Byzantium

The administrative language in this new Roman Empire on the Bosphorus was no longer Latin, but Greek – in the centuries following the fall of the Roman Empire, Latin had become a dead language even in the traditional dominions of the ‘old Romans’. Another new aspect of Byzantium was its close interrelationships – often in the form of bloody conflicts – with the Islamic world. But the threat from the ‘Latin West’, arising from the devastating Crusades, was almost as severe. And finally, Byzantium accelerated the globalisation of historical processes, through its contacts in East Africa, the Indian Ocean, the Caucasus, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Johannes Preiser-Kapeller gives an exciting and informative account of the period.