WI Turks never migrate to or rule Anatolia...linguistic and ethnic consequences in modern times?

Deleted member 67076

Byzantium clearly couldn't keep up with outside pressures, judging by its fall. If it did enough to survive, it would have to handle the issue of the internally weakening civil wars, which would require putting more power into the hands of the emperor, which would probably slowly morph the institutions og the state into maintaining and supporting the emperor and his lifestyle. Without these constant coups, whatever dynasty is lucky to be in charge at this time would see its descendants on the throne for however long it exists. Looking around the world at the vast majority of dynastic monarchies, especially ones were a potentially bad ruler holds absolute power, I can't see how the Byzantine state can chug on without issue.
This logic is kinda of a false dilemma. If Byzantium survives than it'll stagnate and fall because of dynastic decadence and changing world conditions, but if it faces outside pressures enough to provoke institutional changes it will collapse as well. It also rests on assuming that since OTL has mostly dynastic states and other monarchies giving way to republics, that such a thing would continue here. Which is faulty, given plenty of republics are republics in name only and would be outright monarchies if it was popular to do so in this day and age (North Korea, Equatorial Guinea, Syria, the DRC).

What prevents either dynasties from embracing change in response to realizing outside pressures (such as inflation from New World Gold, increasing armament from its neighbors, shifting trade routes, etc)? Or what will stop the court intrigue and have someone pull a Nepalese Royal Massacre and install themselves on the throne?

Now I'm not saying there won't be issue- no state ever has it on easy mode (except the Americans) but the doom and gloom towards Byzantium this forum has recently is a bit of an exaggeration.

As for the finally collapsed Byzantium being ruled by what are basically mobsters at the turn of the 20th Century, that sounds like an amazing alternate history setting.
There's a certain irony in that Rhomanion acting a lot like Ex Communist mob states.

Soverihn - I think the French monarchy was a lot more than a tribal hegemony by 1700 or later. ;) That's like saying the Roman Empire descended from a military junta so of course it was unstable. It seems like later European absolute monarchy is a decent vision for what a surviving Byzantine state would look like during the age of exploration. I have little faith that it would be able to keep adapting quickly enough without lagging behind. It would simply not be a part of some of the major ongoing changes in the world.
I'm very iffy on looking towards the Absolute Monarchies of Western Europe as a vision; unlike Austria or France, Rhomania isn't going to be a patchwork of states that were eaten and thus very have a very odd provincial map (alongside this, its nobility is likely pound for pound weaker given limited to none feudal institutions). Its not so much a monarch having to balance all his provincial nobility while setting up a budding bureaucracy and increasing the standing army. Napoleon's French Empire might be a better comparison imo.

I don't think it's enough to look at Byzantium at its height - obviously it had super impressive high points in terms of political organization - but also Byzantium at some of its lows, because invariably it would have those. The bureaucracy could become a hidebound and ineffective organization. Land and wealth could become concentrated in the hands of a few families, as during the Komnenoi. The Empire will struggle from time to time, and sometimes it will probably come out reduced or weakened, even if it often endures intact.
I agree.

That said, if some nation-state republic replaces Byzantium, I wonder if they'd hearken back to their Greek roots a la OTL Greece or call themselves something like the Roman Republic.
Depends. Until the Palaiologoi period being called a Hellenes was a slur, and people identified primarily as Roman into the 1800s.
 
Byzantium was one of the most unique and rare states in history. It almost felt like a nation state at some points, rather than a Kingdom.

People say it was an Empire, and indeed territory wise it was, however, these lands were often like 95% Greek, so it feels more homogenous than a lot of European Kingdoms.

Replace Greek with Iranian and all those statements are equally true of the Sassanians. :p often 95% Iranian provinces, feels like a nation state sometimes...

@Soverihn - I'm not sure we can rule out Byzantine feudalism or pseudo-feudalism at some point down the road. But you're probably right.
 
