l'Enfermé
27th March 2013, 20:22
I'm glad that Rafiq mentioned that. Soviet research into Byzantine history is indeed the best in the world, and more than that, it was conducted from a Marxist and materialist point of view.
The short answer to your question is basically: the slave system disintegrated in the Eastern Roman Empire between the 4th and 7th centuries. Between the 7th century and the 13th, the country underwent intense feudal development at first, and then, the decay of feudalism began. But this answer is hardly satisfactory, so, take a look at this article from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia:
Byzantine Empireor Byzantium, a state that arose in the fourth century during the decline of the Eastern Roman Empire and lasted until the middle of the 15th century.
The capital of the Byzantine Empire was Constantinople, which was founded by the emperor Constantine I between 324 and 330 on the site of the former Megaran colony of Byzantium (hence the name of the state Byzantium, which was introduced by the humanists after the empire fell). With the founding of Constantinople the Byzantine Empire began to become autonomous within the heart of the Roman Empire. (The history of the empire is usually dated from this time.) The culmination of this independence is generally considered to have taken place in 395, when, after the death of Theodosius I, the last emperor of a unified Roman state, who reigned from 379 to 395, the final division of the Roman Empire into the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire and the Western Roman Empire took place. Arcadius (395-408) be-came the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Byzantines called themselves Romans (in Greek, Romaioi) and their state “The Empire of the Romans.” Throughout the course of its existence the Byzantine Empire experienced many changes in its territorial possessions.
The ethnic composition of the empire was mixed: the population included Greeks, Syrians, Copts, Armenians, Georgians, Jews, Hellenized minor Asiatic tribes, Thracians, Illyrians, and Dacians. With the curtailment of Byzantine territory (beginning in the seventh century) some of these peoples were left outside of the frontiers of the empire. At the same time new peoples settled on Byzantine land (for example, the Goths in the fourth and fifth centuries, Slavs in the sixth and seventh centuries, Arabs in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, and Pechenegs and Cumans in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries). From the sixth to the 11th centuries the population of the Byzantine Empire included ethnic groups from which the Italian nationality was later formed. The dominant role in the economic, political, and cultural life of the empire was played by the Greek population. The official language of the empire from the fourth to the sixth centuries was Latin; from the seventh century until the end of the empire’s existence it was Greek.
There are many complex problems in the socioeconomic history of the Byzantine Empire, and there are different conceptions of their solutions in modern Byzantine scholarship. One example is the determination of the Byzantine Empire’s period of transition from a slaveholding society to a feudal one. In the opinion of N. V. Pigulevskaia and E. E. Lipshits, slavery in the Byzantine Empire had already lost its importance by the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries; but according to Z. V. Udal’tsova (and A. P. Kazhdan), until the sixth and seventh centuries slaveholding was predominant in the empire. (Although he agrees in general with this point of view, M. la. Siuziumov considers the period between the fourth and llth centuries “prefeudal.”)
The history of the Byzantine Empire can roughly be divided into three major periods. The first period (from the fourth century to the middle of the seventh) is characterized by a disintegration of the slaveholding system and the beginning of the establishment of feudal relations. The distinguishing feature of the genesis of feudalism in the Byzantine Empire was the spontaneous growth of a feudal system within a decayed, slaveholding society while a late classical government structure was being preserved. Agrarian relations in the early Byzantine Empire were characterized by the retention of masses of the free peasantry and peasant communes, the widespread extension of the coloni and long-term tenant leases (emphyteuses), and a distribution, more intensive than in the West, of portions of land in the form of peculia among slaves. In the Byzantine village in the seventh century there was an undermining or a complete abolition of large-scale land ownership based on slaveholding. A system of peasant communes was established on the territories of former estates. In the remaining large estates (primarily in Asia Minor) the labor of coloni and slaves began to be substituted by the increasingly extensive use of the labor of free peasants, or tenant farmers.
The Byzantine city of the fourth and fifth centuries basically remained a classical slaveholding polis; but at the end of the fourth century the smaller poleis began to decline and to turn into agrarian settlements, and during the fifth century new cities arose that were no longer city-states, but trading, craft, and administrative centers. The largest city in the empire was Constantinople, the center of crafts and international trade. The Byzantine Empire conducted a brisk trade with Iran, India, China, and other countries; moreover, in its trade with Western European states around the Mediterranean Sea it enjoyed hegemony. The Byzantine Empire was ahead of the countries of Western Europe in its level of development of crafts and trade and in the degree of intensity of its urban life during this period. In the seventh century, however, the city-states declined completely—a considerable number of them underwent agrarianization, and the center of public life shifted to the village.
