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Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 1.Ìý
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Tuesday, 5th July 2011
Is there any feel for whether, had the Crusades not happened, Byzantium might have survived Islam?
The Latin conquest and occupation in 1206 fatally weakened the Byzantium Empire, and must also have shown Islam how conquerable Byzantium was as well.
Or would the commercial erosion of the Byzantium empire by Venice etc have been enough to inflict sufficient wounds to make it impossible to resist the Ottoman onslaught?
It's always seemed to me to be one of the real tragedies of history that the Byzantine Empire was destroyed.Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 2
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 5th July 2011
jenny
The Crusades were quite a good way to re-direct the energies of the Normans, Northmen, etc ..
It seems pretty obvious from "The World's Strongest Men" competitions, and perhaps even from the four ladies who made it into the Wimbledon semi-finals, that "the blood-of the Vikings" did produce populations that included men particularly well-endowed physically, mentally and emotionally to make the best use of the military technology of the time.
Little is known of the background of Earl Godwin, but he seems to have been a man of Wessex. Nevertheless it was not mere short-term advantage that he was seeking when he married one of the relatives of King Cnut, his Viking master. It meant that King Harold and his brothers Gurth, Tostig and Leofwine were all half Viking, while the Normans of William the Conqueror were also close to their "Northmen" roots.
It was by marrying into and harnessing the qualities of "the Vikings" that the English, French and other Germanic tribes that had occupied Western Europe after the collapse of Rome managed to then hold off any further depredations from the "Vikings" and to produce something of a "fortress Western Europe".
But by the time that they had created stability in many places. it was more sensible politics to turn the energies of such people- ambitious to live up to the heroic tales of their forebears- into foreign fields.
On another thread we have touched upon the Anglo-Norman barony's adventures into Wales, Scotland and Ireland. But they also were involved in the struggles in southern France and the resistance against the Muslim take-over in Iberia. In the same way there was a frontier state in the South of Italy restricting Islam largely to just Sicily. And some went on the Crusade and created Crusader Kingdoms in the Holy Land.
All of this comes into the story of Richard the Lionheart, always seen in some ways as a perfect King for England.
Leaving able administrators to rule England, this greatest knight in Christendom it seemed could afford to leave his Kingdom to "just get on" without the kind of instabilities associated with a restless man like his father Henry II. As for Richard I am convinced that, as his mother's special son, he was also aware of the fascination that Eleanor ot Aquitaine had for the uncle that she had never met before she went on the Second Crusade.
He had left for the Crusades as a young man, and had stayed as the governor of Acre (or Antioch?) All the accounts of her time with her uncle have the hallmarks of romance, and by the time that Eleanor was on the way home from the Crusade her first marriage to the King of France was in effect over.
So- going back to your question- the Crusades were a manifestation of the resistance to Islam , and, without the new militarism that came from the conversion of the energy and thrust of "Viking culture", it seems more likely that Islam would have expanded even further.
For a few centuries the lose unity of "Western Christendom" created some kind of stability, one might almost say a "Cold War" situation with localised flare-ups but no real-Continental scale. Then Christendom became a house divided at a time when the OttomanTurks were ready to lead an new Islamic imperialism.
CassLink to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 3
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Tuesday, 5th July 2011
"So- going back to your question- the Crusades were a manifestation of the resistance to Islam , and, without the new militarism that came from the conversion of the energy and thrust of "Viking culture", it seems more likely that Islam would have expanded even further.
For a few centuries the lose unity of "Western Christendom" created some kind of stability, one might almost say a "Cold War" situation with localised flare-ups but no real-Continental scale. Then Christendom became a house divided at a time when the OttomanTurks were ready to lead an new Islamic imperialism. "
Hmm, I'm not at all sure about your first sentence here - seems to me the Crusades were a manifestation of what you were saying earlier - a good way to 'harmlessly' (!!!!) expend the unwanted aggressive and warlike energies of the Normans and their knights etc etc. I think they'd have joined in with any good punch up, and the existence of Islam was just incidental.
Plus, they could hardly have been truly 'anti-Islam' since they attacked and looted the Christian, anti-Islamic city of Byzantium.
Plus again, there is the argument that the Crusades simply angered and injured Islam so much that it mad eit a lot more aggressive towards Byzantium than it might otherwise have been.
But, for all that, I apprciate I am arguing with a Norman Apologist, so am unlikely to convince you of my POV!!!!!!
Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 4
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 5th July 2011
jenny
Well the Crusades were the direct result of an appeal by Byzantium to Rome asking for help from "brothers in Christ", so the Islamic threat seemed real enough.. In order to widen the appeal from the mere defence of Byzantium, Pope Urban II decided to make an issue of the access to the Holy Places which had been the ultimate "Mecca" for Western Christians on pilgrimage for centuries.
As for the opportunism of the warrior classes, I have postulated in fact that the Children's and People's Crusades may well have been an opportunistic seizing by classes of people bound into bondage and servitude who decided to "take the Cross" into lands that were in many ways more prosperous- at least by repute.
But, in fact when the Fourth Crusade diverted to looting Constantinople, to some extent the "Cold War" peaceful co-existence situation was already settling down, and Islamic or Islamic adopted ideas were trickling to the West.. A previous MB thread tackled the question "no Renaissance without Islam" including the way that contact with the Islamic world helped to build on the dynamism of the Twelfth Century industrial revolution.
It is quite obvious that the Italian Cities like Venice and Genoa, along with Constantinople had all settled down to doing business with Islam, which after all sat across the routes leading from Europe to the rest of the World. And as such these cities were becoming bitter rivals. And it was this rather than the greed of the Crusaders that resulted in the looting of Constantinople. By this time Crusaders had learned that it was quicker to go by sea. And so they boarded the ships of Italian merchants. But the "we all have to pay the ferryman". When the Crusaders realised that they could not afford the fare, the Italians said that they could go and seize it from Constantinople. Which is what they did. The horses of St. Mark's in Venice looted on that occasion are, I believe, still there.
As for being a Norman apologist- I am an apologist for all humankind, believing that History has always been the result of the resultant forces produced by all the people involved. Respect for our ancestors seems to me to be the first step towards respect for ourselves.
