3 ms·
"Constantinople fell to the Ottomans after two centuries of retreat and decline." More to the point, after cannons were invented.
by pg 18y ago
"Constantinople fell to the Ottomans after two centuries of retreat and decline."
More to the point, after cannons were invented.
- mattmaroon 18y agoIsn't the rise and fall of most of the large empires due to better weapons technology?
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- bbgm 18y agoOne reason the British Empire went down cause it became too difficult to sustain, both globally and internally
- papersmith 18y agoThat was certainly the case with China.
- pg 18y agoNo; large empires generally collapse from within. But Constantinople was by no means an empire when the Ottomans took it. By that point it had shrunk to a mere town.
- mattmaroon 18y agoYeah, I guess I was thinking more "civilizations" than "empires".
- cabalamat 18y agoI don't think so. One large factor in the decline of empires is when they get too big for the communications technology of the time to handle, i.e. if it takes too long for a message or an army to travel from one end o the empire to another. The British, Spanish, French, Mongol, Ottoman and Roman empires all suffered from this, to some extent.