History of the Byzantine Empire

This book is a fascinating mind's journey through the period of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the building of the new capital Constantinople on the site of the city of Byzantium, and the gradual carving out of the Eastern Empire - a time of migration of various tribes tempted to settle on their territory.

The Eastern Empire, a flexible and rapidly evolving organism, managed to solve the problem of invaders through a skilful policy, establishing coexistence, neighbourhood or alliance with the barbarians and living with them, entering into a relationship not achieved in the Western Empire.

Where is the key to preserving the Byzantine Empire a thousand years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire?

Uspensky provides answers to this and other questions, revealing to the reader the full picture of crucial events that determined the shape of modern Europe. He shows numerous aspects of Byzantium's political, military, and diplomatic history, the clergy and ecclesiastical affairs, crafts and trade, agriculture, urban planning, laws and their enforcement, and the empire's strict hierarchical system. 

Fyodor Ivanovich Uspensky (1845-1928) spent more than 40 years researching historical sources and archaeological data on the ground in Constantinople, Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, and bequeathed us a remarkable work that sheds bright light on the greatness of Byzantium.