I have my doubts on the weakening of the monarch. The monarchy was viewed not as the continuation of some tribal warlord with hegemony over other warlords as in say France, but as an imperial office with responsibilities where the individual could be justifiably removed if he failed to do his duties (or so the propaganda went).

I also think the Imperial Civil Service would play a greater role in this than in China or the Ottomans, given the bureaucracy was what allowed Constantinople to tie together its vast nobility and middle classes into the state (and I think was per capita larger than both most of the time with I believe 1 bureaucrat per 3000 people but don't quote me on that). That sort of bureaucratization, in addition to urbanization work as a check against the sort of land grabs by bourgeoisie and gentry within revolutions.

I have to say, the way that this reads almost suggests that with time the office of Emperor COULD become Elective. I do quite like the idea of the Empire evolving into a sort of Imperial Republic with a leader elected by (and deposable by election by) the Bureaucrats, Generals, and Church. It might even forgo some of the upheaval some suggest. There may be one to force the Emperor title to be elective-for-life-as-long-as-the-council-is-good-with-it (I lack the term, Oligarchal-For-Life?), but after that, it could have other elements weasel democracy in - the Church through its supplicants wanting to choose their priests, the military via the soldiery electing the council (rather than just Generals sitting there), and the Bureaucrats becoming subservient to the equivalent of modern politicians - elected governors as it were.

Now, admittedly you have soldiers able to vote three times to the civilians two times, but still - I could see that as a long-term evolution if democratic ideals were prominent.
 
Replace Greek with Iranian and all those statements are equally true of the Sassanians. :p often 95% Iranian provinces, feels like a nation state sometimes...

@Soverihn - I'm not sure we can rule out Byzantine feudalism or pseudo-feudalism at some point down the road. But you're probably right.

True... But Sassanids were around for maybe 1/3 of Byzantium's timeline. Honestly their true enemy in the middle east was either Turks or Arabs.

Although overall it might be Bulgarians, Turks or Crusaders.
 
It would be funny if the Turks never migrate or fail to conquer Anatolia from the Romans only for the Empire to lose Anatolia to some other group of people - like the Kurds or Armenians. Nothing guarantees that the Empire would last to the present day if somehow there was a competent Emperor dealing with those pesky Turkish raiders.
 
My point is just that Byzantium isn't sui generis.

... Well... Name one other actual successor of one of the most influential civilisations in world history that lasted for a thousand years and basically shielded an entire continent from invasion from foreign invasion...

Don't actually find one mate. I know what you will do!
 
... Well... Name one other actual successor of one of the most influential civilisations in world history that lasted for a thousand years and basically shielded an entire continent from invasion from foreign invasion...

Don't actually find one mate. I know what you will do!

*sigh* Yes, with any country you can cherry-pick some random features which distinguish it from other countries, completely ignore the similarities it has with other countries, and claim that it is unique after all. Obviously every country has some unique features, because if there was nothing to distinguish Country A from Country B they would, in fact, be one and the same country. However, when Practical Lobster said that "Byzantium isn't sui generis", he was clearly denying that the specific statement "It almost felt like a nation state at some points, rather than a Kingdom" was uniquely true of Byzantium, not the general point that Byzantium had some unique features that distinguished it from not-Byzantium.
 
*sigh* Yes, with any country you can cherry-pick some random features which distinguish it from other countries, completely ignore the similarities it has with other countries, and claim that it is unique after all. Obviously every country has some unique features, because if there was nothing to distinguish Country A from Country B they would, in fact, be one and the same country. However, when Practical Lobster said that "Byzantium isn't sui generis", he was clearly denying that the specific statement "It almost felt like a nation state at some points, rather than a Kingdom" was uniquely true of Byzantium, not the general point that Byzantium had some unique features that distinguished it from not-Byzantium.