CassLink to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 5
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 5th July 2011
On the question of Byzantium's inherent capacity to survive, I have to say that the recent Byzantium exhibition in London seemed to me not totally dissimilar from the Aztec Exhibition of a few years before- in showing an essentially isolated culture that was condemned to feed upon itself, lacking the kind of "new imput" that helped Medieval Europe to move on in its thinking- leading eventually to the Renaissance and Reformation.
Of course that Europe looked back to Greece and Rome as a remote "golden age" of myth and legend- and all the more powerful for that.. In Byzantium it was not remote-just ever-present, but being kept alive in a vegetative state, going through the motions.
I got a similar kind of feeling when I first read Mervyn Peake's Titus- Gormenghast books, that seemed to me to be heavily influenced by a childhood spent in China- where I believe Peake's parents were missionaries. The subsequent TV adaptation brought out very clearly- I thought- the "Byzantine" nature of Peake's creation.
CassLink to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 6
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Tuesday, 5th July 2011
The Crusades were quite a good way to re-direct the energies of the Normans, Northmen, etc ..
It seems pretty obvious from "The World's Strongest Men" competitions, and perhaps even from the four ladies who made it into the Wimbledon semi-finals, that "the blood-of the Vikings" did produce populations that included men particularly well-endowed physically, mentally and emotionally to make the best use of the military technology of the time.Ìý
What's obvious?
You'll need to exaplain how (in your opinion) the 4 semi-finalists of the Wimbledon Women's Singles Championship 2011 somehow represent 'the blood of the Vikings'. And you'll also need to explain how (again in your opinion) tennis ability somehow relates to the ability 'to make the the best use of the military technology of the time'.Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 7
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 6th July 2011
Vizzer
Of course what appears to be "obvious" is not necessarily true.. hence the important difference between the real and the apparent.
But for many years the "World's Strongest Man" competitions seemed to be more or less dominated by men from what seems to have emerged as part of a wider "Viking" world through the archaeology of the last 50 years or so, changing the previous Roman Christian written evidence which had shaped previous historical ideas.
In fact it seems that the "Vikings" were part of a northern trade-economic system that was centred around the Baltic Sea and reached out westwards to Iceland, Ireland and the Western Isles of Scotland, and eastwards up the rivers that flowed into the Baltic, including those which offered the possibility of portage across to the rivers flowing down into the Black Sea, and linking up with that economic world for which Constantinople eventually became a hub.
Genetics may well prove that the dissemination of "Viking" genes within this greater area was less than within for example the British Isles- as explored by "The Blood of the Vikings" series.
But given the greater stability especially of English history it seems reasonable to expect the reverse: and that people from this Northern world were often looking for new lands to settle, refusing the option of those specifically Northern creatures the lemmings.
Thus contestants in the World's Strongest Man series that come from places like the USA and South Africa could well be associated with migrations there by people of basically Scandinavian descent.
Of course there are more recent historical reasons that have helped to shape this year's Wimbledon- in particular the collapse of Communism just over 20 years ago. This surely made it possible for people of sporting ambition to avoid the trauma of players of an earlier generation like Martina Navratilova, who had to defect to the West- and risk what the Communist regime might do to her family.
Of course this applied too to the lands of ex-Yugoslavia, outside the Soviet system. But the similarities between the four lady semi-finalists were quite striking- especially as three of the four had their blonde hair back in the kind of plats that practical women and girls with busy lives had been using for centuries.
Whether the connection is more than superficial, the qualities that made these women originally from the Czech Republic, Russia, Poland and Bielarussia so successful were very much the kind of qualties that can lead to success in modern tennis- and, I have suggested, in pre-modern warfare.
Perhaps in this respect one might use the example of the modern sport which is possibly the closest to the arts of war- javellin throwing. It seems that this may be THE national sport in Finland, for certainly it seems pretty rare for the Finns not to have the best javelin throwers in the world. The Finns it seems have very great capacity for producing one huge explosive thrust from their shoulders: and, I would suggest, that before science and technology supplemented such natural attributes so much of the conduct of battles came down to such physical attributes.
So the tennis racket is variously used as both defensive shield and as a means of offence. It is one-handed and two handed blade, rapier or axe. It is club. It is throwing stick.
Of course tennis ability includes many other things too. In effect the tennis player is a throw-back to to David and Goliath tradition of ancient times of trial by battle involving champions, and many commentators pointed to the significance of the fact that Djokovich led the Serbian team that won the Davis Cup. Being part of a winning team seems to have been a crucial part of his personal development and maturity as the people of Serbia, and the rest of ex-Yupgoslavia try to build a way-forward out of past trauma.
CassLink to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 8
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Wednesday, 6th July 2011
I quite agree that the Byzantines made a disastrous error of judgement when they asked the Latins for help in defeating Islam! (As they discovered in 1206 to their cost of course.)
There's no doubt the Latins behaved appallingly to everyone, Muslims and Byzantines alike, and are the clear 'Bad Lads' when it comes to the Crusades. (That said, I dont' think Islam gets off scot-free either, since it was founded on invasion and force, etc)
I see what you mean about the stagnation of the Byzantine Empire, and it raises the tricky question about whether civilisations can ever be static, or whether they have to be dynamic. That said, Byzantium survived for a thousand years after the fall of Rome, which is a pretty good track record - especially compared with Western Europe in that period. It also begs the question of whether the ordinary peasants and general population were a lot better off living in such a durable empire, rather than in the 'dynamic' western Europe filled with vikings, invasions, feudal warfare etc etc etc.Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 9
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Wednesday, 6th July 2011
What a load of tripe, Cass, and completely disrespectful to the person who opened the thread. You're getting worse. See to it.
Jenny, don't you think Isaac II more or less singlehandedly started the chain of events which culminated in the Fourth Crusade's sacking of Constantinople? Byzantine underestimation of Leo's new militant papacy and of the true motivations of European warlords was epitomised by Isaac's (and Alexios's) disastrous reign as emperor. After the brothers' period of government the "sacking" of Constantinople under papal direction almost rated as a rescue mission.
