Crusader Kings 2 Redux

[garbon]

I find it a little sketchy to applaud the Byzantines for their tolerance but at the same time Minsky's comparison to Hitler is absurd.  I mean they were a medieval christian monarchy context is important here people.

I don't think Joan was saying they were the same. The commonality between post-WW2 Germany and Byzantine Empire is that Jews didn't have it so bad as both states implemented measures to make sure that there weren't any Jews.  He wasn't saying Byzantines were Hitleresque but rather it is rather convenient of Psellus to say the Byzantines treated Jews better than Iberia without noting that the Byzantines had taken care to make sure there were few Jews.

[Faeelin]

You are trash talking by calling it 'the Greek Kingdom'

I refer to it as a Greek kingdom because that's what the western Europeans saw it as (witness Roger II of Sicily's insistence that he was the equal of the Byzantine emperors, or Ludwig's tiff with Basil over the title of basileus), with reason. By the period in question the Byzantine state is reduced to the shores of the Aegean.

It didn't call itself the Byzantine Empire, and calling it the Roman Empire seems silly for this period.

'LOL you lost to da Venetians and they suk!!!11' is usually the sort of rhetoric used by people who talk trash because they are incapable of forming actual thoughts on a topic.

I'm merely pointing out that the Empire was not a preeminent power in this period, but was repeatedly invaded and almost destroyed by every neighbor around it.

I find the Greek Kingdom stuff especially groan worthy since you were the guy eager to annoint every King in Western Europe an Emperor.

Eh, I still think this makes sense, because the game doesn't really reflect unions of crowns that well, and with the addition of the kingdoms of Aquitaine, Brittany, etc. it makes sense to have some sort of title above them.

Edit: In fact you even said as much didn't you?  About how public opinion is that the Byzantine Empire was this great and awesome thing?  Public opinion here being Balkan Nationalist opinions from Paradoxtards.

No, I said to the extent the public is aware of the Byzantine Empire, it is that it's this great and awesome thing. Yes, this is mostly based on paradox and alternate history forums, because I don't think most people know or give a damn about it.

[Valmy]

It didn't call itself the Byzantine Empire, and calling it the Roman Empire seems silly for this period.

It doesn't really have a good title for this period which is why we invented one.  But refering to it as 'The Kingdom of the Greeks' was used as a slur at the time so I assumed you were using it as such.

I'm merely pointing out that the Empire was not a preeminent power in this period, but was repeatedly invaded and almost destroyed by every neighbor around it.

Indeed any state in this period would have had a hard time constantly being attacked by all its neighbors which was sorta par for the course for the monarchy we currently refer to as the Byzantine Empire.  Which makes its survival sorta bizarre and interesting.  But I have a hard time not considering the Comenenus version of the monarchy not an important power prior to the battle of...er...what was it *googles* Myriokephalon.  But thinking that appears to irritate you a great deal...for some reason.

Eh, I still think this makes sense, because the game doesn't really reflect unions of crowns that well, and with the addition of the kingdoms of Aquitaine, Brittany, etc. it makes sense to have some sort of title above them.

It is not historical though!  In any case I am just giving you a hard time.  In the event the AI never seems to form those new Empires so it turns out not to matter much.

No, I said to the extent the public is aware of the Byzantine Empire, it is that it's this great and awesome thing. Yes, this is mostly based on paradox and alternate history forums, because I don't think most people know or give a damn about it.

People love lost Empires and lost causes.  Hell there are people who think Robert E Lee was the greatest General of all time despite most of his major military initiatives being complete failures.  If the Nazis had won WWII I bet the Soviet Union would have the same sort of fanbois the Nazis currenly enjoy.

But beyond those history dorks come on man the thing existed for a really long time under constant attack and all the political, mental, and emotional strains that come with that.  That is just interesting.

[The Minsky Moment]

I'm actually reasonably certain that Constantinople is the most consistently Jewish-friendly major European city of the last 1,000 years.  This only breaks in the 1920s, when the Kemalists tried to murder or exile everything interesting about Turkey.

For the majority of that 1000 years, it hasn't been Byzantine, which isn't exactly a coincidence in this context.  The same goes for Salonika - under the Ottoman period there was a huge thriving Jewish population but it appears to have been neglible during the Byzantine period.  And while it's true there were plenty of "horrors" in medieval Europe, fact is that many Jews left Byzantine lands to take their chances (such as they were) in Italy, the Rhineland, and points east.  It's hard to escape the conclusion that after a few centuries of being abused by Byzantine rulers, the Jews took the hint an voted with their feet despite the lack of terrific Plan Bs, and the apparent reduction in historical evidence of persecution after that point doesn't indicate a philo-Judaic change of heart, but rather that the remnant community was too small and pitiful to bother repressing (or recording the repression in chronicles).

