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If you're interested in this kind of history stuff, I recommend reading The Silk Roads, by Peter Frankopan. It's a recent (2015) epic-scope history book, from t
by beat 8y ago
If you're interested in this kind of history stuff, I recommend reading The Silk Roads, by Peter Frankopan. It's a recent (2015) epic-scope history book, from the beginning of written history to the present day, based on the idea that the Middle East, rather than Europe, is the true center of civilization - that the area stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to western India has been foremost, and remains foremost. (In particular, he argues that northern/western Europe was basically an uninteresting, barbarian backwater until 1500 or so.)
Great book, totally fascinating reading, with the hottest geopolitical issues of today traced back through thousands of years of history.
- beat 8y agoOne interesting thing that comes from the book is realizing just how tremendously important the early Islamic expansion and empire was, filling the vacuum caused by the collapse of the Roman empire with a new culture, devoted to advancing technology, peace, trade, and preservation of the writings of earlier civilizations. Without them, we might have lost most of the writing of ancient Greece.
- ng12 8y ago> filling the vacuum caused by the collapse of the Roman empire What about the "other" Roman empire, the Byzantines? They seemed to have filled the vacuum even better.
- basilgohar 8y agoThere's a reason "Byzantine" when used as an adjective also has the negative connotation of "Overly complex or intricate." [1] It was not really a good successor in terms of success for the Roman Empire. [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Byzantine#Adjective https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Byzantine#Adjective
- ng12 8y ago> It was not really a good successor in terms of success for the Roman Empire. How so? Constantinople was the richest, most recognized city on the European continent from the fall of Rome to the Fourth Crusade -- over half a millenium. At it's zenith it ruled almost as much territory as the Roman Empire. There's a reason the Islamic caliphs coveted it so much. Remember that there was a lot of distrust between the Latin and Greek worlds after the Great Schism. The whole reason we're calling them Byzantines instead of Romans (or even Greek/Eastern Romans) is because Renaissance scholars wanted to emphasize Latin Romans over (the still existing) Greek Romans.
- cat199 8y agoSorry, this is history from a western/anglo-centric perspective. The eastern empire simply doesn't exist after 1054.
- beat 8y agoThe eastern empire lost most of its territory by 800, reducing it to a dying regional power. But yeah, totally a European perspective. Aside from the Romans, "Europe" barely comes into play in history, until Spain reached America and started bringing back enormous piles of gold.
- ng12 8y agoThe Byzantines controlled all of Anatolia, the Balkans, and parts of Italy around 1000 and retained much of it through the Komnenian Restoration. I wouldn't call the empire "dying" until after 1204. And remember, even at it's lowest Constantinople itself was regarded extremely highly -- most famously the Rus adopted Eastern Orthodoxy after being so impressed by the city.
- HarryHirsch 8y agoYou can go to any Orthodox church and see the liturgy celebrated as it was in the times of Emperor Basil Bulgar-Slayer. Constantinople survives.
- pishpash 8y agoExactly. It's not like the Byzantines didn't keep the writings of the Greeks. They were the Greeks. Greece still owns islands right off of Turkey, being from the very start a circum-Aegean state.
- billfruit 8y agoIt does seem amazing to me that on one occasion, the Eastern Empire even occupied Rome itself for a few brief years during/after tge Gothic wars.
- beat 8y agoThe Byzantines were an eastern empire, not a western one - more aligned with the Orient than with Europe. That said, pretty much the moment Islam appeared, they ripped Egypt and the Levant out of Byzantine hands - reducing the "Byzantine empire" from "empire" to "regional kingdom that will eventually get sacked". Less than a century after Islam started, they were laying siege to Constantinople. Over the next couple of centuries, Constantinople lost 90% of its population. Basically, they only lasted meaningfully for a few centuries, between the fall of the western empire and the rise of the Islamic empire. If you count the transition from the original Islamic conquest to the Ottoman empire as a single continuous system (as you're doing with the western Roman empire and the Byzantine empire), then the Islamic empire lasted for north of 13 centuries, finally dying only in the 20th century, the end of WWI.
