Byzantine warfare

Abstract

AbstractThe term “Byzantine Empire” refers to the eastern Roman Empire from the fourth (or sixth, as some prefer) century to the fifteenth century, that is to say, from the time when a distinctively East Roman political formation began to evolve with the recognition of the cultural divisions between “Greek East” and “Latin West” in the empire's political structure, to the fall of Constantinople on May 29, 1453, at the hands of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II “Fatih,” “the Conqueror.” And although within this long period there were many substantial transformations, the elements of structural continuity are marked enough to permit such a broad chronological definition. Across this period, the “empire” went through a series of major territorial transformations—in the middle of the sixth century it was still a pan‐Mediterranean state, stretching from southeastern Spain to the Great Syrian Desert, and from the Alps and Danube River in the north to the Atlas mountains and upper Egypt in the south. The Arab conquests and the loss of the Balkans reduced it by the 660s to a rump state consisting of central and western Anatolia, the Aegean basin, and some littoral territories in the southern Balkans. Stabilization across the eighth and ninth centuries, combined with a changed external political situation, permitted expansion and reconquest of substantial territories from Islamic powers in the East and from the Bulgarians in the Balkans during the tenth century, but this was followed in the later eleventh century by implosion and a further shrinkage under both internal social—economic pressures and that from the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia. Under the Comnenian Dynasty from the 1080s until the 1180s, the situation was stabilized and some territory recovered from the Turks in Asia Minor. But the Fourth Crusade in 1204 ended this, and for its remaining twilight years the greatly reduced Byzantine state was an empire in name only, more often than not tributary to one or another of its more powerful neighbors.