Byzantium : The Balkans, Europe

Résumé du document

As a thousand-year empire (324-1453), the universal state that was disparagingly called Byzantium by new-age historians, was the Christian and medieval continuation of the Roman Empire whose inhabitants called themselves Romaioi Romans. Christianity as the state religion and Constantinople as the capital represents the major differences between this medieval Roman Empire and the former, antique one. Its major specificity consisted in reducing Roman law, Greek culture and Christianity into an until then unknown unparalleled synthesis for the whole Mediterranean basin. With its unique legal system, faith, ideology, culture and identity, Byzantium was an unrenewable synthesis across three continents, a bringing together of the temporal and spatial quantum without parallel in history. It is especially important not to lose sight of the economic cohesion of the Christian empire of the Romaioi. It was the only continuation of the antique urban civilization and its monetary economy at a time when the subsistence economy and the primitive exchange of goods were prevalent in other parts of Europe. The stability and universality of Byzantine coinage are one of the most reliable indicators of the superiority of its civilization in a much larger area, extending over three continents and gravitating toward the Mediterranean basin as the cradle of the most advanced civilization in that period.

Extraits

[...] If the European integration of the Western Balkans and, in all probability, Turkey is not achieved within a shorter period, the Euro-Atlantic alliance will lose its historical chance to stabilize and Europeanize the most sensitive part of the European continent, which is so important and sensitive that over a medium term, if not a short one, it can easily be proved, like many times before, that Europe will either fall or survive in the Balkans. Born in Niš, Constantine the Great knew that quite well, so that he founded his thousand-year empire on the south-eastern tip of the Balkans. In fact, the global clash of civilizations began with the G.-M. CHENU, Les limités des interventions européennes Ed. Marie-Françoise ALLAIN, François CALORI, Olivia CUSTER, L'ex Yougoslavie en Europe, de la faillite des démocraties au processus de paix, Paris 1997, p. 60-69; P. [...]

[...] In such countries it is impossible to have an open society. Those are the closed systems of "democratorship" which can easily be identified. Such states cannot be nation or civil states; they can only be systemic and privilegial, autarchic and regressive. What is the real perspective of the West Balkan countries37 in relation to the development of the European integration processes? The end of the 20th century and the beginning of As it is well known, the newly coined term “Western Balkans” refers to the area of former Yugoslavia from which Slovenia was taken away and Albania added. [...]

[...] The Serbs along European Divides), in Europe and the Seerbs, ed. Historical Insitute of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Belgrade 1996, p. 413-425 (Symary in English, p. 426-429) F. BRAUDEL, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II, t. I-II, Paris 19825 (première édition, Paris 1949); H. INALCIK, The Ottoman Empire. The Classical Age (1300-1600), Londres 1973; R. MANTRAN (ed. [...]

[...] The collectivist Marxist and National Socialist ideologies were the main causes of that regression, where the collectivity was dominant and man as an individual was only the impersonal means of the state. The consequence of that madness was the division of the European territory into the zones of influence of the superpowers and their military alliances. M. S. ALEXANDER, The Republic in Danger: General Maurice Gamelin and the Politics of French Defense (1933-1940), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge ; Anglo-french defence relations between the wars, ed. M. S. Alexander, W. J. [...]

[...] HENDY, Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy, c. 300-1453, Cambridge University Press 1985; Cécile MORRISSON, Monnaie et finances à Byzance : analyses, techniques, Aldershot 1994, M. KAPLAN, Tout l'or de Byzance, Gallimard, Paris 2005; Id., Byzance, Les Belles Lettres, Paris 2007, p. 128- Elen ARVELER, Politiéka ideologija vizantijskog carstva, (introd: Prof. dr Ljubomir Maksimoviç, trans: B. Bojoviç, éd: "Filip Viènjiç"- Beograd, "Retrospektive", ed: B. Bojoviç, Beograd 1988); original title: Hélène AHRWEILER, L'idéologie politique de l'empire byzantin, éd. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris The civilizational shift at the beginning of the second millennium was reflected in the inexorable economic growth of the European continent and, in particular, Western Europe (which tended to be exponential)9. [...]