- evol262 8y agoThe Byzantines were as aligned with the "Orient" as Alexander was. They held onto territory in Italy until a full 600 years after the West fell (once Belisarius recaptured it in the 600s). They had active diplomacy with the Holy Roman Empire and other states in the West up until the 4th Crusade, basically. You've completely glossed over the Renaissance of the empire around 1000 AD (550 years after the West fell) under John Tzimiskes, Basil II, etc. You can blame this on the decline of Abbasid power if you want, but even if the caliphate _technically_ held territory in Syria/Lebanon, there was no question as to military superiority. The Byzantines raided with impunity and got tribute from the local emirs. Constantinople lost 90% of its population after the plague of Justinian, and a recurring series of outbreaks over the next centuries, plus a loss of manpower after the desperate end of the Sassanian wars under Heraclius (which Heraclius technically won, but both empires were so diminished that they were easy prey for the new caliphate). It rebounded. Never to its maximum, but it was back near 750000 under the Macedonians. So, the empire was ok until 660, lost territory, rebounded in the 10th century, and was arguably at its best organizationally and culturally until the real decline started during Manzikert. It lasted 1000 years. Please read something other than Gibbon, or at least listen to The History of Byzantium (which follows on where The History of Rome left off). History is not a static field, and the Byzantines are rapidly becoming rehabilitated as more documents come up.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoI question the "devoted to peace" part. They were devoted to expanding Islam by force, and peace after they had conquered you. I once saw a comparison of the battles fought against Islam in the Crusades, and the battles fought by Islam in expanding. Islam fought maybe ten times more battles to expand than the Crusades fought against Islam. (And much of the Islamic expansion was against civilizations that were already christian - all of north Africa, for example.)
- hikarudo 8y agoAbout the comparison, I think it might be this video: Bill Warner, PhD: Jihad vs Crusades https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_To-cV94Bo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_To-cV94Bo
- halflings 8y agoNorth Africa was christian? The amazigh were animists, and Islam was present before any large scale invasion, and was mostly spread by amazigh tribes themselves. (at least in the case of Morocco)
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoWell, Egypt certainly was heavily Christian. I had assumed that most of North Africa was, because it had been Roman, and the Roman Empire was heavily Christian post-Constantine.
- Amezarak 8y agoYou are correct that most all of Roman North Africa was Christianized. Augustine, for example, was a Numidian, and writes a lot about religious perspectives in North Africa.
- halflings 8y agoIt's mostly because you said "all of north Africa" that I wrote this response; being from Morocco, this was surprising.
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- notfromhere 8y agowho do you think caused the collapse of the Eastern Romans?
- nindalf 8y agoDoesn't really make sense to "blame" the Islamic tribes/kingdoms for the fall of the Roman Empire. Perhaps some other power would have done the same. Hard to play historical what-ifs, but let me try. By the end of the 13th Century, almost all Crusader holdings had been taken over by the Sultan of Egypt Baibars. He used his consolidated power to defeat the Mongol horde at the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260, the first time a Mongol army had been defeated. It's possible that if there had been no Islamic power at the time, either the Golden Horde or the Ilkhanate would have eventually swept the Eastern Roman Empire away. Or maybe not. Who knows?
- notfromhere 8y agoThe islamic kingdoms actively fought wars against the byzantines and absorbed most of their territories into their own. So you literally can
- nindalf 8y agoYou appear intent on blaming the Islamic kingdoms for the downfall of the Eastern Roman Empire. It's not at all clear that they would have flourished in the absence of Islam. It's likely they would have been swept aside by the Mongols. Even otherwise, you realise that the body blow to the ERE wasn't struck any Muslim army. Constantinople was captured and looted by Crusaders in 1204, apparently on the Fourth Crusade. Though the Greeks recovered Constantinople a few decades later, it was a shadow of it's past self, left with the city, north Western Anatolia and parts of the Balkans. The Ottomans ended the empire in 1453.
- robdachshund 8y agoUh pretty sure the Holy Roman Empire filled that vacuum by uniting Europe under Catholicism.
