The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine EmpireIn this book, the distinguished writer Edward N. Luttwak presents the grand strategy of the eastern Roman empire we know as Byzantine, which lasted more than twice as long as the more familiar western Roman empire, eight hundred years by the shortest definition. This extraordinary endurance is all the more remarkable because the Byzantine empire was favored neither by geography nor by military preponderance. Yet it was the western empire that dissolved during the fifth century. |
From inside the book
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... western portion going to Honorius and the eastern to his brother Arkadios, few could have foretold the drastically different fates of the two halves. Defended by Germanic field commanders, then dominated by Germanic warlords ...
... western lands as well. Yet the empire did not collapse in defeat until the conquest of Constantinople in the name of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, to then revive once more in much-diminished form until the final Ottoman victory of 1453 ...
... western counterpart.4 On its long eastern frontier, running some five hundred miles from the Caucasus to the Euphrates, it still had to face the persistently aggressive Sasanian empire of Iran, which had long been the most dangerous ...
... western half: coastal North Africa, which was then fertile and exported much grain, the entire Iberian Peninsula ... western empire that faded away during the fifth century. In essence, the eastern, or Byzantine, empire so greatly ...
... western empire could not—made this possible, if only by a very small margin at times. The first was a system of tax collection that was uniquely effective for the times and that none of the empire's enemies could begin to match. After a ...
Contents
1 | |
The Myth and the Methods
| 95 |
III The Byzantine Art of War
| 235 |
Grand Strategy and the Byzantine Operational Code
| 409 |
Was Strategy Feasible in Byzantine Times? | 421 |
Emperors from Constantine I to Constantine XI
| 423 |
Glossary
| 427 |
Notes
| 433 |
Works Cited
| 473 |
Index of Names
| 491 |
General Index
| 495 |