It can also be argued that Isaac's willingness to negotiate with the muslims at his own empire's expense gave his adversaries the "in" they required to justify their later takeover of the whole operation. In that sense the crusaders' brief intervention could be viewed as something which actually delayed Byzantine demise rather than accelerated it.
By the turn of the 13th century it was however a very sick operation in any case, as is evidenced by the fact that even those who coveted it and invested militarily in taking it over all failed to run it after this point. It was doomed, and its eventual obliteration by the muslims could almost be classified as a mercy killing, and a long overdue one at that.Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 10
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Wednesday, 6th July 2011
"What a load of tripe, Cass, and completely disrespectful to the person who opened the thread. You're getting worse. See to it."
I do hope this is in humourous, good tempered jest! I definitely don't feel, as the OP, that Cass has been disrespectful. (Even for a crypto-Norman apologist!!!!Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 11
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 6th July 2011
jenny
If you are prepared to accept more disrespectful tripe
As you yourself put it, Western Europe even after the Dark Ages seemed to be a pretty unstable and barbaric place- but with all of that more likely to experiment and evolve.
A few weeks ago I resumed reading a old history of Medieval Europe from the fall of Rome etc and was reminded of the more deeply rooted lands states etc of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.
The whole question of the creation of "England" is a repeated theme on the MB, but clearly the new kingdoms established by the Teutonic tribes that came into Western Europe felt entitled to create new states like England and France, which eventually absorbed much of Roman Law and Rome-based Christianity pushing the pre-existing indigenous cultures very much into the margins. Those that invaded the Eastern Empire were more prone to try to build on more ancient foundations.
I was reminded of this some years ago when I tried to explain to a student who was really angry at the way that she had been treated that not too many people would have been aware of the significance of the fact that her roots were not in the Indian sub-continent but in Persia, a land which as Iran Westerners often err in regarding as an "Islamic State"- something that did not exist until brought into being by Islam. Persia was much older and had its own role in the birth of Civilization, and the story of the Ancient World.
But surely the Teutons in trying to keep the Eastern Empire as a going concern, were acting very much as the invaders who took over both the Ancient Indian and Chinese Empires.
Now one reason would appear to be that these were potentially successful places, not least because of the challenge of the existing scale.
Certainly if one looks at the British in India, and the later story of Britain in China, the whole question of a tiny, new and experimental country, with less than ten million people like Eighteenth Century England taking over and hoping to run the Indian Empire would have seemed ridiculous to English adventurers very much aware of their relative ignorance, and taught through what education they had received that the Ancient World had been a much more glorious and Civilized one.. Here in the Far East it had not actually died out, and supported human life on a totally different scale. These were places to teach Europe not to be taught except in those arts of war and government that had enabled those Western States to survive and exploit their potential for growth and expansion.
As an exception to my normal practice a few days ago I watched part of the film "Troy"- and a few weeks ago another one about "Alexander the Great".. I have always been a little disbelieving about the figures that are usually quoted for the armies of such episodes. I think that it was asserted that 50,000 Greeks were brought to besiege Troy. The great Persian armies are usually quoted as being even larger. These seem to be very large by Western European standards until perhaps the Age of Revolution and the National Armies of France.
Much of this thinking has to do with the mental adjustment required of me by spending more time in France, where thinking on a truly continental scale is encouraged by the ravages of both history and the weather.
CassLink to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 12
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 6th July 2011
jenny
You may guess that Nordmann and I have some "history".. I am afraid that I frequently annoy him by my "thought-adventures".
CassLink to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 13
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 6th July 2011
jenny
Regarding static and dynamic life-styles,
A few months ago I gained some background understanding of the place of a book that I bought in the Sixties called "Before Philosophy".. The team behind it were very much the cutting edge of one branch of Archaeological research in the late Forties and early Fifties.
I think that you have recently commented on the relationship between Geography and History, and this study-to my mind- brings out very clearly from the extant texts a fundamental difference between Egypt and Mesopotamia.
In Egypt things could work almost like clockwork- even Joseph's seven fat years followed by seven lean years. It encouraged a belief in authority- secular and divine, and the idea that the universe was good and evil in conflict, with the aspiration of the triumph of good- through an alliance of mankind with the most almighty God.
Egypt seemed to be eternal and its cults of death and the dead seemed to reflect that. To some degree one can see these ideas reflected in three religions that emerged from the Egypt-centred world- Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
Mesopotamia, however, was a land that was in constant danger of being throne into chaos. Its pantheon of Gods had no real coordination, and the God of the Heavens, Anu, was busy with greater things. The best that human beings could do was to try to preserve some kind of balance between the Gods. Enlil- for example- the god of violence and the storm was destructive, but not bad. For as in Egypt the flood could be turned into an asset, and in battle or conflict, you certainly hoped that Enlil was on your side, and not your enemies.
Perhaps because I had previously done some work on Ancient China it immediately seemed to me that this whole idea of trying to keep things in balance- acknowledging the value of both destruction and construction, light and dark, positive and negative etc were best summed up in the Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang, and the Chinese belief that the role of Human beings is to try to live in such a way that they preserve the harmony and balance within reality.
As I say Judaism, Christianity and Islam seem to have brought that Egyptian mindset into "Western History"- with all of its intolerance and crusading, while "points East" shared more of the Mesopotamian tradition with complexities of thought that "Westerners" often find hard to tolerate..
I once tried to get a Hindu pupil to dance (To "How Long Has This Been Going On" I seem to remember) and she really could not get the hang of the Western "strict-tempo" rhythmic tradition. Classical Indian dancers dance upon polyrhythmns - as I once saw explained and demonstrated by a classically trained dancer who counted one rhythmn for her feet, and others for other parts of her body- to the number (from memory) of something like 6-8.
CassLink to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 14
Posted by hotmousemat (U2388917) on Friday, 8th July 2011
It's always seemed to me to be one of the real tragedies of history that the Byzantine Empire was destroyed.Ìý
It wasn't. It was taken over by new and more vigorous proprietors and lasted until the 20th century.Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 15
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Friday, 8th July 2011
That's been a bone of contention amongst historians for quite a while, hothousemat.
