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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 November 2011
It is well known that the history of Byzantium does not fit comfortably with mainstream medieval history. This paper returns to the problem in the light of two recent, if opposing, historiographical trends: first, the emphasis on the Mediterranean as a unifying factor, and second, the turn towards the comparative history of western and eastern Eurasia. Neither emphasis accommodates Byzantium well, and it is argued that however difficult it may seem to some historians, any broad approach to medieval history will be inadequate if it does not make space for the history of Byzantium.
1 This is aided by the recent creation of an Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity and an Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research.
2 See Cormack, Robin and Vassilaki, Maria, eds., Byzantium 330–1453 (Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2008)Google Scholar.
3 Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity (1971).
4 Judith Herrin, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire (2007); see Mango, Cyril, ed., The Oxford History of Byzantium (Oxford, 2002)Google Scholar; Jeffreys, Elizabeth, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies (Oxford, 2008)Google Scholar; Paul Stephenson, ed., The Byzantine World (2010); James, Liz, ed., A Companion to Byzantium (Chichester, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and cf. Cameron, Averil, The Byzantines (Oxford, 2006)Google Scholar.
5 Luttwak, Edward, The Virtual American Empire: War, Faith and Power (New Brunswick, 2009)Google Scholar; for the phrase ‘faith and power’ (explicitly acknowledged) see Evans, Helen C., ed. Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557) (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2004)Google Scholar, the catalogue of another of the several major Byzantine exhibitions in recent years.
6 Luttwak, Edward, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire (Cambridge, MA, 2009)Google Scholar.
7 See the detailed review by Anthony Kaldellis, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2010.01.49; for a different approach see the comments of the distinguished scholar of late antiquity Glen Bowersock, London Review of Books, 32.3, 11 Feb. 2010, 17–18. See also Luttwak in Foreign Policy, 2009, cited by Bowersock (ibid., 18); the concept of an ‘operational code’ was developed in connection with the Politburo during the cold war period, and depended on the idea of a stable and closed system.
8 Luttwak, Edward, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century a.d. to the Third (Baltimore, 1976)Google Scholar; see for instance Isaac, Benjamin, The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army in the East (Oxford, rev. edn, 1992)Google Scholar.
9 FT Weekend, 27–9 Nov. 2009.
10 Maguire, Henry, ed., Byzantine Court Culture from 829 to 1204 (Washington, DC, 1997)Google Scholar.
11 Luttwak, Virtual American Empire, 150.
12 Luttwak, Grand Strategy, 418.
13 Murphy, Cullen, Are We Rome? The End of an Empire and the Fate of America (Boston, MA, 2007)Google Scholar; cf. idem, The New Rome: The End of an Empire and the Fate of America (Thriplow, 2007); cf. also Adrian Goldsworthy, The Fall of the West: The Slow Death of the Roman Superpower (2009); James J. O'Donnell, The Ruin of the Roman Empire (2009).
14 Luttwak, Virtual American Empire, 154.
15 See Kaldellis, Anthony, Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformation of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition (Cambridge, 2007)Google Scholar; Rapp, Claudia, ‘Hellenic Identity, Romanitas and Christianity in Byzantium’, in Hellenism, Culture and Ethnicity from Antiquity to Modernity, ed. Zacharia, Katerina (Aldershot, 2008), 127–47Google Scholar; Page, Gillian, Being Byzantine: Greek Identity before the Ottomans (Cambridge, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Greek term ‘Hellene’ referred to pagans in most Byzantine literature and was only gradually used for ‘Greek’, mainly from the eleventh century ad onwards.
16 For the Byzantine approach see Michael Jeffreys, ‘Textual Criticism’, in The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies, ed. Jeffreys, 86–94, who points out that the standard manuals of textual criticism are designed for and written by classicists.
17 See on this H. Hunger, ‘On the Imitation (Mimesis) of Antiquity in Byzantine Literature’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 23–4 (1969–70), 17–38; Mullett, Margaret and Scott, Roger, eds., Byzantium and the Classical Tradition (Birmingham, 1981)Google Scholar.
18 See P. Agapitos, ‘Literary Criticism’, in The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies, ed. Jeffreys, 77–85.
19 See Kaldellis, Anthony, ‘Historicism in Byzantine Thought and Literature’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 61 (2007), 1–24Google Scholar.
