Book
The Byzantines
First published 2016
Alfred Duggan gives a compact history of the eastern Roman Empire, whose inhabitants understood themselves as Romans although later historians called them Byzantines. Beginning with Constantinople’s emergence as an imperial capital, he follows the state’s survival after imperial rule collapsed in western Europe and its position between the Mediterranean, the Balkans and the powers of the Near East.
The account considers imperial government, Orthodox Christianity, military defence, diplomacy, art and scholarship across a thousand years. Duggan balances Byzantium’s preservation of classical learning and creation of a distinctive Christian civilisation against the violence of court politics, religious controversy and repeated invasion, carrying the story towards the Ottoman capture of Constantinople in 1453.
This short history was published posthumously in 2016.
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