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The rise of Venice to become the great emporium for the West’s trade with the East was closely connected with the Byzantine recovery; culturally, Venice was really an outpost of the great metropolis at Constantinople – as its architecture revealed.
John Darwin • After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000
For these empire-builders, the vast grassy steppe that stretched across Eurasia from Manchuria to Hungary was an open road to commercial wealth and almost limitless power. The trading cities of the Near and Middle East were a natural target.
John Darwin • After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000
In 1500, nothing indicated that Europe would one day dominate the world. The Ottomans had just taken Constantinople, and China was confident in its superiority.
Yet, 400 years later, in 1900, Europe controlled almost the entire planet.
Why and how? (1/10) https://t.co/CbXN19uWas
In both Byzantium and the Frankish West, it was the fusion of secular with religious influences that created societies cohesive enough to withstand the aftershocks of imperial breakdown, barbarian invasion and Islamic expansion.