During the fourth and fifth centuries the Byzantine Empire was a centralized, military-bureaucratic monarchy. Complete power was concentrated in the hands of the emperor (basileus). The Senate was an advisory organ to the emperor. The free population was divided into orders, the highest of which was the senatorial estates. Political parties of a sort known as demes were a serious social force in the fifth century and thereafter. The most important of these were the Veneti (led by the highest dignitaries) and the Prasinoi (which reflected the interests of the upper layers of tradesmen and craftsmen). In the fourth century Christianity became the dominant religion. (In 354 and 392 the government issued laws against paganism.) From the fourth to the seventh centuries Christian dogma was developed and a church hierarchy took shape. At the end of the fourth century monasteries began to be built and the church became a rich organization that possessed numerous landholdings. The clergy were freed from the payment of taxes and duties (with the exception of the land tax). As a result of the conflict between various tendencies within Christianity (Arianism, Nestorianism, and so forth), Orthodoxy became completely dominant in the Byzantine Empire during the reign of the emperor Justinian in the sixth century (although as early as the end of the fourth century the emperor Theodosius I attempted to reestablish church unity and transform Constantinople into the center of Orthodoxy).
In the 370’s both the foreign and domestic policy of Byzantium were determined by its relations with the barbarians. In 375, with the forced consent of the emperor Valens, the Visigoths settled on Byzantine territories south of the Danube. In 376 the Visigoths, enraged by their oppression at the hands of the Byzantine authorities, rose in revolt. In 378 the combined units of the Visigoths and sections of the rebellious population utterly routed the army of Valens at Adrianople. With great difficulty (at the price of concessions to the barbarian aristocracy) the emperor Theodosius succeeded in crushing the uprising in 380. In July 400 the barbarians almost occupied Constantinople, and they were driven from the city only because of the intervention in the battle of the broad strata of the urban population. By the end of the fourth century, with the increase in the number of mercenaries and foederati, the Byzantine army was barbarized; due to the barbarians’ settlement there was a temporary extension of small-scale free land ownership and colonization. Whereas the Western Roman Empire, which experienced a profound crisis, fell under attack by the barbarians, the Byzantine Empire proved to be economically and politically more viable, and this allowed them to stand up against the barbarian incursions. (In the Byzantine Empire the crisis of the slaveholding economy occurred with less force and the cities were preserved as centers of crafts and trade and retained a powerful apparatus of authority.) During the 470’s and 480’s the empire repelled the onslaught of the Ostrogoths.
At the end of the fifth century and during the sixth century a period of economic upturn and a certain political stabilization began in the Byzantine Empire. Financial reform was adopted in the interest of the upper echelons of the trade and crafts groups in the important cities of the Byzantine Empire, primarily Constantinople. For example, they abolished the chrysargyron (the tax that was collected from the urban population), farmed out the taxes that had formerly been collected by the state, and collected land taxes in money. Social dissatisfaction among the plebeian masses led to a sharpening of the conflict between the Veneti and the Prasinoi. In the eastern provinces of the empire there was intensified opposition from the Monophysitic religious movement, which combined the ethnic, ecclesiastical, social, and political interests of various classes of the populations of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. At the end of the fifth century and the beginning of the sixth, Slavic tribes began to enter Byzantine territories from the north across the Danube (in 493, 499, and 502). During the reign of the emperor Justinian I (527-565) the Byzantine Empire reached the highest point of its political and military power. Justinian’s major goals were the reestablishment of the unity of the Roman Empire and the strengthening of the authority of a single emperor. He relied politically upon the broad circles of the middle and small landowners and slaveholders and limited the claims of the senatorial aristocracy; at the same time he made an alliance with the Orthodox Church. The first few years of Justinian’s reign were marked by major popular movements (for example, in 529 and 530 the uprising of the Samaritans in Palestine, and in 532 the Nika revolt in Constantinople). The government of Justinian carried out a codification of the civil law. Justinian’s laws, directed to a considerable degree at strengthening slaveholding relations, nevertheless reflected the changes that had occurred in Byzantine social life. It facilitated the standardization of forms of property and the equalization of the population’s civil rights, established a new system of inheritance, and compelled heretics to convert to Orthodoxy under threat of deprivation of their civil rights and even capital punishment. During Justinian’s reign, centralization of the government was intensified and a strong army was created. This made it possible for Justinian to repulse the attacks of the Persians in the east and the Slavs in the north and conduct extensive conquests in the west (in 533 and 534 the Vandal state in North Africa, in 535-555 the Ostrogoth kingdom in Italy, and in 554 the southeastern