[dps]

People love lost Empires and lost causes.  Hell there are people who think Robert E Lee was the greatest General of all time despite most of his major military initiatives being complete failures.  If the Nazis had won WWII I bet the Soviet Union would have the same sort of fanbois the Nazis currenly enjoy.

Lol.  People would go on about how those Soviet tanks with the multiple turrent were really better than Panzer IVs but there just weren't enough of them, or something.

Though I do have to admit that those things do have a certain aesthetic about them.  They sort of hark back to earlier ideas about "land battleships" and it seems like they would be a good idea.  But if practice, they just didn't work.  Of course, early-war Soviet command-and-control was so bad even the T-34s (which were actually good tanks) didn't really accomplish all that much in the summer and early fall of 1941.

[Valmy]

For the majority of that 1000 years, it hasn't been Byzantine, which isn't exactly a coincidence in this context.  The same goes for Salonika - under the Ottoman period there was a huge thriving Jewish population but it appears to have been neglible during the Byzantine period.  And while it's true there were plenty of "horrors" in medieval Europe, fact is that many Jews left Byzantine lands to take their chances (such as they were) in Italy, the Rhineland, and points east.  It's hard to escape the conclusion that after a few centuries of being abused by Byzantine rulers, the Jews took the hint an voted with their feet despite the lack of terrific Plan Bs, and the apparent reduction in historical evidence of persecution after that point doesn't indicate a philo-Judaic change of heart, but rather that the remnant community was too small and pitiful to bother repressing (or recording the repression in chronicles).

When did this happen?  Are we talking prior to the fall of the Western Empire?  The time of Justinian to Phocas?  Was there a big Jewish population in the Balkans?  Did the invasion of the Slavs have any influence?  I mean for a bit there most of Anatolia was Arab and most of the Balkans were Slavic.  Did the wars drive the Jews out as well or...what?

I also question why specifically you are calling out the rulers when from what I see they are constantly being hammered by the church and its supporters for being soft on Jews.  The Church and the people of the East seem to be the driving force here, I am sure the Emperors would have preferred to just let people sit there and pay taxes if they could get away with it.  Phocas only did his idiotic persecution as a way to generate public support for his regime for example.  But you may be right...but I am not sure this was a top down persecution.

[Queequeg]

Minsky, I should say first that I feel awkward discussing Jewish history as a non-Jew.  I hope it is obvious throughout this argument that Jewish history is a passion of mine on par with Byzantine, and that I don't at any point want to belittle the suffering of Byzantine Jews. I think you're misinterpreting Byzantine religious policy, and this annoys me because it's part of a general tenancy to write off the Byzantines as humorless theocrats.

For the majority of that 1000 years, it hasn't been Byzantine, which isn't exactly a coincidence in this context.

Not really.  We can expand the period to include the entire Macedonian Dynasty.  That's more than half Byzantine.  You'd also probably have to exclude the Early Republican period with extremely intense anti-Jewish persecution that resulted in the mass exile of almost the entire Jewish population of Istanbul. 

And while it's true there were plenty of "horrors" in medieval Europe, fact is that many Jews left Byzantine lands to take their chances (such as they were) in Italy, the Rhineland, and points east.  It's hard to escape the conclusion that after a few centuries of being abused by Byzantine rulers, the Jews took the hint an voted with their feet despite the lack of terrific Plan Bs

I think it's just as likely that many Byzantine Jews left for 'pull' reasons as much as 'push'.  Byzantium was likely just not attractive a place for urban Jewish populations for a whole number of reasons, most of which I have mentioned.   The Byzantine Economy wasn't going to be as attractive; the silk-weavers of Nikaea lived under constant fear of Latin or Turkish attack and were increasingly unimportant, while urban economies of Nuremberg and Venice were increasingly wealthy.   The Byzantines already had Italian, Greek and Assyrian crafstmen and moneylenders, and the massive state apparatus and intervention in the economy and well-established guild system left fewer opportunities. 

and the apparent reduction in historical evidence of persecution after that point doesn't indicate a philo-Judaic change of heart

So a claimed absence is not evidence of absence so much as evidence of a positive.  Totally unconvincing.  There's actually substantial work on this, up to and including the  Palailogoi.  Michael VIII was criticized for philo-Judaism by the Patriarch, for example. 

but rather that the remnant community was too small and pitiful to bother repressing (or recording the repression in chronicles).

There are probably  less than 1,000 Jews left in Egypt, but I think it's a fair bet that whenever the plumbing stops working, a substantial portion of the Egyptian population would blame Mossad agents. 