While the territory (albeit what little was left of it) was indeed subsumed into the Ottoman empire in 1453 the Ottomans had already radically adapted and improved their administration, based largely on what they learnt after the takeover of former Venetian territories in the district. While these had also been largely ex-Byzantine there were few of them in which the Venetians had not radically redesigned (they would have probably said "streamlined") the local administrative and political landscape.
This is reflected even today in ex-Ottoman territories which retain the nomes first described under Venetian rule. Also, since the Byzantine administration in Constantinople was inextricably linked and interwoven with a religious administration which the Ottomans most definitely did not want to incorporate into their own system of government, there was less of a takeover of existing administrative structures and much more of a complete obliteration of those structures to be replaced wholesale by the Ottomans' own system. This explains also the zeal and rapidity with which the Ottomans attempted to excise even the name "Constantinople" from the language.
I wouldn't therefore say that the Byzantine Empire was "taken over" by new proprietors, vigorous or otherwise. Neither would I say that the Ottomans "destroyed" it, though it is undoubtedly true that they removed its last vestiges with assiduous intent once they got the opportunity. The truth is rather more complex, I think, and the actual "destruction" of Byzantium could probably be more accurately levelled at Venetian, Balkan and Crusader-led inroads into its power, territory and authority over the centuries prior to the Ottoman siege of its principal (and by then only remaining) city.Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 16
Posted by hotmousemat (U2388917) on Friday, 8th July 2011
The Ottoman sultans certainly saw themselves as successors to the Byzantine emperors, for example when they proclaimed themselves protectors of the Orthodox Church (which has endured in Istanbul to this day).
As for the obliteration of the old administrative structure, the Greeks continued to provide the sultans with a civil service, Istanbul itself remaining a Greek city until the 20th century.
But I agree that rather than the Byzantine Empire being taken over, it might be more accurate to say that it had been destroyed long before the actual fall of the city and was rather recreated by the Ottomans.Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 17
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Friday, 8th July 2011
The Ottoman sultans certainly saw themselves as successors to the Byzantine emperors, for example when they proclaimed themselves protectors of the Orthodox Church (which has endured in Istanbul to this day).
Ìý
This they most certainly did, though the church was politically emasculated in the process. Its role in the administration, compared to that which it enjoyed during Byzantine rule, was effectively nil. Mehmed was no fool when he came to a hasty agreement with the church, but neither was the church when it voluntarily accepted its "protected" status at the expense of its secular power.
As for the obliteration of the old administrative structure, the Greeks continued to provide the sultans with a civil service, Istanbul itself remaining a Greek city until the 20th century.
Ìý
This is by no means as certain or as definite as you state it. The hierarchical bureaucracy built by the Ottomans and which lasted until major constitutional reform in 1908 was most certainly designed to exclude Greek or any other non-muslim content in its ranks, from the Grand Vizier's deliberate powers of diktat delegated through the sancak beys, the beyler beys, the khadis, the sipahis right down to the policy of recruitment as exemplified by the devisrme levy which applied for all public appointments. While Greek language was utilised to a small degree, most notably within diplomatic ranks when dealing with European powers, there was a strict policy of conversion to mohammedism for all civil servants, and the language of administration for that service was most emphatically lisman-i Osmani, not Greek.
With regard to the civil population the "rum" (Greek community) in Instanbul were reckoned at the turn of the 20th century to comprise a quarter of its inhabitants - a higher ratio indeed than in most Turkish cities but still outnumbered three to one, excluded from government service and other high ranking employment, and until 1878 forced to convert religion and to speak Turkish should they wish to enter "mainstream" society. This hardly suggests a city which could be broadly classified as "Greek", I would have said, though it did undoubtedly figure hugely in Greek aspirations for the reclaiming of once Greek territories during the rise of that country's own nationalist cause.Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 18
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Friday, 8th July 2011
It's always seemed to me to be one of the real tragedies of history that the Byzantine Empire was destroyed.
It wasn't. It was taken over by new and more vigorous proprietors and lasted until the 20th century.
It was destroyed as part of Christendom, and subsumed into Islam. Perhaps the real achievement during the Ottoman domination was for the Orthodox Church to survive, and remain something other than just a tiny minority church like the Syrian church, or the Copts in Egypt. Would I be right in saying that the majority of the population at least in Greece, even if not in the areas last ruled by the Byzantines, remained predominantly Orthodox, rather than converting to Islam?
Was there any other part of Islam where the indiginous, conquered population remained true to whatever the pre-existing religion was, rather than convert en masse? I would suppose that Mughal India had a sizeable very Hindu (et al) indigenous population remaining? Not sure how much of Moorish Spain remained Christian, or whether only a minority of the Spanish converted to Islam.
Overall, it would seem to me that the success of Islam in its conquests was to achieve mass conversion to Islam amongst those it conquered. An irreversible spiritual conquest.Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 19
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Friday, 8th July 2011
Would I be right in saying that the majority of the population at least in Greece, even if not in the areas last ruled by the Byzantines, remained predominantly Orthodox, rather than converting to Islam?Ìý
Yes, Greece remained Orthodox through the Ottoman occupation, plus the Greeks living in Asia Minor itself largely remained Christian until their expulsion in the early 1900s. In fact, much of the Balkans retained it's Christianity through the occupation, except Albania which (I think) largely converted to Islam.
In much the same way as the Hedge Schools were run in Ireland during the British occupation, it was Orthodox village priests who were mainly responsible for educating the young. In this way the Greeks were not only able to maintain their religion but also their language and customs.
Again, much like Ireland, it would be silly to say that Greece escaped 800yrs of foreign occupation unscathed, there is still much Turkish influence to be found. The language, music, dances, dress and foods all bear some influence to this day but the various peoples of the area that is now Greece managed to survive with their ethnicities largely in tact.Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 20
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 8th July 2011
Jenny
Actually your picture of Islam seems to be very close to that which was used to inspire the Crusades.. But the situation that you refer to in Moghul India does seem to be a more common model, not in fact unlike my "apologia" for the Norman Conquest.
The ministry of the life of the Prophet Mohamed was aimed at the way that Mecca in particular was being run, and at Medina Mohamed was able to establish himself as an alternative government.