regions of Spain). The conquests of Justinian, however, proved to be unstable; in the western regions that had been won back from the barbarians, the rule of the Byzantines and their restoration of slavery, as well as the Roman tax system, inspired revolts among the population. (An uprising within the army in 602 became a civil war aad led to a change of emperors; the throne passed to the centurion Phocas.) At the end of the sixth century and during the seventh the Byzantine Empire lost the regions it had conquered in the west (with the exception of southern Italy). Between 636 and 642 the Arabs conquered the richest eastern provinces of the Byzantine Empire (Syria, Palestine, and Upper Mesopotamia), and between 693 and 698 its possessions in North Africa. By the end of the seventh century the territory of the Byzantine Empire included no more than one-third of Justinian’s domains. At the end of the sixth century the settlement of the Balkan Peninsula by Slavic tribes began. In the seventh century they settled a considerable number of territories within the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire (in Moesia, Thrace, Macedonia, Dalmatia, Istria, and parts of Greece; and a number of slaves even in Asia Minor), although they pre-served their own language, daily life-style, and culture. There was also a change in the ethnic composition of the population in the eastern part of Asia Minor; settlements of Armenians, Persians, Syrians, and Arabs appeared. With the loss of some of its eastern provinces, however the Byzantine Empire as a whole became ethnically more uniform; its central territory consisted of lands that were settled by Greeks or Greek-speaking Hellenized tribes.
The second period (from the middle of the seventh century to the beginning of the thirteenth) was characterized by an intensive development of feudalism. As a result of the decrease in its territory at the beginning of this period, the Byzantine Empire was primarily a Greek state, and during the llth and 12th centuries (when it included Slavic lands) it was a Greco-Slavic state. Despite its territorial losses it remained one of the strongest powers in the Mediterranean area. In the Byzantine village from the eighth century to the first half of the ninth century the free rural commune began to predominate; the communal relations of the Slavic tribes that had settled in the Byzantine Empire also facilitated the strengthening of the local Byzantine peasant communes. The legislative landmark of the eighth century that is known as the Farmers’ Law testifies to the presence of neighborhood communes, the property differentiations within them, and the beginning of their disintegration. From the eighth century to the first half of the ninth century the Byzantine cities continued to experience a decline. During the seventh and eighth centuries important changes took place in the administrative structure of the empire. The old dioceses and provinces were replaced by new, military-administrative districts known as themes. All the military and civil authority in a theme was concentrated in the hands of the commander of the theme army—the strategus. The free peasants who made up the army, the stratiotai, were enrolled by the government in the class of hereditary owners of military land sections in return for undergoing military service. The theme system essentially signified the decentralization of the state. It strengthened the empire’s military potential and made the achievement of success in wars against the Arabs and Bulgars possible during the reigns of Leo Ill (717-741) and Constantine V (741-775). Leo Ill’s policy was directed at combating the separatist tendencies of the local aristocracy (as is shown by the publication in 726 of the collection of laws entitled Ecloga, which divided the themes into smaller units) and at limiting the self-government of the cities. During the eighth century and the first half of the ninth century an extensive religious and political movement known as iconoclasm began in the Byzantine empire, reflecting primarily the op-position of the popular masses to the ruling church, which was closely linked to the higher aristocracy of Constantinople. Iconoclasm was used by the provincial aristocracy in its own interests and was led by the emperors of the Isaurian dynasty, who confiscated monastery and church treasuries for their own use in the course of their struggle with the iconodules. This struggle raged with particular force during the reign of the emperor Constantine V. In 754 he convoked a church assembly that condemned the veneration of icons. The policy of the iconoclast emperors strengthened the provincial aristocracy. The growth of large landowning and the attack of the feudal lords on the peasant communes led to a sharpening of the class struggle. In the middle of the seventh century the popular-heretical movement of the Paulicians began in the eastern part of the Byzantine Empire in western Armenia, spreading throughout Asia Minor in the eighth and ninth centuries. Another major popular movement in the Byzantine Empire during the ninth century was the uprising of 820-825, led by Thomas the Slav (died 823), which took place on imperial territory in Asia Minor and in some parts of Thrace and Macedonia, and from the very beginning was antifeudal in thrust. The sharpening of the class struggle frightened the feudal lords; it compelled them to overcome the schism in their ranks and reestablish the veneration of icons in 843. The truce among the government, the military aristocracy, the higher clergy, and the monasteries was accompanied by fierce persecutions of the Paulicians. The Paulician movement, which became an armed uprising during the middle of the ninth century, was suppressed in 872.