20 See Bowersock, G. W., Brown, Peter and Grabar, Oleg, eds., Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Post-Classical World (Cambridge, MA, 1999)Google Scholar. The first issue of the new Journal of Late Antiquity in 2008 carried three papers discussing this periodisation from the point of view of late antiquity (not Byzantium). Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, covers the period ad 150–750 and has as its sub-title From Marcus Aurelius to Muhammad.
21 See Mark Whittow, The Making of Orthodox Byzantium, 600–1025 (1996); Shepard, Jonathan, ed., The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c. 500–1492 (Cambridge, 2008) begins c. 500Google Scholar; for discussion of this choice of date see ibid., 21–6.
22 French scholarship is also readier to make Byzantium start with Constantine, and the majority of publications on Byzantine art in English also start there: see Cameron, The Byzantines, ch. 1; the first volume of Le monde byzantin, ed. Cécile Morrisson (Paris, 2004), is entitled L'Empire romain d'Orient 330–641, that is, from the dedication of Constantinople to the end of the reign of Heraclius.
23 See e.g. The Theft of History (Cambridge, 2006); The Eurasian Miracle (Cambridge, 2010); Renaissances – The One or the Many? (Cambridge, 2010); see also Hobson, J. M., The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization (Cambridge, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and for the current valency of ‘Eurasia’: also Arnason, J. P. and Wittrock, B., eds., Eurasian Transformations, Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries: Crystallizations, Divergences, Renaissances (Leiden, 2004)Google Scholar.
24 Wickham, Christopher, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400–800 (Oxford, 2006)Google Scholar.
25 Idem, The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 (2009). The first volume in the same series, with a telling title, is by Simon Price and Peter Thonemann, The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine (2009), and ends in ad 425; what does this imply for Byzantium?
26 Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, 827–31.
27 Shaw, Brent D., ‘After Rome: Transformations of the Early Mediterranean World’, New Left Review, 51 (May/June 2008), 89–114, cf. 112Google Scholar.
28 For the latter see Howard-Johnston, James, Witnesses to a World Crisis: Histories and Historians of the Middle East in the Seventh Century (Oxford, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with a robust defence of the reliability of the Arabic sources.
29 See Heather, Peter, Empires and Barbarians (Oxford, 2009)Google Scholar; Heather, Peter, The Fall of the Roman Empire (Oxford, 2005)Google Scholar; Ward-Perkins, Bryan, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford, 2005)Google Scholar.
30 Evelyne Patlagean, ‘Byzance dans le millenaire médiéval’, Annales HSS, 60.4 (2005), 721–9, at 723.
31 See Averil Cameron, ‘The Absence of Byzantium’, Nea Hestia (Jan. 2008), 4–59, at 42–3.
32 Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (2004).
33 Patlagean, Evelyne, Un Moyen Âge grec (Paris, 2007)Google Scholar; the interpretation of changes in Byzantium in the eleventh century is crucial, and has undergone major revision in the last decades; current excavations at Sagalassos and Euchaita (Avkat) in Anatolia focusing on the relation of urban sites and their hinterlands are providing more relevant information.
34 Cf. Cameron, ‘The Absence of Byzantium’.
35 Huntington, Samuel, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (New York, 1996)Google Scholar; see Cameron, ‘The Absence of Byzantium’, 32. J. P. Arnason, ‘Parallels and Divergences: Perspectives on the Early Second Millennium’, in Eurasian Transformations, ed. Arnason and Wittrock, 13–40, writes of the ‘Byzantine/Orthodox sphere’ (21), and allows for a partial corrective of earlier negative views (30), while still stressing eventual failure (30–2).
36 See for instance Goody, Jack, Islam in Europe (Cambridge, 2004)Google Scholar; Aziz al-Azmeh, Islams and Modernities, 3rd edn (2009).
37 See Laruelle, Marlène, Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire, Eng. trans. (Washington, DC, 2008), 100–1Google Scholar, on Aleksandr S. Panarin's concept of Orthodox civilisation; unlike Eurasianists or neo-Eurasianists who looked towards the east and Russia's Turkic Muslim heritage, Panarin focused on Christianity, even though not emphasising Kievan Rus with its strong Byzantine connection.