In fact- again to draw a parallel with English History- one might compare the situation with the Henrician Reformation when the oath that Thomas More refused to take- and lost his life as a consequences- only applied to men of influence and potential power like himself.
The Medieval History book that I am reading currently takes the line that at least the Arab phase of the Islamic Revolution realised that the Greco-Roman economic system was a "golden goose" .
I have elsewhere referred to the current "Hong Kongisation of China", for it was surely obvious from Chinese history that the Chinese would not destroy the economy of British Hong Kong, but rather accentuate the Chinese role in that real "economic miracle" and try to replicate it within their own Empire.
Hence it seems most unlikely that the Arab Muslims practised the kind of intrusion into the hearts, minds etc of the common people as,for example, the Spanish Inquisition was to do under Philip of Spain, when people could get into trouble for observing the Muslim practice of having baths.
What Pope Urban complained about was the consequence of the conversion to Islam of the Turks from regions like Armenia. Like the "barbarian" Vikings they seemed wild and savage and to some extent they took up the crescent in much the same way that the "Vikings" and the "Northmen" took up the Cross. Both cultures seem to have had a tendency to praise the warrior- the men of Holy War, rather than the men of peace and understanding.
A few years ago Daniel Barenbohm and a Palestinian friend started to bring Israeli -Jewish students and Palestinian students together to form a combined Orchestra. And they chose to do this via a summer camp down in old Muslim Granada in Southern Spain, where one very enlightened ruler assembled a great library drawing on all the strands of literature around the Mediterranean- Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic etc.
As with many conquering peoples- and there are also examples in Moghul India and in China where someone from the invading race took a genuine interest in knowledge- smaller-minded people subsequently took power and tried to crush the light of learning.
But the ideas associated with Averrroes came north from Granada to Paris during the middle of the European Middle Ages. And when the Turks finally captured Constantinople some of the great works that it held in store made their way westwards especially to Italy and fed into the Renaissance.
CassLink to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 21
Posted by hotmousemat (U2388917) on Friday, 8th July 2011
It was destroyed as part of Christendom, and subsumed into Islam. Perhaps the real achievement during the Ottoman domination was for the Orthodox Church to survive, and remain something other than just a tiny minority church like the Syrian church, or the Copts in Egypt. Ìý
On the contrary, the Syrian Church and the Copts survived precisely because they were under Arab then Ottoman domination rather than Byzantine! Islam was OK with Christian 'heretics', Constantinople wasn't.
Would I be right in saying that the majority of the population at least in Greece, even if not in the areas last ruled by the Byzantines, remained predominantly Orthodox, rather than converting to Islam?Ìý
Yes. Which rather goes to contradict your statement:
Overall, it would seem to me that the success of Islam in its conquests was to achieve mass conversion to Islam amongst those it conquered. An irreversible spiritual conquestÌý
But they didn't. The process through which some areas became majority Muslim took centuries, in other areas it never happened. There was no effort to achieve mass conversion.Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 22
Posted by hotmousemat (U2388917) on Friday, 8th July 2011
Mehmed was no fool when he came to a hasty agreement with the church, but neither was the church when it voluntarily accepted its "protected" status at the expense of its secular power.Ìý
It was the usual arrangement for religious groups within Muslim empires. Rather a good deal; you did not often get Christian princes making the same offer to Muslims or Jews that came under their control.
This is by no means as certain or as definite as you state it.Ìý
Certainly not! Nothing in history, especially middle-eastern history is certain or definite!
I am simply pointing out that the ruling dynasties of Byzantine cities like Trebizond (a more important Imperial city than Constantinople towards the end) had multiple family connections with the Muslims of Anatolia. And many an Ottoman sultan had a Greek mother!
Regarding the presence of Greeks in the Ottoman administration, I was thinking of the famous Phanariotes, but the more basic point is the Ottomans always used local religious leaders or princes to collect taxes and administer the law. I suspect most subjects of the sultan went through their whole lives without ever seeing a Turk.Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 23
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Friday, 8th July 2011
"It was destroyed as part of Christendom, and subsumed into Islam. Perhaps the real achievement during the Ottoman domination was for the Orthodox Church to survive, and remain something other than just a tiny minority church like the Syrian church, or the Copts in Egypt. "
On the contrary, the Syrian Church and the Copts survived precisely because they were under Arab then Ottoman domination rather than Byzantine! Islam was OK with Christian 'heretics', Constantinople wasn't.
Sorry, I didn't make myself clear. I wasn't concerned with which variety of Christianity survived, I was concerned with the loss of the Byzantine territories to Islam, and the fact that, whether by conversion or demographic replacement of the previously Christian population (ie, pre Islamic conquest), these areas are now by far and away predominantly Muslim, and part of Islam.
****
"Would I be right in saying that the majority of the population at least in Greece, even if not in the areas last ruled by the Byzantines, remained predominantly Orthodox, rather than converting to Islam? "
Yes. Which rather goes to contradict your statement:
**
Again, I didn't make myself clear enough. My praise was for the Greek Orthodox Church in staying sufficiently strong to ensure that the bulk of the Greek people did not convert to Islam, and were not demographically replaced by Muslims. Thus 'captive Orthodox Christendom' was able to survive for four hundred years, and when Greece became free again, it was returned to Christendom, and escaped Islam.
***
Just for the record - I have no problem with Islam in the Middle East or areas where there was no pre-existing dominant Christianity or any other dominant major religion, eg, Hinduism. I just don't like religions that 'take over' other pre-existing ones by conquest or by population replacement (as, yes, of course, Christianity did notably in the Americas)(though of course that begs, yet again, the tricky question of the moral value of a religion anyway - the most infamous example is the religon of the Aztecs, which really did need to be urgently destroyed!!!!)Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 24
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 8th July 2011
hothousemat
Do I not recall that the French in West Africa tended to use this approach in the Imperialist era?
Was it the French policy of the British that was known as "The Golden Stool" approach, leaving the "native rulers" with more independent authority than, for example, the Britain's Subsidiary Allies in the Indian SubContinent, who had a British Resident looking over their shoulder.