The second half of the ninth century and the whole tenth century belonged to a period in which the Byzantines created a centralized feudal monarchy with a strong government and a pervasive bureaucratic administrative apparatus. One of the principal ways of exploiting the peasants during this time was the centralized rent, which was collected in the form of numerous taxes. The presence of a strong central authority explains to a considerable extent the absence in Byzantium of a feudal-hierarchical structure. In contrast to Western European states, the vassal-lien system remained undeveloped in the empire; feudal troops were detachments of bodyguards and retinues rather than an army of a feudal magnate’s vassals. Two strata of the ruling class played the major role in the country’s political life: the big feudal lords (dinati) in the provinces and the bureaucratic aristocracy connected with the trade and craft circles in Constantinople. These social groupings, constant rivals of each other, transferred power back and forth. By the 11th century feudal relations in the Byzantine Empire had basically become dominant. The utter defeat of the popular movements made it easy for the feudal lords to attack the institution of the free peasant commune. The impoverishment of the peasants and the military settlers (stratiotai) led to a decline in the general levy of the stratiotai and reduced the peasants’ capacity to pay. (The peasants were the principal taxpayers.) Several emperors of the Macedonian dynasty (867-1056) relied on the aristocratic officials and the trade and craft circles of Constantinople and had an interest in obtaining taxes from the peasants, so they tried to retard the process whereby the commune members were deprived of their lands, the disintegration of the peasant communes, and the formation of feudal patrimonies. But their efforts were not at all successful. During the llth and 12th centuries the formation of the basic feudal institutions in the Byzantine Empire was completed. Patrimonial exploitation of the peasants had come to fruition. The free commune remained only in the empire’s outlying regions; elsewhere the peasants became feudally dependent people (paroikoi). Slave labor had lost all its importance in farming. In the llth and 12th centuries the pronoia (a form of conditional feudal landholding) gradually became widespread. The government distributed to the feudal lords the right of exkuseia (a special form of immunity). A specific trait of feudalism in the Byzantine Empire was the combination of seignorial exploitation of dependent peasants with the collection of a centralized rent for the benefit of the state.
In the second half of the ninth century there was an upturn in the Byzantine cities. The growth of craft production was connected primarily with an increased demand for crafted items on the part of the strengthened Byzantine feudal aristocracy, but also with the growth of the empire’s foreign trade. The flourishing of the cities was facilitated by the policy of the emperors, who provided privileges to the trade and craft corporate guilds and other organizations. By the tenth century Byzantine cities had acquired the traits characteristic of medieval cities: small-scale craft production, the formation of trade and craft corporate guilds, and the regulation of the activity of these organizations by the state. A feature of the Byzantine city was the retention of the institution of slavery, although the main figure in production became the free artisan. In the tenth and llth centuries most Byzantine cities were no longer only fortresses or administrative or episcopal centers; they became a point of concentration for crafts and trade also. Until the middle of the 12th century Constantinople remained the center of transit trade between the East and the West. Byzantine seafaring and trade played an increasingly important role in the basin of the Mediterranean Sea despite competition from the Arabs and Normans. In the 12th century changes occurred in the economies of the Byzantine cities. There was a certain curtailment of craft production and a lowering of the standard of production techniques in Constantinople, although there was an upturn in the provincial cities—for example, Thessaloniki, Corinth, Thebes, Athens, Ephesus, and Nicaea. The penetration into the Byzantine Empire of the Venetians and the Genoese, who obtained considerable trading privileges from the Byzantine emperors, ruinously affected the economy of the Byzantine cities. The development of Byzantine crafts (especially in the capital) was hindered by government regulation of the corporate guilds’ activity.
In the second half of the ninth century the church’s influence increased. During the patriarchate of Photius (858-867), the Byzantine church, usually submissive to the emperors, began to defend the idea of the equality of the spiritual and the secular authorities and called for the active Christianization of neighboring peoples with the aid of church missions; there was an attempt to introduce Orthodoxy into Moravia and the Christianization of Bulgaria was carried out around 865 by the mission of Cyril and Methodius. Differences between the patriarchate of Constantinople and the papal throne, which sharpened during the patriarchate of Photius, led in 1054 to an official schism between the eastern and western churches. (From this time on the eastern church was called the Greco-Catholic [Orthodox] and the western church, the Roman Catholic.) The final separation of these churches occurred, however, after 1204.
