The fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 has been long considered one of the epochal events of the medieval world. Dramatic accounts of the final siege of the city began to appear soon after the events, and they continue to proliferate. Most focus on the siege itself, often presented as a heroic defense of Christianity against Islam, the last act in an ongoing holy war. The endless dynastic quarrels that fill most narratives of late Byzantine history only reinforce “byzantine” stereotypes. In The End of Byzantium, Jonathan Harris presents general readers with a vivid and compelling narrative of the reigns of the last Palaiologan Emperors (1403–1453), Manuel II and his sons, John VIII and Constantine XI, and the fates of their survivors after 1453. He not only brings the issues, setting, and personalities to life, but also presents strong arguments for revising our view of Byzantine failure. Based on contemporary sources and recent research, this book is important reading for historians as well as general audiences.
Harris argues that the late Byzantines were realists who interacted closely and generally peacefully in everyday life with Ottoman Turks, as with Genoese and Venetians, in their small remaining territories in Constantinople and Greece. Interconnected by family ties and trade, Byzantines, Balkan Christians, Italians, Europeans, and Turks shared Byzantium's former European territory. During their last half century, Byzantine rulers maneuvered between Ottoman and western alliances, accepting Turkish vassalage and paying tribute, testing the limits of treaties, engaging alternately in diplomacy and military action, and dabbling dangerously with Ottoman pretenders. They played Turkish demands off against western assistance, traveling to the west to seek aid and Crusades, but did their best to delay implementing papal demands for church union that served as a condition of support. Harris demonstrates that both emperors and powerful families were often divided in their allegiances, sometimes changing sides for political ambition or the need to conserve their wealth and protect their families.
Following a brief account of the expansion that brought Ottoman control to the outskirts of Constantinople, Harris presents the dilemma of Manuel II and subsequent rulers in their diminished empire. In Constantinople, they maintained impressive ceremonies and titles in a ramshackle city of crumbling monuments and deserted areas, while Venetian and Genoese semi-independent enclaves bustled with the trade, shipping, and international finance they controlled, a source of wealth for some of Constantinople's leading citizens. The remaining empire contained only widely separated territories ruled quasi-independently by Palaiologos family members whose internecine quarrels continued even beyond 1453. Survival depended on the fortunes and personalities of Ottoman rulers and Byzantine skill in determining where they could safely push treaty limits. Harris vividly describes the disastrous consequences Manuel II, John VIII and Constantine IX engendered by involving themselves in Ottoman succession struggles, expanding their territories and battling with their brothers, but he also credits all three rulers with diplomatic skills. The Ottoman policy of conquest, offering generous terms of peaceful surrender—security of life, property, and religious practice—to besieged cities was critical; refusal resulted in pillage, rape, and captivity, evident in the violent destruction of Thessalonica in 1430.
The author's discussion of church union is especially relevant for church history. The price for western military aid was high: acceptance of church union unpalatable in Constantinople and certain Ottoman reprisals. Manuel II had counseled his son to avoid an agreement, but John and his advisors came to believe that a Crusade to destabilize Ottoman rule was worth accepting union. Harris's account of the Council of Florence in 1439 offers a vivid description of the Byzantine participants, emphasizing the political calculation and careful diplomacy that resulted in acceptance of a compromised wording approving the Latin filioque and the more difficult acceptance of papal supremacy. The cost to Byzantium was enormous in the defeat of the promised Crusade at Varna in 1444 and the bitter controversies that arose over the agreement in Constantinople.
The final siege of Constantinople, the author argues, was unexpected by Greeks and Turks, the product of obsessive planning by the young Mehmed II soon after he became sultan, and a dramatic change from his predecessors. According to Harris Mehmed's declaration of his invasion as jihad was new and unwelcome to many Turks. Traditionally, Constantine IX's determination to defend Constantinople to the death as a holy war in 1453 has been seen as heroism, but Harris suggests that both the poor and the wealthy inside Constantinople, like the Genoese, Venetians, and many Turks, saw military conquest and its consequences as a disaster. Despite his meticulous preparations, Mehmed made the traditional offer of security in return for surrender to Constantine, and many, remembering the fate of Thessalonica, must have wished it to be accepted. What might have happened to the city and its inhabitants is worthy of speculation.
The End of Byzantium does not end with the fall of Constantinople, but traces the fate of inhabitants who were able to escape, the loss of the last Byzantine strongholds in the Peloponnese, and the end of the Palaiologan rulers. Harris's final words to readers who have not experienced their situation are to not judge too harshly the late Byzantines, who, lacking the resources to oppose the Ottomans militarily, generally chose survival and accommodation to the new regime rather than heroic resistance. For those have followed the argument of the book, the plea is compelling.
Overall, this work fills an important lacuna in late Byzantine history for general readers, undergraduate courses, and historians. It makes use of recent scholarship on the period and offers a corrective to the romantic heroism and blame that still affect interpretations of the period. It would be helpful for the author to have included more reflection on the sources for the period, especially since so many are available in translation and have generated significant controversy. But this suggestion does not detract from the merits of the work.
