how did the Byzantines recover from so many calamities?
>Hun Invasions
>Plague of Justinian/Khosrau I
>Persian Invasions of 602-628
>Arab Conquests
>Caliphate annual raids/sieges of constantinople
>20 years anarchy
>Disaster at Pliska
>Constant coups, civil wars
>incompetent regencies
>Norman/Crusader interference
>Turkish invasions
>Rus invasions
>Fourth crusade
yet almost until the end it seemed that the empire would always have a string of capable emperors who would miraculously recover a sizeable portion of lost territory, reform the economy and military and restore enough power that the empire was the most powerful in it's region. Even when bordered by an empire 5x it's size and far richer, it held it's own relatively easy and eventually turned the tide.
so the question is, why could this empire do it for so long when most other nations were conquered and gave up (i.e Iran)
Theodosian walls
Having capital withstand almost any sort of attack(until gunpowder) decided everything
They could just wait until enemy army gets too exhausted from siege and get what they want
>But muh 1204
Yeah and guess what? It was the most disastrous thing to happen to Byzantium
Even with them retaking it half a century later (by a pure luck) time was lost and city wasn't able to recover fast enough and instead was cause of a huge moneysink which led to even bigger losses
Not just the walls, but geography. Located on the European side of the continent, and surrounded on 3 sides by water thanks to the Golden Horn (which they could chain off), it was a supreme defensive spot. Attackers from Asia needed naval supremacy to keep their armies besieging the walls supplied, and they were vulnerable to naval sorties (or reinforcements from ex: Venice)
>Byzantine walls
>Greek fire
>Byzantine armor
>Access to the silk road
They weren't able to expand east because Arabian deserts are perfect for ambushes and so locals always have an advantage (you have to be an insane jihadist or part of the mongol hordes to not get demoralized).
They basically conquered all of Eastern Europe into being their proxy kingdoms via evangelizing Orthodox Christianity their.
homie the desert starts way down south
> proxy kingdoms via evangelizing Orthodox Christianity
that's why bulgarhs and serbs constantly raped them?
>all of that green
blatantly dishonest
How did Persia persist with such shit land
surprisingly fertile despite not being green, and in an excellent position for trade, plus constantly occupying mesopotamia
>birthplace of wheat farming
>access to afghan tin mines
>lost of mountains make it extremely defensable
The real question is how the frick did the arabs take over so fast. The answer is unironically israelites.
No thats because they lost to romans and the arabs at that time were very OP
They barely had any israelites
no its because iranjeets are self-indulging idiots
It didn't that's why the persians kept trying to expand
Slavs literally mean slaves u dishonest gypsy Black person, they were the ones getting raped for thousands of years, even after romans. Kys
Read a book gayman
>arabian deserts
Amerimutt moronic
>jihadist
This just mean warrior moron
>muh maps
>comparing modern times to old times
It was way more Green before you idiot
How could Europe let a stalwart of Christendom full to the Musselman?
They were Orthodox and weak, no one really cared
The fact that they survived for so long without any real friends says that isn't the case achmed.
1204 crippled them, by the 15th century the only thing keeping them from getting gobbled up by the Ottomans was Tamerlane's mega chimpout.
The Byzantines didn’t even have a conception of Christendom. Ideologically they believed they were the only legitimate government on earth and other Christians states were as illegitimate as the Muslims.
>>Hun Invasions
of Justinian/Khosrau I
Nothingburger + not exactly threatening to the state as a whole
>how did the Byzantines recover from so many calamities?
It was literally a thousand years of the agony of the real Rome lol. Byzantium always only lost and weakened, never returned lost (except Justinian in the beginning and Basil). And Byzantium was not Rome. Byzantium is Rome in the same sense as the NCR of Fallaut is the USA.
Despite all the memes of instability, this was largely limited to the top-job, and the empire inherited, and maintained up until 1204, and even when they restored themselves did a decent job at getting it back into in a capable order, a robust state bureaucracy.
The lives of the everyday citizen in the ERE contrasted with those in either Western Europe or the Caliphate were vastly better, in both availability of food, cost of food, quality of education, literacy, and the order in which taxes were levied.
Partly why the Fourth Crusade was so destructive, was that the Franks and Venetians intentionally targeted civil administrators and clergymen, before finding themselves in a system these largely illiterate and feudal frickwits didn't know how to manage, and assumed because they couldn't run it, that it was needlessly complicated from the start, ignoring the centuries before that it worked. I mean frick, the Latin Empire's economy was so poor (also partly due to Venice), despite being on formerly one of the richest areas in Afro-Eurasia, that it relied on selling off holy relics back to Western Europe.
this, state structure, and may I add, roman civilitas and martial know-how
the "1000 years agony" is top moronic takes from IQfy
the laskarid dynasty did not have the walls nor the peninsula but could still recover in between giants thanks to their economic and military reforms
Liberally applying Incredible amounts of violence
Because they were Romans