- Amezarak 8y ago> Without them, we might have lost most of the writing of ancient Greece. This is a really bizarre interpretation, considering that the 'writing of ancient Greece' was only endangered due the destruction of the eastern Roman Empire (and the Persian Empire) by the Muslim conquests. The era of the conquests was extremely chaotic and a major setback for civilization in the region. The historical record practically falls apart because of this. Prior to the conquests, the eastern Roman Empire and its long heritage of learning and culture was trucking along quite happily, even if there were periodic border conflicts with the Persians. Even during the conquests and their ever-shrinking territory, the Romans maintained their technological superiority over the surrounding civilizations. The final conquest of Constantinople, and the consequent fleeing of the learned with their texts westward, was a key factor in helping along the European Renaissance. It's always been a bit strange to me how the history of the Roman Empire is pretty much ignored after the fall of the western empire. The East remained one of the greatest, wealthiest, and most educated powers in the world for centuries.
- kashprime 8y agoI think the sack of Constantinople by the Latins in their 4th crusade did more to secure Byzantium's decline than any single action by the Arabs. The Turks merely delivered a coup de grace centuries later.
- Amezarak 8y agoThe Fourth Crusade was devastating, but Rome had already lost nearly all its territory to the Arabs by that time - which is in part what set off the crusades in the first place. The Muslim conquests had taken all Roman territory outside Anatolia by 730, many centuries before the Fourth Crusade. The period surrounding the Muslim conquests is almost as disruptive in the historical record as the Bronze Age collapse. A lot of writing either gets lost or destroyed during that period. Sources dry up after ominous allusions to doom and gloom. The Latin sack was bad for Constantinople, but isn't nearly that bad. The emperors were also very aware that the loss of nearly all their holdings was the beginning of the end, and that they were essentially caretakers, only able to delay the end. It's very sobering reading what they wrote.
- abecedarius 8y ago> Without them, we might have lost most of the writing of ancient Greece. We did lose most of it. This isn't to diminish the preservation by the Islamic world of so much of what did survive.
- adamc 8y agoThanks for the recommendation!
- projectramo 8y agoThanks for the recommendation. (I was under the impression that the true center of civilization was China.)
- beat 8y agoChina wasn't expansionist, though. They never grew much beyond their current borders. They were good trading partners, but didn't have the complexity and drive of the middle eastern civilizations, from the early Persians through the Ottomans.
- Keysh 8y agoChina was extremely expansionist. It's just that over time they successfully assimilated (or suppressed) most of the regions they conquered, to the point where they and most other people think of them as naturally part of China (ignore what the Tibetans, Uighirs, and Mongols say, they're just disloyal). That's a bit like saying, "The US never grew much beyond its current borders, so it wasn't expansionist."
- mystikal83 8y agoA good review of this book https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/29/silk-roads-peter-frankopan-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/29/silk-roads-pet...
- catominor 8y agoFWIW I'd recommend "The Inheritance of Rome" by Christopher Wickham. It is jumps around a lot but gives a lot of really in-depth analysis of the Eastern Roman Empire and the rise of the Caliphate. It's doesn't look like you may expect.
- beat 8y agoI'll add it to the list, thanks!
- canhascodez 8y agoPerhaps similar in theme would be Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes" by Tamim Ansary.
- mcguire 8y agoWhy the West Rules—For Now, by Ian Morris, focuses similarly on the Middle East throughout most of history, as the "Western" center of civilization, until roughly the industrial revolution.
- beat 8y agoI wish I could be around to see the world in a hundred years or so. Since reading Factfulness, I've really gotten into a natural-progression mindset for nations/regions. Once modern economics sets in, certain things start changing very rapidly. Many countries today are going through what Europe and America went through in the 19th century through WWII - massive improvements in education and wealth and public health, massive decline in birthrate. And it's happening far faster in some places than it happened in Europe. For example, it took England 95 years to drop its birthrate from above 6 to below 3. Iran did it in 10 years. (Iran's birthrate today is lower than Europe.) China has increased its per capita GDP about 15,000% since 1952. That's just mind-boggling. As Hans Rosling points out, Sweden in the 19th century was worse off than most of Africa today - birth rate above 5, 90% illiteracy, 20% of the population actually fled to the US to escape famine. And a century and a half later... they're Sweden, the most civilized country in the world. It's just a matter of time before this catches up to the Middle East. There's no reason they can't be as wealthy and stable as Europe, it's just going to take a few generations. After all, the Levant was once the center of civilization - more than once.