In its long history, from the later 5th century, when the last vestiges of the western half of the Roman empire were absorbed into barbarian successor kingdoms, until the fall in battle of the last eastern Poman emperor, Constantine XI (1448-53), the empire was almost constantly at war. Its strategic situation in the southern Balkans and Asia Minor made this inevitable. It was constantly challenged by its more or its less powerful neighbours - at first, the Persian empire in the east, later the various Islamic powers that arose in that region - and by its northern neighbours, the Slavs, the Avars (a Turkic people) in the 6th and 7th centuries, the Bulgars from the end of the 7th to early lltn centuries and, in the later 11th and 12th centuries, the Hungarians, later the Serbs and finally, after their conquests in Greece and the southern Balkans, the Ottoman Turks. Relations with the western powers which arose from what remained of the western Roman empire during the Sth century were complicated and tense, not least because of the political competition between the papacy and the Constantinopolitan patriarchate, the two major sees - Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem were far less powerful after the 7th century Islamic conquests - in the Christian world. Byzantium survived so long partly because internally it was well-organised, with an efficient fiscal and military system; and partly because these advantages, rooted in its late Roman past, lasted well into the nth century. But as its western and northern neighbours grew in resources and political stability they were able
to challenge the empire for pre-eminence, reducing it by the early 13th century to a second- or even third-rate rump of its former self, subordinated to the politics of the west and the commercial interests of Venice, Pisa and Genoa,among others,the greatest of the Italian merchant republics. In this book, we will look at some of the ways in which the medieval east Roman empire secured its long existence.
