Suchergebnisse

Worldviews -- Society and economy -- Family and household -- Constantinople -- Cities and towns -- The countryside -- Military life -- The monastery -- Artistic life -- Life of the mind.

In this book Dr Harvey shows that, if we broaden our comprehension of feudalism, the economic developments of the Byzantine Empire and of the medieval west were far more comparable than Byzantine historians have been prepared to admit. Previous interpretations have linked economic trends too closely to the political fortunes of the state, and have consequently regarded the twelfth century as a period of economic stagnation. Yet there is considerable evidence that the empire's population expanded steadily during the period covered by this book, and that agricultural production was intensified. A wealth of evidence serves to reinforce the point that the disintegration of the empire in the late twelfth century should no longer be associated with economic decline. Dr Harvey's conclusions, in particular that there is no incompatibility between the development of the landed wealth of a feudalising aristocracy and the growth of commerce and urbanisation, will affect all future interpretations of Byzantine history

"In this book, the distinguished writer Edward Luttwak presents the grand strategy of the eastern Roman empire we know as Byzantine, which lasted more than twice as long as the more familiar western Roman empire, eight hundred years by the shortest definition. This extraordinary endurance is all the more remarkable because the Byzantine empire was favored neither by geography nor by military preponderance. This book is a broad, interpretive account of Byzantine strategy, intelligence, and diplomacy over the course of eight centuries that will appeal to scholars, classicists, military history buffs, and professional soldiers." --

It is now five hundred years since the Byzantine empire was brought to an end by the Ottoman Turks, Scholars today quite justly reject Gibbon's assumption that the Byzantine empire was, throughput its entire existence, in a state of decline. They have come to rank it, instead, as one of the great empires in history. And this for good reasons. It endured for over a thousand years. Down to about the middle of the eleventh century it was the center of civilization in Christendom. It preserved the thought and literature of antiquity; it developed new forms of art; it held back the barbarians. It produced great statesmen, soldiers, and diplomats as well as reformers and renowned scholars. Its missionaries, aided by its diplomats and sometimes by its armies, spread the gospel among the pagan tribes, especially the Slavs, which dwelt along its frontiers and beyond. As a Czech historian has put it, Byzantium "molded the undisciplined tribes of Serbs, Bulgars, Russians, Croats even, and made nations out of them; it gave to them its religion and institutions, taught their princes how to govern, transmitted to them the very principles of civilization—writing and literature." Byzantium was a great power and a great civilizing force.