emperor to function. The theme system was defunct and had not been replaced, so it was largely up to the emperor to raise a force and react to enemy attack. The army was paid in land and coin, and there was certainly plenty of wealth available. But it was not a system that seemed to work well after 1180. Above all, it required good leadership, which was sorely lacking under the Angeloi.
 
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Byzantium's problem was internal. It was being ruled as a family business by the Komnenoi. Their system worked for a time because it generated stability. But in the long run it wasn't sustainable, nor did it necessarily produce good government. In fact it probably produced the opposite: a complacent, parasitic ruling class who were appointed based on birth rather than merit, and whose main goal was to spend wealth as extravagantly as possible while doing little or no work in service of the empire.

Corruption undermined Byzantium from within. Justice was not being administered fairly, and government offices were bought and sold. All this would have alienated the people from their government.

The expanding wealth of the empire led local families to amass increasing power, leading to local separatism in Trebizond and in Greece and Cyprus, not to mention Bulgaria.

The military of the empire was heavily centralised and relied on the emperor to function. The theme system was defunct and had not been replaced, so it was largely up to the emperor to raise a force and react to enemy attack. The army was paid in land and coin, and there was certainly plenty of wealth available. But it was not a system that seemed to work well after 1180. Above all, it required good leadership, which was sorely lacking under the Angeloi.

Taking into an account that most of the same bad things can be said about many monarchies of all times (you can start with the appointments by birth rather than merit), probably the key word is "centralized". As soon as everything is depending upon ruler's person, the system is not stable. Especially when we are talking about a relatively small state surrounded by the strong rivals. It is rather a surprise that it managed to maintain its existence for such a long period of time.
 
These points were each mentioned once in the above comments, but they bear repeating. First, the Seljuk sultanate had its capital at Nicaea (Iznik), very close to Constantinople. After the First Crusade, the Turks took 232 years to get back to Nicaea. The First Crusade pushed the Turks back for over two centuries! Second, the Crusade, and the Crusader state of Antioch, incorporated a lot of Normans who otherwise would have spent their time attacking the empire.

So I say that if the First Crusade doesn't happen, the Byzantine Empire isn't around in 1204 for the Fourth Crusade to destroy it.
 
Honestly, it does depend on what you mean by "No Crusades" - if Alexios got what he wanted (y'know, mercenaries) - then this changes quite a few things.

If we say that Alexios uses Latin mercenaries to retake Nicaea, he could very well grant pronoia to these mercenary companies (likely the plan). The great part for the Romans with this is that the mercs do the tax collecting, and policing, and settling, and opens the door to more mercenaries, the costs being some of the tax revenues on land you haven't conquered yet, and an up-front fee. This could well become a major outlet for 3rd sons, and the like - and particularly Normans. This effectively legitimises many Normans who could effectively become legitimised as aristocracy within the Roman state as a result.

You may have Bohemonds who use the circumstances to try and declare themselves independent (a Latin-Turk state in Anatolia would be an interesting exploration), but I'd say that is what Alexios was wanting. (Although, I love the idea of a Dux Bohemond of Nicaea, Catepan of Anatolia, married to Alexios' daughter).

TL;DR The Crusades are not what Alexios wanted. Giving him what he wanted fits under "No Crusades" IMO.
 

trajen777

Banned
The Byzantine problem with mercenaries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_Company


That was an extreme situation -- per Treadgold and Haldon in the history of the Byz (and roman state) the mercs typically performed very well and in the whole were more loyal than the local troops. Now being said their was a need to have a ratio of Byz troops to mercs of perhaps 2 -1 to keep them in line. As to the Catlan company, they defeated all before them - Turks - Byz etc over and over, however the contract the Byz signed was vastly beyond their ability to pay. If they had been able to pay it might have turned out differently.
 

trajen777

Banned
Alexios was able to defeat the Normans in the 80's the Pech in the 90's the Turks in the islands in the late 90's and was retaking parts of Anatolia after this. The 1st Crusade speed up the capture of Nicea but the loss of Antioch to the crusaders focused so much of the Byz attention on northern Syria. By themselves the Byz would have taken ground (Alexios consistently defeated the Turks over and over again without crusader support)
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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Responding to the OP, I drafted a timeline based on the premise of "No Crusades" resulting in an earlier Byzantine demise. Red represents the ATL, green represents events happening in both OTL and the ATL. Blue represents OTL events only:

Screen Shot 2018-04-28 at 4.25.12 PM.png
 
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