[Queequeg]

No, I said to the extent the public is aware of the Byzantine Empire, it is that it's this great and awesome thing. Yes, this is mostly based on paradox and alternate history forums, because I don't think most people know or give a damn about it.

I realize how annoying many of the Pan-Paradox Byzanteens are, as I was one of the first.  But I think you are completely wrongheaded on this.   

Byzantium isn't "this great and awesome thing" among people who know it.  The vast majority-if they have an opinion-don't have a very high opinion of it. This includes, disastrously, almost the entire population of Turkey.  The Turks have largely succeeded at wiping the nation clean of most traces of Byzantine heritage, from closing monasteries, renaming towns, letting Nationalist animals do stuff like this, selling priceless works of art from churches in Kosovo or Northern Cyprus on the black market, or letting Ani fall to dust.  There is still systematic discrimination against Christians, and the last pogrom was only 60 years ago.   The Cappadocian Greek language has died, and Pontic Greek-which predates the Empire by a thousand years-is all but dead.  What little remains of the Byzantine legacy is under constant pressure, and deserves defending.  There's still a lot of intellectual work that needs to be done as the field was largely ignored until the last few decades, and I can assure you that Norwegian teenagers aren't going to write seminal texts on Komnenoi political economy, nor are they going to help preserve a thousand year old Church.

I refer to it as a Greek kingdom because that's what the western Europeans saw it as (witness Roger II of Sicily's insistence that he was the equal of the Byzantine emperors, or Ludwig's tiff with Basil over the title of basileus), with reason. By the period in question the Byzantine state is reduced to the shores of the Aegean.

Byzantium starts the game as one of the three most powerful states on the map.  We call 12th Century England the Angevin Empire, so I see no reason why the Komnenoi at least would not fall under this title. 

Also, I think your insistence on using "Greek Kingdom" before 1204 is simply bizarre.  It's an Empire.  Large, multi-ethnic, centralized.  It's the direct descendant of the Empire that invented the word Empire.  It had 800 years of history.  Comparing the Komnenoi state  under John II or early Manuel with Siciliy is just bizarre.  It's not the Byzantines fault Ludwig had an inferiority complex.

[Tamas]

For this whole discussion, I have just one thing to say:

[Josquius]

Well...video games certainly led me towards the path of having a clue what on earth Byzantium was.
Though I was only a child when I first played age of empires so who knows whether I would have stumbled upon it myself.

[Valmy]

For this whole discussion, I have just one thing to say:

Indeed.  Isn't it glorious?  If only we could get more discussions like this going on other aspects of Euro history.

[The Minsky Moment]

Valmy, Q:

There is still quite a bit of obscurity concerning Jewish migratory movements in the late classical period/Early Middle Ages, but what is clear is that there is a significant transfer out of Byzantine lands into Italy and then France and Germany on the one hand, and also into Sassanid lands of on the other.  With respect to the former, there is evidence of favorable treatment by the early Papacy, the Ostrogoths, and even the Lombards, in comparison to the their plight in those parts of Italy subject to the Byzantine reconquista; the latter tendency can be illustrated by the fact that while the Talmud was originally assembled in Palestine, the accepted version was ultimately assembled years later in Babylon - and Babylon, Isfahan and other Jewish centers in the Sassanid realm became more important centers of Jewish scholarship, culture and commerce than the traditional homeland in the Syria-Palestine region.  That the remnant Jewish population of Syria/Palestine/Egypt generally welcomed the Arab conquest is well known.  It is trivially easy to come up with names of famous Jewish scholars, philosophers and even statesmen who lived in Iraq, Persia, Arab controlled Syria/Palestine/North Africa/Spain and western/soutern Europe; I can't think of any such figures in Byzantine-controlled lands.

The fact that Q has to reach to the  Palaiologi (almost 1000 years after the founding of Constantinople) is telling: the Palaiologi were happy to make whatever alliances they could and support of the Jews and their international commercial ties was useful in contesting the Italian merchant states of the Med. and of course their Comneni rivals who maintained the traditional Byzantime anti-Jewish program.  Basically it is an exception that proves the rule - a marriage of political convenience leveraged from traditional policies of hostility.

I am not suggesting that a civilization be judged entirely on how it treated Jews in the middle ages (a criterion that pretty much everyone would flunk rather badly other than a few exceptional times/places) but I don't think there is much room for argument that focusing on that narrow issue, the Byzantines did not cover themselves in glory, even by the low standards of the epoch.

[Josquius]

this is a bit of a historic question since this isn't my area but...whats with the golden horde's cross flag?

[Valmy]

Huh...I had all the DLCs but they seem to have poofed on me on Steam.  Anybody else have this problem?

[Tamas]

Huh...I had all the DLCs but they seem to have poofed on me on Steam.  Anybody else have this problem?

check local cache integrity