38 See meanwhile Cameron, Averil, ‘Byzantium and the Limits of Orthodoxy’, Raleigh Lecture in History, Proceedings of the British Academy, 154 (2008), 139–52Google Scholar; see also eadem, ‘Enforcing Orthodoxy in Byzantium’, in Discipline and Diversity, ed. Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory, Studies in Church History 43 (Woodbridge, 2007), 1–24.
39 Shaw, ‘After Rome’, 113.
40 Ibid., 113–14.
41 Mann, Michael, The Sources of Social Power, i:A History of Power from the Beginning to ad 1760 (Cambridge, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mann's Eurocentric approach has already been noted by others.
42 Morris, Ian and Scheidel, Walter, eds., The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: From Assyria to Byzantium (Stanford, 2009)Google Scholar, and Scheidel, Walter, ed., Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires (Oxford, 2009)Google Scholar.
43 Entitled The First Great Divergence: China and Europe, 500–800 CE; the Stanford–Princeton Working Papers on the Classics (PSUWP), available on the web, include this material, as well as an earlier version of Shaw's review of Wickham.
44 On the issues of definition see Jack A. Goldstone and John F. Haldon, ‘Ancient States, Empires and Exploitation: Problems and Perspectives’, in Dynamics of Ancient Empires, ed. Morris and Scheidel, 3–29; Barfield, Thomas J., ‘The Shadow Empires: Imperial State Formation along the Chinese–Nomad Frontier’, in Empires: Perspectives from Archaeology and History, ed. Susan, E. Alcock et al. (Cambridge, 2001), 10–41, at 28–39Google Scholar.
45 See also John F. Haldon, The State and the Tributary Mode of Production (1993).
46 In 1981, Christopher Wickham wrote: ‘The holocaust in Italy came in the great age of wars, 535–93: the shifts of balance under the German rulers, first Odoacer (476–93) and then the Ostrogothic kings (490–553) were trivial by contrast’ (Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society, 400–1000 (1981), 15).
47 See Durliat, J., ‘L'approvisionnement de Constantinople, in Constantinople and its Hinterland, ed. Mango, Cyril and Dagron, Gilbert, with the assistance of Geoffrey Greatrex (Aldershot, 1995), 19–33Google Scholar.
48 See especially David Abulafia, ed., The Mediterranean in History (2003).
49 On which see Laiou, Angeliki E., ed., Urbs Capta. The Fourth Crusade and its Consequences (Paris, 2005)Google Scholar.
50 Abulafia, David, ‘Mediterraneans’, in Rethinking the Mediterranean, ed. Harris, W. V. (Oxford, 2005), 64–93Google Scholar.
51 Ibid., 76–80; cf. Lopez, R. S., The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1971)Google Scholar.
52 Pirenne, Henri, Mahomet et Charlemagne (Paris, 1937)Google Scholar; see the review by Brown, Peter, ‘Mohammed and Charlemagne by Henri Pirenne’, in idem, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1982), 63–79Google Scholar. As Brown points out, though the book appeared only in 1937, Pirenne had expressed his ideas from as early as 1922.
53 So also McCormick, Michael, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce ad 300–900 (Cambridge, 2001)Google Scholar, and see Horden, Peregrine and Purcell, Nicholas, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford, 2000), 169–72, 365–76Google Scholar, with 153–60 (an ‘early medieval depression’); Brent D. Shaw, ‘Challenging Braudel: A New Vision of the Mediterranean’, Journal of Roman Archaeology, xiv (2001), 419–53.
54 Cf. the memorable review by Wickham, Christopher, ‘Marx, Sherlock Holmes and Late Roman Commerce’, Journal of Roman Studies, 78 (1988), 183–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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56 Goitein, S. D., A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (6 vols., Berkeley, 1967–93)Google Scholar.
57 See the survey by Laiou, Angeliki E., ‘Exchange and Trade, Seventh–Twelfth Centuries’, in The Economic History of Byzantium: From the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, ed. Laiou, Angeliki E. (3 vols., Washington, DC, 2002)Google Scholar, ii, 697–768; M. Balard, ‘A Christian Mediterranean’, in The Mediterranean in History, ed. Abulafia, 183–213. For Byzantium and the concept of a Mediterranean agrarian economy see P. Toubert, ‘Byzantium and the Mediterranean Agrarian Economy’, in The Economic History of Byzantium, ed. Laiou, i, 377–91 (with a section on ‘Byzantine Specificities’, 387–91).
