tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1680622593910991248.post7687634691985769960..comments2023-11-03T03:45:54.322-04:00Comments on Fox Home: 1453 -- The Holy War for Constantinople + The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New HistoryFoxessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06754083123669916994noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1680622593910991248.post-16384693777741855122017-02-26T17:36:09.919-05:002017-02-26T17:36:09.919-05:00Trade and commerce are the most important element ...Trade and commerce are the most important element for even the smallest group moiety that claims rulership. Without them there is no taxation. Pirenne claims all this Roman administrative infrastructure for both military rulers and the monasteries -- so what were they taxing, if not goods?<br /><br />Which is why it took until the rise of the nation-state to bring down the power of the Hansa. The pool for taxation that the French in particular could call up, could support armies and navies powerful enough to take down even the fabulously wealthy Hansa cities. They couldn't compete financially with a nation state and its capacity to tax.<br /><br />The Ottomans, it has been argued, also had one of the very few slave societies, and even did slave-breeding in the way the antebellum south did.<br /><br />I'm not sure this is true. The evidence I've seen is quite slight, and comes principally out of the Spanish court of Isabella. She was obsessional about the Turks, for good and real reasons, of course. But she was willing to believe anything about them.<br /><br />Considering the enormous numbers of slaves that were always imported from the wars they and their client states engaged in so constantly, there hardly seems reason to do so. Slaves were CHEAP in Instanbul, with exceptions of course for the exceptionally talented, skilled and beautiful.Foxessahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06754083123669916994noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1680622593910991248.post-26362817000663333342017-02-26T17:35:02.745-05:002017-02-26T17:35:02.745-05:00Constantinople''s conquest by the Ottomans...Constantinople''s conquest by the Ottomans did far more to divide east and west than the Saracens were able to do.<br /><br />The extraordinarily lucrative trade with the east, carried on through Constantinople and that old empire, even in the 12th and 13th centuries, was enormous (see, for instance, the Polos). The Genoese and others as well as the Venetians had mercantile empires throughout the Black, Caspian, Aegean Seas, and ports in Greece and coastal areas of what we now think of as Turkey. In the north, the Hansa was in the game.<br /><br />The Conquest shut this off for while -- the Venetians had an embassy and ambassador at Istanbul soon after the Conquest. They were deeply entrenched by the 16th century. Elizabeth had diplomatic and trade relationships with Sulyeman, as well as with the Hansa.<br /><br />The Church tried to preach Crusade after the conquest in 1453. But Europe wasn't that interested. The secularization of culture contributed no small part. Their own religious controversies, fueled by the printing press and the stirrings of the Reformation also played a large role. <br /><br />The cities and people who were involved in Europe fighting the Turks in these centuries were those Italy, Spain and France hardly considered Europe at all. The front lines holding back the Turks -- and the Tartars -- were Poland and the Balkan - Hungarian - Russian states. They did so much to hold back the constantly threatening storm of Ottomans as they eyed and coveted both Vienna and Rome.<br /><br />Mehmet overtly saw himself the inheritor of the Roman Empire, and he believed he could and should unite the entire world into one empire under Ottoman and Allah's rule. <br /><br />It's all so interesting, if also tragic. We're still dealing with all of it even now.Foxessahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06754083123669916994noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1680622593910991248.post-60185274240666554612017-02-26T17:34:12.335-05:002017-02-26T17:34:12.335-05:00Among what one learns as to the Pirenne Thesis get...Among what one learns as to the Pirenne Thesis getting things wrong -- particularly no trade from the east and in the Mediterranean from the 7th - 14th centuries because, he says, Islam.<br /><br />I do not mean that part of Pirenne's thesis which is Roman culture, administration continued in these centuries in the west -- even, as mentioned above, Mehmet considered himself the legitimate heir of the Roman Empire. What I mean is arguments about trade and commerce into and out of the east into the west stopped because of the Arabs in the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries. <br /><br />I haven't accepted this in my later years of dealing with more recent scholarship. Islam itself in the east and the Mediterranean had trouble with trade and commerce in the 7th and 8th and 9th centuries due to many elements, including they didn't have the naval expertise in those centuries yet. It took the Ottomans to master this. The reduction in trade, as far it was reduced, was caused by many things, but Islam was far from being the principle reason. And in these centuries Venice (it was in 450 C.E. that the lagoons were settled with significant population, and by 697 they raised their official flag of founding) and the North (the Hansa's muscle was fully formed at the start of the 12th century) begin trading in combinations of overland and water routes with the east -- the "Vikings" played a big role. As we at least recall, they were trading overland down south long before they even went a-viking in the world's classic image of Vikings trashing the Christians of England and France -- and they formed special guards and units for the Moors in Spain too, as well as in Constantinople.<br /><br />And especially by the time of the Carolingians -- particularly Charlemagne -- the Venetians were doing trade, commerce and taxation with the Muslims of Iberia and in Gaul great guns. At least as far as the technology of the time allowed for it.<br /><br />But neither the Gallo-romans nor Saracens had the technologies and resources in that era to do that kind of global trade, particularly the Saracens. <br /><br />It took the Ottoman mind and organizational skill to admire and understand naval technology (and gun powder and cannon) well enough to develop an effective Islamic military navy -- which, of course the west had to deal with in the Mediterranean as well as the other seas.<br /><br />Lepanto . . . Venice wanted the trade but they protected their own trade first second third and last, and were happy enough to have the Ottomans out of the game if possibly.<br /><br />But soon there were other options, and in other directions, and Spain and England, among others, were in the game and even on top of it. The Venetians (and Ottomans) were nowhere. Which of course we all understand when we just consider history after the first voyages west.Foxessahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06754083123669916994noreply@blogger.com