Actually this local initiative might have been reflected in the experience of an aunt of one of my pupils- as she recounted it about ten years ago. Her aunt was convicted of being an adulteress in a court of Shariah Law, and was sentenced to be placed in a pit and stoned. The girl insisted that the boyfriend tunnelled into the pit and led her to safety. In such ways subject people can insist to the powers that be that they carried out the law to the absolute letter, while interpreting it according to their own notion of justice.
Sensible rulers just tick the box and leave a peaceful community to "get on with it".
CassLink to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 25
Posted by hotmousemat (U2388917) on Saturday, 9th July 2011
Sensible rulers just tick the box and leave a peaceful community to "get on with it".Ìý
I recall a French commentator saying that this was the logical outcome of the UK policy of 'multiculturalism'.
Why shouldn't we follow the old Muslim model of allowing internal religious and cultural groups govern themselves, as long as they do not support the monarch's enemies and pay their taxes?
And I must admit, we do have a confused attitude. We seem to be OK with self-determination as long as it is based on geography (Scotland, Wales, etc.) but not if it is based on culture. There seems no logic to that.
So who do I (I'm British) owe loyalty to? The Queen? Or to the regional or cultural leader of my choice? Is it not amazing in a historic context that there is currently no obvious answer to that question?
I suspect that both Caliphs and Kings would both be shocked that we have got into such a muddle over such a basic issue and tell us we are inevitably headed for trouble.Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 26
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 9th July 2011
hothousemat
But France has a much stronger tradition of "cohabitation" than that England that believed in and tried to promote "Commonweal".. And though it seems that those English traditions of "good naturedness" that Lord Clarendon urged needed to be restored along with the monarchy in 1660 are not what they were, people who have come to visit or live here in Greater London- like our Croatian daughter-in-law can still see it clearly by comparison with their own roots.
Last summer a French couple from the Lorraine district told me that they had visited London in the Spring and felt that "we" were much more advanced than the French in terms of integration.
I touched on some of the relevant issue to this and perhaps this thread in something that I wrote entitled "Was Protestantism the Islamic Fundamentalism of an Ealier Age?"- in which I argued that what is presently called Islamic Fundamentalism may well eventually be seen as the work of very small minorities that are stuck in the past.. The real Islamic Fundamentalism that is going on- in my experience- is the intellectual, cultural and artistic effort of thousands like some of my most able pupils who are trying to work our just how the teachings of the Prophet should be interpreted in the Twenty First Century and the way ahead for us all, which after all is the aspiration of Islam- peace and harmony among all of God's creation.
But to this end the whole British self-determination strategy seems, like what we now call "Islamic Fundamentalism", to be based upon a return to the Past and the attainment of goals that were important and cherished by earlier ages. The Irish, Scottish and possibly even the Welsh may be encouraged by nationalist versions of history to consider "what might have been", and how people now might hope to have been happier and more prosperous people had history worked out differently.
To some extent I believe that such feelings fed into British Socialism and the Labour movement, creating a Labour political programme by the end of the Nineteenth Century based upon just how much better the Industrial Revolution would have been if it had been carried out differently and by a modern State. In many ways the Attlee Government was able to implement all of those ideas in what was in effect a revolution. But the situation in Britain in 1945 and its place in the world was no longer that of Britain 1775-1850. And the idea of ecomic planning and State control merely imposed upon the state of the tides of History was no more effective in the USSR.
Unfortunately we are still left with a post-Keynesian reality in which the Nineteenth Century mantra of materialism is till dominant in the West, and the culture that the West is offering to the wider world. "It is the economy stupid"..
In fact what I maintain is that a strong economy is a by-product of a strong, dynamic, and creative society- not its cause. And going back to this thread surely what "did for" Byzantium and then ultimately the Ottoman Empire, and what Churchill referred to in his Fulton speech as all the great capitals of Eastern Europe, was:
(a) the increasing role of the Italian cities as alternative entrepots connected to and through the Islamic world to the wider world. (All summed up in the Marco Polo story. Venetian merchant held captive after a sea-battle in Genoa, and entertaining his fellow captives with tales of his great adventure)
and (b) the not unrelated fact that Italian navigators realised that new emerging states like Spain and Portugal, and the more modest England, might sponsor their efforts to exploit the new sailing technology- and perhaps renewed contact with the stories of great sailor-explorers of Ancient Greece- in order to cut out not only Constantinople, but the whole Turkish Empire. Spain and Portugal achieved new golden ages based upon extreme anti-Islamic and Counter-Reformation agendas- connected with the Crusading spirit of Rome. England and the Dutch freed themselves so that they could catch that "tide in the affairs of men..."
So to address the question of to whom you owe loyalty.. The easy answer is the person who seems to be leading you forward, just as the Ancient Greeks realised that a ship has to have a Captain, and that the well-being of all and the ship itself demanded having the best man, most capable of taking all through strorm, trouble and challenge towards a "promised land".
My thesis is that those who offer to lead us are to some extent repeating the Byzantium situation. As I have said in terms of politics and society the Labour Party essentially was based upon re-enacting the Age of Revolution with the benefit of Hindsight. While the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher tried to re-enact the successes of Gladstonian Liberalism: and at present we are back with Disraelian Conservatism.
Now we would all agree- I think on this MB- that people should learn from History. And surely the lesson of Byzantium is that it is in the nature of all Life to grow and to seek kinds of growth. But meaningful growth involves things that are new and unprecedented.
Even it seems right down to basic evolution, according to a recent piece based on research on worms. Perhaps you read this. Why has nature evolved sexual reproduction and not stuck with simple cloning of successful sets of genes? Answer it seems because the parasites and diseases operate like those on our computers, and learn how to get the upper hand. So "the good life" must ever be renewed in sensitivity to Present circumstances.
Sorry if this is another one of my long posts.. But I thought that you raised important points.
CassLink to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 27
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Saturday, 9th July 2011
"we" were much more advanced than the French in terms of integration.
***
It's always seemed a bit ironic to me that the French make a great fuss about insisting their Dom Toms (I think that's the shortform for overseas territories is, isn't it?) are 'truly French' and then disliking the fact that so many of the Dom Tomians come to mainland France.....
I may be completely wrong but was that original insistence that Dom Toms were 'truly French' based on a centralist government strategy that was Napoleonic in insisting that ALL of France be ruled from the centre, including their colonies?
