(10) ANTHONY KALDELLIS –

THE NEW ROMAN EMPIRE: A HISTORY OF BYZANTIUM (2023)

 

 

My wildcard tenth place entry as best history book of 2023 is this history of the eastern Roman Empire – from founding to fall of Constantinople, with more than a millennium of history in between them.

 

By the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 AD– on the threshold of the Spanish discovery of the Americas and marking the start of the early modern period – the empire was effectively reduced to the city itself with some spare change left behind in the couch in the Peloponnese.

 

It had come a long way – and fallen so far – from its glorious founding as new imperial capital from the former city of Byzantium by Constantine in 330 AD, reigning as sole emperor over the whole classical Roman empire. From that point the empire was almost inevitably destined to be divided (again) into western and eastern halves, with the latter ruled from Constantinople and almost inevitably destined to outlast the former.

 

The founding of Constantinople and its rule over the eastern empire that became the sole empire once its western counterpart fell prompts consideration of what to call that empire, which is addressed from the outset of the book – and in its title.

 

It was of course, as they considered themselves to be, the continuation of the Roman Empire, but it also had important distinctions from the former classical empire – distinctions that allowed it to endure as long as it did and not merely as a “pale facsimile of classical Rome” but “a vigorous state of its own, inheritor of many of Rome’s features, and a vital node in the first truly globalized world”.

 

Western history has borrowed from Constantinople’s former title Byzantium – as indeed does the book’s subtitle and its author as self-described Byzantist – to call it the Byzantine empire, often to the detriment of the empire’s continuity with the Roman Empire. I guess Constantinopolitan Empire doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

 

That is something which this book resists, advocating persuasively against that usage. While it is no doubt a term with an unfortunate history of usage, much like the general usage of Byzantine as a pejorative adjective, I think the title of Byzantine Empire may well be too ingrained in common usage to shake.

 

The common alternative has been to call it the Eastern Roman Empire – a usage similar to that of various Chinese dynasties to distinguish their geographical extent at different times, such as the Southern Song dynasty.

 

The book makes a persuasive case for a title as the New Roman Empire but then doesn’t really use that beyond the book’s title and introduction, instead preferring to use Romania – a usage that I don’t think will catch on for potential confusion with the modern nation of that name. Also come on – neo-Roman Empire was right there!

 

As for the book’s history of that thousand-year empire, it’s pretty much summed up by that earlier quote about it as a “vigorous state of its own” – one which endured through “innovative institutions and a bottomless strategic playbook”, the latter including what in modern parlance is called soft power and set out in one of the book’s many engaging points.

 

Another engaging point is that the book plays into my preference for thematic history, not simply chronicling what happened but asking how and why it did – above all, the question of how and why the empire “lasted so long lies at the heart of the book”.

 

That can be broken down into further questions, which the book engages. How and why did it survive when the western empire didn’t? How and why did it almost succumb to enemies after that, notably the Persians and Arabs when it came within a heartbeat of falling? How and why did it then rebound after those and other occasions of decline?

 

As to the book’s big question of how and why it lasted so long, a fundamental part of the answer is reflected in its preferred usage of Romania – that the empire transformed itself to resemble not so much subjects under imperial rule as participants in a Roman nation state.

 

A further engaging point is that the author doesn’t shrink on occasion from laying down some snide snark – such as when channelling his inner Procopius, he lets the occasional barb slip that he really doesn’t like Justinian. He quips that the Plague of Justinian was the only thing the emperor didn’t want to name after himself – ooo, sick imperial burn! Of course, in this house, Justinian is a hero – although even I have to admit he overextended the empire.

 

Less engaging for me is when he detours into the endless theological disputes in the broader history of Christianity within the empire. Yes, yes – I know the history of the empire is intimately caught up with the history of Christianity within it but my eyes mostly glazed over when the book went there.

 

Except for the dispute over icons – that kept my interest, although I suppose it helped it just involved the simply use (or prohibition from use) of images and not some mindbogglingly pedantic semantics. Also, there was the book’s insight that the iconoclasts were not as, well, iconoclastic as they were made out to be.

 

Even so, I preferred the book’s more straightforward political and military history of when the empire was kicking ass or having its ass kicked.

 

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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