Posted on 09/07/2015 10:36:00 AM PDT by the scotsman
Lake Van is way the heck beyond the natural historic Byzantine defense lines of the Taurus and Anti-Taurus Mountains. The Byzantines never should’ve been out at Lake Van, but the successes of the earlier emperors Nicephoros Phocas, John Tzimisces and Basil II had expanded the empire’s borders to be not easily defensible.
The historic defense lines in Anatolia, which the Byzantines held for centuries against the Moslems, was where to hunker down. They could’ve held that forever.
The impact on European history of keeping Anatolia? Probably most pronounced in the Balkans. The Balkans would’ve been more of a first-world area, and not the tinder box it became later.
I kind of think Austria would’ve developed more or less the same, even without the historic conflict with the Turks.
(Just initial thoughts.)
Also to keep in mind though, the fall of Byzantium lent a very important impetus to the European Renaissance, by sending Greek scholars and manuscripts to the West, where they had a tremendous impact, especially in Italy, and by transmission from there, to the rest of the West.
Yes, a lot of the “learning” modern academics claim was transmitted by the Arabs actually came from the Greeks.
And another thing — the Crusades were started by Emperor Alexius Comnenus’s appeal for help to the West.
No Manzikert, no Crusades, no expansion of western European horizons from that.
Then later, no Turks might impact whether there was obstruction of the eastern overland trade routes, which led western Europeans to seek trade routes in the Atlantic ocean.
So Manzikert may have had some good consequences for western Europe.
(But I’d still take no defeat at Manzikert!)
I thought they were started by Pope Urban II?
He got a letter from Alexius Comnenus asking for help, IIRC.
He got a letter from Alexius Comnenus asking for help, IIRC
Thanks for the clarification, learn something new every day.
We need some people like them now!
It was Alexius’s letter that caused the pope to proclaim the Crusade.
Alexius was hoping the West would just send soldiers who would fight under him, but the Crusader armies went their own way.
It did help him recover a lot of western Anatolia, and his son John and grandson Manuel reconquered more, so by 1180, the Byzantines had back maybe 1/3 of their historic lands in Anatolia.
But they didn’t get all the way back to the Taurus and Anti-Taurus Mountain lines, so they didn’t have the old defensible boundaries.
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