Camels in early medieval western Europe (2016)

The History of Rome podcast talks a lot about present day Turkey and the rest of Asia Minor, as well as Carthage and Egypt and other North African places as they were all parts of the Empire.

I don't have anything more specific about later history, but the spice trade and the Orient Express are two (I think) fascinating pieces of history that tie Western Europe to North Africa and eastern Asia. The history of the Crusades is also integral to understand the mixing of these areas... Europe wouldn't have cared if they didn't think east Asia was "theirs" in some way.

I’d definitely start with Ancient Greece as it preceded Romans and Romans had to wage war agains Greek states in the beginning to become the real deal. Perhaps even start with Alexander the Great and his conquest.

I would then look into Carthaginian wars, famous general Hannibal and his fate. This was a crucial period when Rome was competing with Carthage for the top spot and at times it looked quite dire for Rome as Carthage had an upper hand.

Next interesting period would be Julius Ceazar and especially what happened after his death when his generals were battling to inherit his empire which eventually led to the split into eastern and western Romans. This split later continued when Christianity became mainstream religion and lead to Byzantine Empire.

You can look into the sack of Constantinople and wonder what would happen if Western Christians didn’t sack and destroy Eastern Christians allowing Islam to take over the region.

And then we come to the German rise as German lands become the heart of the indirect continuation of the Roman Empire in the form of Holy Roman Empire.

The Yale series on the early middle ages has some good info in the first six or seven lectures[1] My favorite relevant tidbit is that Roman North Africa was the major supplier of grain to Italy, at least in the 4th and 5th centuries, when disruptions in North Africa could cause famines in the city of Rome. When the Vandals in Spain were looking around for another juicy piece of the Roman empire to settle in, they (supposedly) wrangled themselves an invitation from the Roman governor of North Africa, whom they promptly betrayed and defeated. They consolidated control of North Africa and held it for almost a century until Justinian, ruling from Byzantium, took Africa back for the empire. At that point, North Africa was a much more important region than Italy was, and many historians argue that Justinian's reconquest of Italy from the Goths immediately afterwards was a waste of time.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC8JcWVRFp8&list=PL77A337915...

Most of the replies are related to Roman stuff, but more 'recent' checkout the Moors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moors

They created some amazing architecture and culture in Southern Spain.

Yes. Romans actually were heavily invested in Northern Africa - today’s Egypt, Libya and so on were valuable parts of their domain. Northern Europe was actually more unstable and more of a “barbarian” land controlled by wild Germanic tribes. Those got later incorporated into the empire through the Roman army which preferred soldiers from Germanic lands in the north due to their valor in battle.

The crucial point was the sacking of Constantinople. Basically Western Christians sacking the city and raping and destroying center of Eastern Christianity. If Christians would have instead united history could have been quite different. The era of crusades is very interesting and complex. Lots of very important historical events that shaped the world history afterwards happened during those times. Lots of parallels could be drawn even to our current time we are living (hint hint).

The most significant demographic change for the city was actually not the Ottoman conquest, but its destruction and rule by the Western Christians ~200 years prior. These events took the population down from about 400,000 to about 35,000. It never recovered. By the time Mehmed II came along, it was only 50,000.

The Anatolian and Thracian lands were part of the Greek cultural sphere historically (well, at least since Alexander's conquests peeling them off of Persia). Alexander's conquests ensured that Egypt and Palestine would remain in Mediterranean-centric empires--these were part of the Roman Empire and then the Byzantine Empire.

The Arab conquests quickly removed Egypt and Palestine from the Byzantine world. The Seljuk Turks moved into central Anatolia (this is what prompted the Crusades), and did seek to take Constantinople, although they were done in by the Mongols instead.

The Fourth Crusade resulted in the sack of Constantinople by Western Christendom. The Latin Empire didn't last terribly long, and the remnants of the Byzantine Empire took it back within a century, but the Byzantine Empire was at this point in a fatal cycle of internal rebellion. At this time, the Ottomans, who start out as a minor Beylik in western Anatolia, take advantage of Byzantine distraction to peel off the lands of Thrace and move their capital to Edirne and solidify themselves as the dominant power in the Balkans. It's from this base that they ultimately defeat the European powers (Battle of Varna) and put the Byzantine Empire out of its misery (conquest of Constantinople).

By and large, the Ottomans actually brought back stability to Thrace and Anatolia, at least for 300 years or so. Anatolia was lost to the Seljuks long before, and the Ottomans were the first power to be able to unify it under a polity since the collapse of the Sultanate of Rum. Christian infighting caused the political instability in the Balkans that the Ottomans were most able to take advantage of.

Note that the change in political control doesn't necessarily correspond to change in the general inclinations of the population. Greeks and Armenians still remained a major part of the Seljuk and Ottomans (although they did decline over the centuries), and the Ottomans were generally quite tolerant of this heritage for the first few centuries (much less so after around 1700).