ABSTRACT
Byzantium and its broader cultural world ought to be of particular interest tohistorical sociology. The very long duration of a cultural complex with its own permanent and exclusive political centre is already an attractive topic for comparative study, and a good prima facie reason to view the Byzantine experience from a civilizational angle. More specific points can be added in support of this approach. If it makes sense to speak of a Byzantine civilization, its unity and continuity were – for insiders as well as receptive and alien outsiders – to an unusually high degree bound up with imperial integration. The only clear case of an even closer and more lasting interconnection of this kind is the Chinese one. Some comments on differences and similarities may help to put the Byzantine record in perspective. Compared to Byzantium, which shared a classical legacy with other civilizations, the Chinese claim to imperial possession of a cultural tradition was more exclusive. On the other hand, China had to contend with counter-empires emerging on its Inner Asian frontier and combining imitation of its models with their own techniques of power. This factor was much less important in Byzantine history, but not quite absent; the Bulgarian empire is the most salient example. The Ottoman conquest of Byzantium and the surrounding region differed from the seventeenth-century Manchu conquest of China in fundamental respects. The Manchus took over an empire, whereas the Ottomans gradually absorbed a group of successor states (the properly imperial period of Byzantine history had come to an end in 1204). As for the results, Manchu rule may be seen as a final synthesis of Chinese and Inner Asian imperial traditions. By contrast, Ottoman expansion led to the triumph of one universal religion over another, with corresponding effects on political institutions and political culture; Byzantine inputs counted for something in the making of the Ottoman empire (so much so that historians have occasionally been tempted to describe it as a successor state), but their role was nowhere near that of Confucian traditions in the Manchu regime.