Did they not think that their DomTomians would want to come to rich mainland France? (though I believe the Dom Toms are actually a net drain on the French economy)
Of course, France, with it's much more generous mainland land mass and its much lower population density overall, can far more easily absorb a large number of immigrants than Britain can, integrated or not.Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 28
Posted by jenny (U14149730) on Saturday, 9th July 2011
"Unfortunately we are still left with a post-Keynesian reality in which the Nineteenth Century mantra of materialism is till dominant in the West, and the culture that the West is offering to the wider world. "It is the economy stupid".. "
I doubt whether in 50 years, if that, it will matter a hill of beans what we in the west think about anything, as we won't be running the show any more!
That said, I wonder how long it takes a civilisation to realise it's been overtaken and is effectively 'dead in the water'?
The issue of Islam is very, very interesting in terms of the coming century's history-to-be, in that ironically, 'we' in the west may pal up with Islam as it looks back to the past, not the future, and 'we' will start wanting to do the same. Islam and 'The West' (however we define it!) will be like two boulders stuck in the stream of history, going nowhere.
I know it's right to be pleased that so much of Islam currently is undregoing some kind of 'democratic urge', which is to be welcomed on behalf of the mass of their populations, but I suspect the far more important political battle tobe won by western political democratic culture is going to be for the hearts and minds of the Chinese people.
A world economy dominated by a non-democratic China is a fearful dystopian prospect for the future.Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 29
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Saturday, 9th July 2011
Of course this applied too to the lands of ex-Yugoslavia, outside the Soviet system. But the similarities between the four lady semi-finalists were quite striking- especially as three of the four had their blonde hair back in the kind of plats that practical women and girls with busy lives had been using for centuries.
Whether the connection is more than superficial, the qualities that made these women originally from the Czech Republic, Russia, Poland and Bielarussia so successful were very much the kind of qualties that can lead to success in modern tennis- and, I have suggested, in pre-modern warfare.Ìý
The connection is superficial.
Perhaps in this respect one might use the example of the modern sport which is possibly the closest to the arts of war- javellin throwing. It seems that this may be THE national sport in Finland, for certainly it seems pretty rare for the Finns not to have the best javelin throwers in the world. The Finns it seems have very great capacity for producing one huge explosive thrust from their shoulders: and, I would suggest, that before science and technology supplemented such natural attributes so much of the conduct of battles came down to such physical attributes.
So the tennis racket is variously used as both defensive shield and as a means of offence. It is one-handed and two handed blade, rapier or axe. It is club. It is throwing stick.Ìý
Is it javelin or tennis which the 'Viking' crusaders excelled at? Make your mind up.
And are we now to believe that Boniface of Montferrat and Enrico Dandolo of Venice etc were javelin-throwing Finns?
Of course tennis ability includes many other things too. In effect the tennis player is a throw-back to to David and Goliath tradition of ancient times of trial by battle involving champions, and many commentators pointed to the significance of the fact that Djokovich led the Serbian team that won the Davis Cup. Being part of a winning team seems to have been a crucial part of his personal development and maturity as the people of Serbia, and the rest of ex-Yupgoslavia try to build a way-forward out of past trauma.Ìý
A pseud's cliche to say the least.
So does this mean that when the Doherty brothers won the Davis Cup in 1903 for the British Isles was this a crucial part of the rest of the UK's attempt to build a way forward out past traumas such as the Boer Wars etc?Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 30
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 9th July 2011
jenny
As I inferred with my reference to French ideas of cohabitation, in French society that seems to be very much based upon everyone knowing and acting in accordance with their place in the scheme of things..
It is a matter of some interest to me that almost every evening French intellectuals are featured on French TV as those oracles who can put the quarrels and tribulations of the day into a greater sweep of philosophy, psychology, or history- depending upon their own particular muse. As British commentators have put it the French Left rather more than the British has really been dominated by "Champagne Socialists" like DSK.. Some millionnaires back the Labour Party, but great wealth seems to be an impediment with the British grass roots. In France it seems to be more of an asset. The French attitude to "the revolution" seems to be "more power to your elbow", and I am not sure that many people follow their stocks and shares more intently than my Socialist father-in-law.
As for the Dom Toms I remember my father-in-law going as part of a local Government team to visit Guadeloupe and Martinique to see how those provinces were being run.. He encountered a great deal of frustration at the results of the state-planning that was intended to help to create a thriving fishing industry in island with a great untapped potential in that respect. So they selected some of the most suitable candidates and sent them to metropolitan France to receive the appropriate education and training. But "the best laid plans" etc. Once "les Antigais" have lived a couple of years in France they prefer to stay in France, and once any French person has some paper qualifications it seems really beneath them to do any work with a manual element.
As for the amount of space in France, I noticed an article by a Â鶹ԼÅÄ journalist resident in Paris that took the line that the French are "in advance" of us in terms of apartment living, whereas the "Englishman's home is his castle".
Of course Paris is rather particular but all the signs of the last 40 years or so is that the French had little interest in modest little English-style terraced and semi-detached houses. Such castles are scarcely better than "rabit-hutch' flats. The French women does not want a castle but a "Chateau". The house must be a "maison isolee" where she has total control over her space, and can mostly ignore any neighbours.
With the recent prosperity before the latest crash the French have taken to rural living with buildings going up all over the place within comfortable commuting distance of the towns and cities. And there they found themselves cohabiting with foreigners of temporary or permanent residence. I have been told that in our part of Burgundy which has one of the lowest population densities in the whole of France almost every hamlet, village, town has at least one British family. That's OK they have a place in "the scheme of things" as "the old enemy" turned saviour in the Second World War.
CassLink to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 31
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 9th July 2011
jenny
I was not thinking of the Arab spring, except in so far as the educated student-class, and the professionals like the doctors, who seem to have a key role, may well feel themselves part of that Islamic community that is very much at the cutting edge of the present efforts to further Civilization. Many of these or their family members will have conducted their studies in "The West"
But I was thinking more of the many Muslim pupils that I have enjoyed teaching, many of whom have gone on to undergraduate and post-graduate studies in UK Universities.
