Daily Archives: July 25, 2024

Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Roman Empires (9) Empire of Trebizond & Principality of Theodoro

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Map of the approximate borders of the Empire of Trebizond shortly after the establishment of the Latin Empire, with the short-lived possessions in western Anatolia conquered by David Komnenos – map by Samhann for Wikipedia “Empire of Trebizond” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

 

 

(9) EMPIRE OF TREBIZOND & PRINCIPALITY OF THEODORO

(1204-1461 / 1475 AD)

 

One of the three major residual successor states to the eastern Roman Empire after the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade in 1204 – and the one with coolest alternative name, the Trapezuntine Empire.

(Which always prompts to my mind images of the Trapezoid Empire, itself prompted by that pyramid scheme in The Simpsons protesting that their model was more of a trapezoid).

Like the other two vestigial states, it claimed to be the legitimate successor of the eastern Roman Empire – but pushed that claim the least of the three of them, preferring to do its own thing on the Black Sea coast and peacefully abandoning its claim in 1281 or so by treaty with the Nicene imperial state that did succeed in claiming back the empire.

Interestingly, the Trapezuntine Empire was formed before the fall of Constantinople, essentially as a descendant of the last truly great imperial dynasty took the opportunity presented by the encampment of Crusaders outside Constantinople for a military adventure to found his own empire, in alliance with the kingdom of Georgia.

Before that, Trebizond had a long history of doing its own thing even when part of the Roman empire and the Trapezuntine Empire just carried on that history, only more so through the wealth of its trade and pimping out its princesses famed for their beauty.

And there must be something to that foreign policy of bling and booty as Trebizond survived longest among the eastern Roman successor states (setting aside the residual Serbian or Italian dependency that was in Epirus), outlasting the fall of Constantinople until it too was besieged and conquered by the Ottomans in 1261.

Even then, its bizarro Byzantine offshoot in a sliver of Crimea, the Principality of Theodoro, lasted another 14 years until it too fell to the Ottomans in 1475.

Top Tens – Philosophy & Science: Top 10 Books (6) Eric Hoffer – The True Believer

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(6) ERIC HOFFER –

THE TRUE BELIEVER: THOUGHTS ON THE NATURE OF MASS MOVEMENTS (1951)

 

First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women.

That’s paraphrasing Scarface of course. While it’s close, it’s not quite what American social philosopher Eric Hoffer proposed for his tripartite classification for the development of mass movements – first you get the “men of words or fault-finding intellectuals”, then you get the fanatics, and then you get the “practical men of action”. (Still not sure when you get the women though).

Those categories are not mutually exclusive – they may overlap in the same person or persons – but when the “practical men of action” take over leadership from the fanatics, it marks the end of the movement’s “dynamic phase” (with the movement more establishing itself as a social institution) and “steering the mass movement away from the fanatic’s self-destructiveness”.

And “in the absence of a practical man of action, the mass movement often withers and dies with the fanatic (Nazism died as a viable mass movement with Hitler’s death).”

The book is exactly what it says on tin – thoughts on the nature of mass movements that “arise to challenge the status quo”, including their success or failure, and rise or fall.

One of the book’s interesting (and famous) propositions is that mass movements are interchangeable, whether radical or reactionary – and whether religious, political or something else – they are similar in terms of the psychology of their adherents. The movements attract the same sort of people, some of whom flip from one to another – such as St Paul as religious hitman turned evangelist, or fanatical opponent of Christianity turned fanatical proponent of Christianity.

Hoffer’s prose style was characteristically aphoristic – pithy aphorisms or turns of phrase that stick in the mind and resonate afterwards. Perhaps the most famous is “mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil”.

They’re not all bad either – Hoffer “gives examples of how the same forces that give rise to true believer mass movements can be channelled in more positive ways”.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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