81–90 of 94 posts
It seems there's a lot of interest for Byzantine History on HN, that's fantastic! My friends and I have run a book club for the past four years on Ancient History with focus on the Eastern Roman Empire. Most books we read were kind of dry. Here's a list of books I found readable and engaging if you want to delve deeper: * Byzantium trilogy by Norwich. If you don't want to get all three, I suggest getting The Apogee (…
It seems there's a lot of interest for Byzantine History on HN, that's fantastic! My friends and I have run a book club for the past four years on Ancient History with focus on the Eastern Roman Empire. Most books we read were kind of dry. Here's a list of books I found readable and engaging if you want to delve deeper: * Byzantium trilogy by Norwich. If you don't want to get all three, I suggest getting The Apogee (…
I’m not convinced that Procopius wasn’t just writing erotic fiction.
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Historically (before ~1800 let's say) China was known for its very high-quality goods. In fact, the Silk Road trade and later trade with the Spanish was almost exclusively Chinese goods flowing out and gold and silver specie flowing in - mainly because their domestic production was good enough that foreign goods couldn't compete. This was enough of a thing that the Romans became concerned at the amount of specie flow…
This is was the reason for the Opium Wars with the English. The English wanted Chinas tea but the Chinese didn't want anything from the English so the English were bleeding gold and silver into China. So the English forced Opium onto the people of China against the will of the King of China. China rebelled, the English conquered and forced the Chinese to open their ports and accept Indian-grown opium as trade for Chi…
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Unfortunately for the Byzantine empire it spent most of its centuries in a population/territory/economic decline. Back in 541-542 an outbreak killed about 40% of the city’s population. But even during the period 1347-1453, a total of 61 plague reports were noted. They only had the wealth, peace and population to focus on science to a very small degree. That they managed to stay afloat for as long as they did is a tes…
>> Back in 541-542 an outbreak killed about 40% of the city’s population. An outbreak of the plague .
I'm curious, is there a list somewhere of these world-changing industrial espionage incidents? Here's two more I remember off the top of my head. Not sure why the top results are the Smithsonian Magazine but here are some links: Samuel Slater brings cotton mill technology to America in 1789: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-esp... Robert Fortune learns Chinese tea production methods and brings…
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> Since the Church considered the ’scientific’ domain to be part of its curriculum, new science was generally a threat. I don't think that's true. Church only opposed science that was in contradiction with the Bible, which was a small minority of all science discoveries. Church never had any qualms with Newton laws or laws of conservation of mass (in chemistry) etc.
> Church never had any qualms with Newton laws or laws of conservation of mass (in chemistry) etc. That was a much later church separated by more than one schism. The Orthodox Church of the Byzantine empire was much less tolerant of any thoughts that might contradict doctrine. More that one philosopher was convicted of heresy.
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This is was the reason for the Opium Wars with the English. The English wanted Chinas tea but the Chinese didn't want anything from the English so the English were bleeding gold and silver into China. So the English forced Opium onto the people of China against the will of the King of China. China rebelled, the English conquered and forced the Chinese to open their ports and accept Indian-grown opium as trade for Chi…
That's a very dramatic narrative. As if the English or the Chinese were united among themselves. As if Chinese traders and smugglers didn't collude, or that the opium ban was a purely moral one and not commercial.
Somewhere inbetween those stories lies the truth. However as with the current crisis, it was the English that invaded with their Navy, that would make them the aggressor and hence the bad-~guy~human. Taking todays value system and applying it to events that happened some 180 years ago.
Byzantine history is so important to understand the modern world. It gives us the context for the orthodox/west divide; it gives us an example of a economic and intellectual superpower needing to live with the realities of barbarian neighbors, and being destroyed! It shows us great statecraft lasting a thousand years. It even shows us why generals and senior civil servants were eunuchs and how the next best thing was…
The religious parts of this I'm not sure I can agree with really.... I'm orthodox if it matters or seems relevant. The catholic/orthodox differences are largely just because of a thousand years of divergence, of speaking different languages and having relatively little interchange, of each individually having movements in response to internal pressures and trends not experienced by the other. Not going to get into a…
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Thanks, I don't really know the customs of the other Orthodox churches, but they are different organisations. I don't know them well, by any means. I'm reading about them on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Orthodox_Churches Apparently there are six Oriental Orthodox churches that are all "autocephalous" (i.e. they do their own thing). I think the Russians and Serbians are closer to the Greek church…
Yeah the jurisdictions are an unbelievable mess you virtually need a degree in history to understand. Downside of not being under a single bishop like the catholics. The oriental orthodox iirc reflect an even earlier schism than the one with rome, and aren't in communion with the eastern orthodox (despite those words meaning the same thing) which is the greek & russian churches mostly, plus a bunch of smaller slavic…
I think I remember about Iakovos marching with MLK. It's even a little surprising and I wonder if it wasn't all down to Iakovos' personality, kind of like the current Catholic pope is a bit of a maverick. Certainly, in Greece the church is not known for its support for civil liberties. I reckon there's many Greeks who have distanced themselves from the church exactly because of its extreme reactionary stance in many everyday issues, so the opposite of what happens in the States. Well, those are different countries :)
Thanks again for your unique perspective!