The foreign policy of Byzantium from the second half of the ninth century to the llth century was characterized by continual wars against the Arabs, Slavs, and later the Nor-mans. In the middle of the tenth century the Byzantine Empire won back from the Arabs Upper Mesopotamia, part of Asia Minor, Syria, Crete, and Cyprus. In 1018 the empire conquered the kingdom of western Bulgaria, and the Balkan Peninsula as far as the Danube River came under Byzantine rule. During the period of the ninth to 11th centuries relations with Kievan Rus’ began to play a large role in Byzantine foreign policy. After the siege of Constantinople by troops of the Kievan prince Oleg (907), the Byzantines were compelled in 911 to conclude a trade agreement that was advantageous for the Russians and facilitated the development of trade ties between Rus’ and the Byzantine Empire along the great route “from the Varangians to the Greeks.” During the last third of the tenth century the empire fought Rus’ for control of Bulgaria, and despite initial successes by the Kievan prince Sviatoslav Igorevich, the Byzantine Empire was victorious. An alliance was concluded between Byzantium and Kievan Rus’ during the reign of the Kievan prince Vladimir Sviatoslavich. The Russians helped the Byzantine emperor Basil II put down the feudal revolt of Phocas Bardas (987-989), and Basil II was forced to agree to the marriage of his sister Anna to the Kievan prince Vladimir; this facilitated the alliance between the Byzantine Empire and Rus’. At the end of the tenth century Christianity was adopted by Russia from the Byzantine Empire (in the form of the Orthodox rite).
From the second third of the llth century to the early 1080’s the Byzantine Empire underwent a period of crisis. The state was shaken by “troubles” and a struggle was being waged by the provincial feudal lords against the aristocracy and officials of the capital (the feudal revolts of Maniaces [1043], Tornikios [1047], and Isaac Comnenus [1057], who temporarily seized the throne [1057-59]). The empire’s position vis-à-vis foreigners also worsened; the government was forced to repulse simultaneously the attacks of the Pechenegs and the Seljuk Turks. After the defeat of the Byzantine army by the Seljuk troops in 1071 at Manzikert (in Armenia) the empire lost most of Asia Minor. The West inflicted equally heavy losses on the Byzantine Empire. By the middle of the 11th century the Normans had seized the greater part of the empire’s possessions in southern Italy; in 1071 they occupied the last point of Byzantine resistance, the city of Bari (in Apulia).
The struggle for the throne sharpened in the 1070’s and culminated in 1081 with the victory of the Comnenian dynasty (1081-1185), which represented the interests of the provincial feudal aristocracy and relied upon a narrow layer of the aristocracy that was united to it by marital bonds. The Comneni tore the state administration away from the old bureaucratic system and introduced a new system of titles to be awarded only to the higher aristocracy. Power in the provinces was transferred to the military commanders (duxes). Instead of the general people’s levy of the stratiotai, the importance of which had declined as early as the tenth century, during the reign of the Comneni a major role began to be played by the heavily armed cavalry (katafraktoi), which resembled Western European knights, and by foreign mercenaries. The strengthening of the state and the army allowed the Comneni to make gains in their foreign policy at the end of the llth century and the beginning of the 12th (repulsing the Norman offensive in the Balkans, winning back a considerable part of Asia Minor from the Seljuks, and establishing sovereignty over Antioch). Manuel I compelled Hungary to acknowledge the sovereignty of the Byzantine Empire (1164) and consolidated his power in Serbia. But in 1176 the Byzantine army was defeated by the Turks at Myriocephalum. Along all its borders it was forced to go on the defensive. After the death of Manuel I a popular revolt began in Constantinople (1181), caused by dissatisfaction with the government’s policy of granting protection to Italian merchants and Western European knights who had joined the imperial service. Andronicus I (1183-85), a representative of a lateral branch of the Comnenus family, made use of this revolt to come to power. His reforms were directed at setting the state bureaucratic apparatus in order and fighting corruption. Failures in the war against the Normans, dissatisfaction among the burghers with the trading privileges that the emperor had granted to the Venetians, and the use of terror against the feudal magnates alienated even the former allies of Andronicus I. In 1185 the Angeli dynasty (1185-1204) came to power as a result of an insurrection by the Constantinople magnates; its rule marked the decline of the Byzantine Empire’s domestic and foreign power. The country underwent a profound economic crisis; feudal disintegration was intensified, there was a de facto independence of the provincial governors from the central authority, the cities fell into decay, and the army and navy grew weak. The disintegration of the empire had begun. In 1187, Bulgaria broke away, and in 1190 the empire was compelled to acknowledge the independence of Serbia. At the end of the 12th century there was a sharp increase in the number of conflicts between the Byzantine Empire and the West. The papacy strove to subordinate the Byzantine church to the Roman curia; Venice succeeded in pushing its competitors, Genoa and Pisa, out of the empire; and the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire nurtured schemes of subduing Byzantium. As a result of the interweaving of all these political interests the direction of the Fourth Crusade (1202-04) was changed; instead of going to Palestine it went to Constantinople. In 1204, under the attack of the crusaders, Constantinople fell, and the Byzantine Empire ceased to exist as a real empire.