Nevertheless along with those one must place those "British students" from Indian and Chinese backgrounds, who are similarly creating vital bridges that produce new directions- and create a huge new potential as the UK is so well-placed now to take advantage of the new dynamics of the world's fastest growing economies and societies.
When I was in France I watched a TV feature about a series staged in Dubai that is something like a cross-between "The Apprentice" and these "We've Got Talent" shows.. The producer of this series is a Lebanese Muslim, who works with quite a lot of British technical expertise to produce a very high-profile show that is shown throughout that "Arab world".. The whole thing is part of the attempt of Dubai to show itself as the future of an Islamic Civilizaton based upon science and technology, and the young people involved were all recruited from far and wide throughout the Arab world from Morocco to Oman. They were all super-intelligent and highly motivated, as witnessed by some of the Western experts engaged to act as facilitators popping into the laboratories that each was provided with in order to perfect their final project and presentation. The prize was a fund that would make it possible to go ahead into commercial production.
It may all come to nothing. But it is the face of Islam looking to the Future that is rarelys shown on the British media.
Meanwhile the highest achieving group in Britain for some time has been the British Hindu one, and in many ways they have shown what is possible when Asian values (which seem much like early-Victorian ones) are applied to the present day with a sense of true conviction.
CassLink to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 32
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 9th July 2011
Vizzer
As I am sure that I do not need to tell you in 1903 money and media hysteria were much more interested in actual war than in sport as an alternative and less harmful "war-substitute. Was it not around that time that the UK in particular sponsored the revival of the old Greek Olympic Games as a possible alternative?
Things have escalated exponentially since then.. Even the post-war White City Olympic games seem to belong to a totally different age.
But the Doherty's may well have had Viking genes. which I believe are at least as common in Ireland as in the UK.
CassLink to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 33
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Saturday, 9th July 2011
It's always seemed a bit ironic to me that the French make a great fuss about insisting their Dom Toms (I think that's the shortform for overseas territories is, isn't it?) are 'truly French' and then disliking the fact that so many of the Dom Tomians come to mainland France.....Ìý
This isn't really the case. France does indeed treat the Overseas Departments as intregrated parts of the state with all the rights and privileges which that entails. Where there may be some 'dislike', however, is in the case where overseas departments opted for independence which was then, nevertheless, followed by mass immigration from the independent country to the metropolitan hexagon.
I may be completely wrong but was that original insistence that Dom Toms were 'truly French' based on a centralist government strategy that was Napoleonic in insisting that ALL of France be ruled from the centre, including their colonies?
Did they not think that their DomTomians would want to come to rich mainland France? (though I believe the Dom Toms are actually a net drain on the French economy)Ìý
It was actually during the reign of Louis XVI that the department structure was set up. This was done by the National Assembly shortly after the 1789 Revolution. It was the corresponding departmental prefect system which was later established by Napoleon Bonaparte.
By contrast the UK developed an anti-integrationist policy towards its overseas territories. Ireland was the exception which proved and re-inforced the rule. This anti-integrationism was evidenced, for example, by the rejection by the UK establishment of Malta's application in the 1950s to join the UK and send MPs to Westminster.
Both France and the UK, however, have experienced mass-immigration from former overseas territories over the last 60 years. So it doesn't seem to matter whether the metropolitan country has an integrationist or an anti-integrationist approach in this.
Of course, France, with it's much more generous mainland land mass and its much lower population density overall, can far more easily absorb a large number of immigrants than Britain can, integrated or not.Ìý
Not so.
Countries with large populations and high densities of population can much more easily absorb mass immigration that those which are sparsely populated. Mass immigration into a sparsely populated country is likely to have severe implications and dramatic consequences for the existing population. 'Absorbing' just doesn't come into it. Colonisation is more likely and dispossession the outcome. Ask the indigenous Americans and aboriginal Australians etc about that one.Link to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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Message 34
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 9th July 2011
Perhaps following Vizzer's point about the demographics, one of the factors that was very closely looked at in France in 1940 as a cause of its poor showing in the war was the very low birth rate since at least the First World War. I am not sure for the previous period, but, as the era of Imperialism has come up, it was a period when the UK population more or less doubled (1851-1911) while at the same time sending large numbers of emigrants from the British Isles to plant the "White Dominions".
The French do not seem to have needed the same "release valve" for the Malthusian spectres of over-population. A favourite story from the French Empire applies to the French soldiers who were given free land on condition that they stayed in Quebec in the middle of the Seventeenth Century. They built themselves homesteads along the St. Lawrence River, and then realised that there was no point having a farm with no future. An army was all male. The French Crown would have to step in. Officials went to the Paris orphanages and sent a shipload of girsl escorted by Nuns, and the men were told to come and claim a wife. They entered one end of a hall with the wives on show. And at the other end said which one they chose. They were married on the spot, and went home.
The wives did not last long. These were city girls from in most cases poverty and hardship and frontier life wore them out. The men applied for better wives and this time the officials went to places like Burgundy where families often had 7-8 daughters and not much chance of providing them with a dowry , and therefore a good husband. The parents were persuaded to let some of their girls emigrate. The marriage process was repeated: and the couples were given financial incentives to encourage them to have 8-10 children or more.
Of course after the First World War the question of low birth rate was something that was tackled by both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, the former launching a "Battle for Births". I have got somewhere a note of the reasons that the French people gave in 1940 for not having many children. And I cannot remember now whether there was public recognition of my gut feeling.
When France was a largely rural and peasant society, liable to work levies like the "Corvees" there was a real advantage in having large families. More work and more productivity.
But the French Revolution resulted in a different enclosure movement from the English one, and the French peasant became the landed smallholder. But French inheritance (perhaps since the Code Napoleon) does not observe primogeniture, and more children means the family land getting broken up into truly uneconomic units- as happened a great deal in India, and I believe Ireland.
The normal fate of the family estate when there are too many offspring is that the family loses it because the main property has to be sold off and the value shared out, because no one heir can afford to buy out the rest.
A recent case in France featured a sixty year old woman who tricked the medical world into giving her an IVF birth because she wanted a son to inherit her wealth.
CassLink to this forum: Without the Crusades, might Byzantium have survived Islam?
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