58 Susan E. Alcock, ‘Alphabet Soup in the Mediterranean Basin: The Emergence of the Mediterranean Serial’, in Rethinking the Mediterranean, ed. Harris, 314–36.
59 Honour and shame: Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 487–523; Campbell, J. K., Honour, Shame and Patronage: A Study of Institutions and Moral Values in a Greek Mountain Community (Oxford, 1964)Google Scholar; Peristiany, J. G., ed., Mediterranean Family Structures (Cambridge, 1976)Google Scholar; J. G. Peristiany, ed., Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society (1965); Gilmore, D. D., ed., Honour and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean (Washington, DC, 1987)Google Scholar; cf. Schwarz, Seth, Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society? Reciprocity and Solidarity in Ancient Judaism (Princeton, 2010)Google Scholar. See also Burrus, V., Saving Shame: Martyrs, Saints and Other Abject Subjects (Philadelphia, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
60 M. Herzfeld, ‘Practical Mediterraneanism: Excuses for Everything, from Epistemology to Eating’, in Rethinking the Mediterranean, ed. Harris, 45–63; Herzfeld is noted as an ‘anti-Mediterraneanist’ by Horden and Purcell (The Corrupting Sea, 20, 486; see also Herzfeld, M., Anthropology through the Looking- Glass: Critical Ethnography on the Margins of Europe (Cambridge, 1987))Google Scholar.
61 Lendon, J. E., Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World (Oxford, 1997, 2001)Google Scholar.
62 The considered and detailed discussion of the issue in Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, ranges widely both chronologically and geographically, but without dealing with Byzantium, which gets no special treatment in the book.
63 On this fraught subject see recently John Koliopoulos, ‘Modern Greece: An Old Debate’, in Networks of Power in Modern Greece: Essays in Honour of John Campbell, ed. Mark Mazower (2008), 129–35.
64 Well brought out by Suzanne Saïd, ‘The Mirage of Greek Continuity: On the Uses and Abuses of Analogy in Some Travel Narratives from the Seventeenth to the Eighteenth Century’, in Rethinking the Mediterranean, ed. Harris, 268–93, at 276–9.
65 See James Crow, Jonathan Bardill and Richard Bayliss, The Water Supply of Byzantine Constantinople (2008).
66 See the brilliant paper by Gilbert Dagron on the arrangements made in the Middle Byzantine period to secure the supply of fish from the Black Sea, ‘Poissons, pêcheurs et poissoniers de Constantinople’, in Constantinople and its Hinterland, ed. Mango and Dagron, 57–76.
67 Ostrogorski, G., Geschichte des byzantinischen Staates (Munich, 1940)Google Scholar; Eng. trans. by Hussey, Joan, History of the Byzantine State (Oxford, 1956)Google Scholar; on Ostrogorsky see also Patlagean, Un Moyen Âge grec, 49–51.
68 Though see Treadgold, Warren T., A History of the Byzantine State and Society (Stanford, 1997)Google Scholar; Gregory, Timothy E., A History of Byzantium (Malden, MA, 2005)Google Scholar.
69 J. M. Hussey, with the editorial assistance of Nicol, D. M. and Cowan, G., The Cambridge Medieval History, iv:The Byzantine Empire (Cambridge, 1966–7)Google Scholar; here the starting point is ad 717.
70 Shepard, ed., The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire, including sixteen out of twenty-four chapters from various volumes of the New Cambridge Medieval History (as explained at ch. 10, n. 24). See also Angold, Michael, ed., Cambridge History of Christianity, v:Eastern Christianity (Cambridge, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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72 Cf. Raffensperger, C., ‘Revisiting the Idea of the Byzantine Commonwealth’, Byzantinische Forschungen, 28 (2004), 159–74Google Scholar; Ivanov, S. and Vavrínek, V., in Jeffreys, Elizabeth, ed., 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies, ii:Abstracts of Panel Papers (Aldershot, 2006), 32–3, 34–5Google Scholar.
73 See Cameron, ‘Enforcing Orthodoxy in Byzantium’.
74 So for instance Krueger, Derek, ed., A People's History of Christianity, iii:Byzantine Christianity (Minneapolis, MN, 2006)Google Scholar.