The third period (1204-1453) was characterized by a further intensification of feudal disintegration, a decline of the central authority, and a continuous struggle against foreign invaders. Elements of the disintegration of the feudal economy began to appear. The Latin Empire (1204-61) was established in an area of Byzantine territory that had been conquered by the crusaders. The Latins suppressed Greek culture in Byzantium, and the dominance of the Italian trader-merchants hindered the rebirth of the Byzantine cities. Because of the resistance of the local population the crusaders did not succeed in extending their power over the entire Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor. On the Byzantine territories that they failed to subdue, independent Greek states came into being: the Nicaean Empire (1204-61), the Trebizond Empire (1204-1461), and the state of Epirus (1204-1337).
The Nicaean Empire played the leading role in the struggle against the Latin Empire. In 1261 the Nicaean emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus reconquered Constantinople and restored the Byzantine Empire with the support of the Greek population of the Latin Empire. The Palaeologan dynasty (1261-1453) was consolidated on the throne. During the final period of its existence Byzantium was only a small feudal state. The Trebizond Empire (until the end of the Byzantine Empire’s existence) and Epirus (until its annexation by Byzantium in 1337) remained independent. During this period feudal relations continued to predominate in Byzantium; under conditions of the complete domination of the great feudal lords in the Byzantine cities, the Italian economic predominance, and the Turkish military threat (from the end of the 13th century to the beginning of the 14th) the first manifestations of early capitalist relations (for example, tenant rent of the enterprise type in the village) quickly perished. The intensification of feudal exploitation brought about popular movements in the countryside and the city. In 1262 there was the uprising of the Bithynian border-fighters—frontier military settlers in Asia Minor. In the 1340’s, during a period of bitter struggle between two feudal cliques over the throne (the followers of the Palaeologan dynasty and those of the Cantacuzene), antifeudal uprisings raged in Thrace and Macedonia. A unique characteristic of the class struggle of the popular masses during this period was the joint action of the urban and rural populations against the feudal lords. The popular movement developed with particular strength in Thessaloniki, where the uprising was led by the Zealots (1342-49). The victory of the feudal reaction and the continual occurrence of feudal internecine conflicts weakened Byzantium, which could not stand up against the attacks of the Ottoman Turks. At the beginning of the 14th century they seized the Byzantine possessions in Asia Minor (in 1354, Gallipoli, and in 1362, Adrianople, whither the sultan transferred his capital in 1365), and later they took possession of all of Thrace. After the defeat of the Serbs at Maritsa (1371), Byzantium followed the example of Serbia and acknowledged its vassal dependence on the Turks. The defeat of the Turks by the forces of the Middle Asiatic conqueror Tamerlane in 1402 in a battle at Ankara postponed the fall of Byzantium for several decades. In this situation the Byzantine government sought support from the countries of Western Europe in vain; nor was there any real aid forthcoming from the Council of Ferrara-Florence, which in 1439 provided for a union between the Orthodox and Catholic churches on condition that the primacy of the papal throne be acknowledged. (This union was rejected by the Byzantine people.) The Turks renewed their attacks on Byzantium; and the economic decline of the latter, the sharpening of class conflicts, feudal internecine warfare, and the self-seeking, greedy policy of the Western European states all facilitated the victory of the Ottoman Turks. After a two-month siege, Constantinople was captured and plundered by an onslaught of the Turkish army on May 29, 1453. In 1460 the conquerers subdued Morea, and in 1461 they seized the Trebizond Empire. By the early 1460’s the Byzantine Empire had ceased to exist, and its territories were included in the Ottoman Empire.
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