The History of the Byzantine Empire

As the Roman Empire expanded to help govern it better it brought out the Western (old) Romans in Western Europe and the Eastern (new) Romans in Eastern Europe. Many in the west saw the east as Greeks, but the Eastern Romans saw themselves as the Roman Empire with its capital in Constantinople. Early on Emperor Constantine sought to keep the two united but as the fifth and sixth centuries rolled around they each had gone their separate ways. With chaos in the west, the east thrived after the west fell under Germanic tribes and the east later became known as the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine Empire lasted from 330-1453 a thousand years longer than the Western Roman Empire. Due to the placement of the Byzantine Empire and its capital, this empire became very wealthy. It was positioned between the Black Sea and the entrance of the Mediterranean Sea in the middle of a trade route in which the Asians, Europeans, and North Africans used. As their walls withstood many attempts of invasion, the Byzantine Empire’s walls were sure to fall to advent of cannons from the Ottoman Empire at the helm of Mehmed II.

Early in the new millennium as the Roman Empire was declining, the emperor thought it wise to split in half for he thought it would be easier to control. On 330 Constantinople was inaugurated and given a second name, New Rome. This city goes through vast changes and acquires a new religion, a new focus of gravity, and a major modification of culture. Constantinople offered the emperor a strategic place for protecting the empire in the west from invaders like the Persians in the Middle East. Even though Constantinople signified the beginning of the Byzantine Empire, it was the conclusion of the Roman Empire. For centuries...

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...lah, and Muhammad is his prophet. The great church, for many centuries the most magnificent in Christendom, now begins its career as a mosque. And Constantinople gradually acquires a new name; the urban area, widely referred to in everyday Greek as eis tin polin (in the city), becomes Istanbul (5, www.historyworld.net). The great city in the east once at the top of all in Europe was now in Muslim hands. Byzantine Empire helped maintain Roman and Greek culture as well as Christianity with the spreading of its ideas all around the world. These “new” Romans had made their mark by carrying on legacies of fallen emperors and sister empires. Even thought the city fell the new captures still considered themselves to carry on the Roman ways. The fall of Constantinople meant the closing of the famous trade route, the Silk Road.

Works Cited

History of World Societies