Ok, fair point. Byzantium isn't like an Alien colony. Sorry. It was very much still an Empire/Kingdom, and just because it had a solid large scale powerbase of ethinically homogenous people, doesn't make it a modern nation state.

Also didn't know what sui generis meant, looked it up, used that definition. Sorry again.
 
That said, if some nation-state republic replaces Byzantium, I wonder if they'd hearken back to their Greek roots a la OTL Greece or call themselves something like the Roman Republic.

I could envision a scenario similar to post-Sèvres Turkey where a Kemal Atatürk analogue rises up to slough of the old Byzantine wineskin and replace it with a new Greek republican national identity.
 
Ok, fair point. Byzantium isn't like an Alien colony. Sorry. It was very much still an Empire/Kingdom, and just because it had a solid large scale powerbase of ethinically homogenous people, doesn't make it a modern nation state.

Also didn't know what sui generis meant, looked it up, used that definition. Sorry again.

No need to apologise. FWIW I think I came across as a bit snippy in my reply to you, for which I apologise in my turn.
 
Presuming the Empire remained a going concern? There were sizable Armenian populations in the hills country of the northeast (some have speculated that annexing the kingdoms there made the passes more vulnerable), along with more marginalized Kurdish and Aramaic speakers on the periphery, but the Marmara dialect of Greek would be the educated standard all over and likely make more progress against Balkan Slavic than OTL.

Of course if the place broke up we can easily be speaking of the Greek languages.
 
Obviously, there are a lot of ways things could evolve. Remember, at the time of the 4th crusade in 1204, central authority had almost completely broken down in most outlying provinces:

- Trebizond was occupied by Komnenoi pretenders, backed by Georgia
- most of the Peloponnese was occupied by a rebellious governor (sans the Athenian acropolis, still loyal to Constantinople)
- most of Morea was under the control of local big-wigs who weren't paying any taxes
- Rhodes, Phalphagonia and parts of the Meander river valley were so loosely controlled by the government that they immediately became independent during or right after the 4th Crusade

Not to mention I'm counting 19 other usurpers in an 18 year period (1185-1203), literally more than 1 per year!


Therefor, it's no inconceivable that the Empire could fall all on its own, with lots of tiny successor states unable to dislodge each other and eventually absorbed by competing powers from across the Middle East, the Balkans or Italy.

Of course, this doesn't HAVE to happen if we avoid Mazinkert. We could see the emergence of a gunpowder empire ala the Ottomans who conquer everything around them for a couple of centuries before stagnating (whilst also having a major advantage over them, in that many of those regions would be more inclined to accept Christian overlords, especially in southern Italy, the Balkans or future Romanian principalities), or a proto-capitalist state that never turns its back on Italian merchants and instead integrates them in the fabric of society. Or even a permanently fractured realm, with Greece occupied by Italians/Normans, Constantinople by Bulgaria (resulting in an interesting mix and assimilation of Bulgarian rulers) and Anatolia by native Rhomanians.

A lot of things are possible.
 
Presuming the Empire remained a going concern? There were sizable Armenian populations in the hills country of the northeast (some have speculated that annexing the kingdoms there made the passes more vulnerable), along with more marginalized Kurdish and Aramaic speakers on the periphery, but the Marmara dialect of Greek would be the educated standard all over and likely make more progress against Balkan Slavic than OTL.

Of course if the place broke up we can easily be speaking of the Greek languages.

How strong and widespread exactly were the Aramaic speakers/Syriacs/whatever in 1000 AD, even after centuries of them being in a borderland and often ruled by Muslims? The late Ottoman censuses show them as rather fragmented, even compared to Armenians, but aside from the validity of those censuses, the situation in 1000 AD was quite different.

And if the Armenians can stay a consolidated group, surely the Syriacs can as well, although they'll be smudged in with Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, and Greeks (in the urban areas) making any state difficult to form unless you have something like the modern Armenian state and lots of nastiness involving religion and ethnic groups.
 
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