Economic Factors in the Decline of the Byzantine Empire -- PETER CHARANIS, Rutgers University Questions. Be specific in your responses and provide examples from the article. 1. What does the author identify as the reason(s) for the decline of the Byzantine Empire? 2. How was the demographic make-up of the Byzantine Empire similar to that of other large empires? In what ways was their response similar other empires? 3. Describe the theme system and identify the role it played in Byzantine political, economic and social life? 4. Identify instances of reform by Byzantine emperors. What were the motivating factors behind these reforms? 5. In what ways was the decline of the Byzantine Empire similar to the decline of empires of the classical age? 6. Does the experience of the Byzantine Empire suggest universal challenges to maintaining large multi-ethnic empires? IT IS now five hundred years since the Byzantine empire was brought to an end by Venice, served the Ottoman sultans as vassals, or miserably toured the West the Ottoman Turks. Scholars today quite justly reject Gibbon's assumption that begging for help in return for which they were ready to sacrifice the religious the Byzantine empire was, throughout its entire existence, in a state of decline. traditions of their people. What a far cry from the august position of their They have come to rank it, instead, as one of the great empires in history.1 And predecessors of the tenth century who challenged East and West and challenged this for good reasons. It endured for over a thousand years. Down to about the them not without success! "I shall conquer your lands," wrote Nicephorus middle of the eleventh century it was the center of civilization in Christendom. It Phocas to the Caliph of Bagdad, "and I shall go as far as Mecca. ... I shall preserved the thought and literature of antiquity; it developed new forms of art; it conquer all the Orient [East] and the Occident [West] and I shall spread held back the barbarians. It produced great statesmen, soldiers, and diplomats everywhere the religion of the cross."4 The same emperor declared to the as well as reformers and renowned scholars. Its missionaries, aided by its ambassador of the German emperor, Otto I: "Do you want a greater scandal diplomats and sometimes by its armies, spread the gospel among the pagan than that [Otto] should call himself emperor and claim for himself provinces tribes, especially the Slavs, which dwelt along its frontiers and beyond. As a belonging to our empire? Both these things are intolerable; and if both are Czech historian has put it, Byzantium "molded the undisciplined tribes of Serbs, unsupportable, that especially is not to be borne, nay, not to be heard of that he Bulgars, Russians, Croats even, and made nations out of them; it gave to them its calls himself emperor."5 What brought the empire from this pinnacle of power religion and institutions, taught their princes how to govern, transmitted to them down to the abject position in which we find it in the fourteenth and fifteenth the very principles of civilization-writing and literature." 2 Byzantium was a great centuries is one of the most interesting problems in history. power and a great civilizing force. In the history of the Byzantine empire, war and religion were the two principal Yet in a sense Gibbon was right. For the Byzantine empire did not come to an factors that molded the society of the empire and determined its external position.6 end as the result of a single blow as, for instance, the battle of Nineveh of 612 B.C. War was the normal state of things throughout its long existence. The external is said to have brought to an end the mighty Assyrian empire. The empire which crisis, however, that particularly affected the evolution of its society was that of the Mohammed II [Mehmet II] destroyed on May 29,1453, had been wasting away for seventh century. over three hundred years, although part of this time, notably during the period of The advances of the Saracens and the incursions of the Slavs and Bulgars the Comneni, it was not an insignificant force. By the time of the fall of reduced virtually the whole empire to a frontier province. To cope with this Constantinople, however, the Morea, one or two islands in the Aegean, and situation the emperors of the seventh century reorganized the provincial Constantinople were all that had been left of its once widely extensive territories. administration of the empire, introducing what is known as the theme system, the Constantinople itself, which in the tenth century had a population of perhaps one essence of which was the subordination of civil to military authority exercised in million people, had been reduced to probably not more than 75,000 inhabitants.3 each province by the commander of the army corps stationed there.7 But with As a center of commerce it had long been eclipsed by Galata, the Genoese colony the establishment of the theme system is connected the establishment of another on the opposite side of the Golden Horn. The Byzantine emperors became institution, the system of military estates. These military estates, small in size puppets in the hands of the Italian commercial republics, notably Genoa and and granted to individuals in return for military service, became the opening wedge in the formation of a new class of free peasant proprietors. The soldiers The great emperors of the tenth century realized the dangerous social and themselves constituted the nucleus of this class, but others gradually were added. political implications of this development and tried to check it. Every major For while the eldest son of a soldier inherited his father's plot together with the emperor from Romanus Lecapenus to and including Basil II, with the exception of obligation of military service, the rest of the family were free to reclaim and John Tzimeskes, issued more than one novel for this purpose. These emperors cultivate the land that was vacant.8 The free peasants, cultivating their own land, sought to preserve the free peasantry because they considered it an essential paying the taxes, and, if necessary, serving in the army, came to constitute the element for the health of the state. As Romanus Lecapenus put it in one of his dominant element in the agrarian society of Byzantium. They became a bulwark novels: of the state, lent to it new vigor, and enabled it eventually to recover its position in It is not through hatred and envy of the rich that we take these measures, but for the the Orient. By the end of the tenth century, Byzantium had become the most protection of the small and the safety of the empire as a whole. ... The extension of powerful state throughout the Christian-Moslem world. the power of the strong . will bring about the irreparable loss of the public good, if the present law does not bring a check to it. For it is the many, settled on the land, The situation changed in the eleventh century. During the second half of that who provide for the general needs, who pay the taxes and furnish the army with its century the empire suffered a series of military reverses from which it never fully recruits. Everything falls when the many are wanting.10 recovered. The most serious of these was the disastrous defeat at Manzikert The strictest among the measures taken for the protection of the free peasantry (1071). The battle of Manzikert decided the fate of Asia Minor and conditioned was that issued by Basil II concerning the allelengyon, a measure which required the subsequent history of the Byzantine empire. But Manzikert was only a battle, the landed aristocracy to pay the tax arrears [back taxes, taxes due] of peasants and battles had been lost before without the serious consequences that followed too poor to meet their own obligations. But with the death of Basil (1025) the Manzikert. What explains the decline that set in after it and that would lead effort to stop the growth of the large estates came to an end. His law concerning eventually to the disappearance of the empire were the conditions which came to the allelengyon was repealed and the other measures, although kept in the books, prevail in the social and economic life of the empire in the eleventh century and were not enforced. The fate of the free peasantry was definitely decided. later. Manzikert itself was the result of these conditions. Meanwhile, a similar fate befell the class of the enrolled soldiers, holders of the The dominant fact in the social and economic life of the empire in the eleventh military estates. For the aristocracy, which, by one means or another, absorbed century is the triumph of the landed military aristocracy and the decline of the the estates of the small peasants, absorbed also those of the soldiers. The soldiery-peasantry which had for centuries served as the bulwark of the state. protection of the interests of these soldiers had been one of the deepest concerns From the very beginning of its history the large estate had been a feature of of the emperors of the tenth century. Wrote Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the Byzantine society. The complicated and burdensome fiscal administration novel that he issued for the protection of the estates of the soldiers: "The army is affected by the reorganization of the empire following the political and economic to the state what the head is to the body . He who neglects it neglects the crisis of the third century worked in such a way as to give impetus to the growth of safety of the state ...