Abstract
This chapter discusses the methodological implications of the labeling of the East Roman empire as Byzantium in modern scholarship. It argues that the invented term Byzantine empire has a distinctly Orientalist structure which has attributed a subaltern status both to the historical realm of Constantinople and the field of Byzantine Studies. The effect of this Orientalist structure is reflected in the three wholistic approaches to the research of ideology and identity in the Byzantine Empire that have dominated modern scholarship, namely Hellenism, Byzantinism, and Republicanism. The chapter provides a critical analysis of all three of them, highlighting their kinship to Orientalism and arguing that they should be understood as ideological by-products of European fantasy and Western hegemony.
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