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Comment by rnmwfQ3f | Hacker News Reader

The Ottoman Empire was the continuation of the Roman Empire, not the end of it.

If you were a Greek living in the Byzantine Empire – or as they described themselves, a Roman living in the Roman Empire – the Ottomans were just the new Roman Emperors. The Roman bureaucracy, civil institutions, and daily life changed very little.

People don't normally acknowledge it because both the Holy Roman Empire and the Russian Empire wanted to be recognised as successors to the Roman Empire, but the truth is that the Ottomans were the real successors.

Some info on Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_claim_to_Roman_success...

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>The Ottoman Empire was the continuation of the Roman Empire, not the end of it

Well, it was a conquest, from different peoples, with different civilization, and different religion, and different laws and government structures.

That's pretty much the definition of the end of an empire.

>If you were a Greek living in the Byzantine Empire – or as they described themselves, a Roman living in the Roman Empire – the Ottomans were just the new Roman Emperors.

Not really. There are countless laments for the fall of the empire from the "Greeks living in the Byzantine Empire" at the era, all the way from folk sayings and stories, to scholars, and tons of insurrection against the invaders after the fall of Constantinople.

This idea of the "random masses" that have no sense of belonging and identity, and just change a rule after a different people conquer their lands and impose their rule is dehumanizing and ludicrous, doubly so for an empire and a civilization that last for a millenium...

Surely this is a Ship of Theseus situation, isn't it? There may have been little change from year to year, but a red-blooded Jupiter-Optimus-Maximus-fearing classical Roman citizen transplanted into the future would have been horrified at various moments, first when the Republic became an Empire, again when Christianity took over, when the Empire was split in the Tetrarchy, and when it became apparent that the Greek-speaking half was all that was left. Sure, there's a continuous line of succession much later, but for Gaius Quinctilius Budweiser, I think the traditional break when the West finally gave up is as good as any.

> I think the traditional break when the West finally gave up is as good as any.

Except that the Greek-speaking part was as Roman as the Latin-speaking part in culture, heritage, bureaucracy, governance, and self-identity. The later Western European historians' designation of the East as "Byzantine" (read: not "real" Romans) is much motivated by the West Europe's desire to see themselves as intellectual descendants of the Roman Empire (n.b. Italian Renaissance and Classicism).

>Except that the Greek-speaking part was as Roman as the Latin-speaking part in culture, heritage, bureaucracy, governance, and self-identity.

Not that much. It was roman in leadership and had the roman legal structures, but it was always the area of prior Greece and the Hellenistic kindgoms, which had millenia of history and culture all of its own (to the point of the Roman's saying that when they conquered it millitarily, it conquered them culturally).

That's also true of the areas in Southern Italy, Sicily, North Africa, and Illyria. Nothing about the East differentiated it, and the Romans saying that it conquered them culturally were the same as the Americans now lamenting that the US has seen cultural changes. "Oh no! You're not sending consular armies out every year to acquire new territory as your sole cultural identity!" was the complaint.

Completing the conquest of the Mediterranean basin and being left bordering only states against whom the Romans never had any particular success, the Sahara, (Parthians/Sassanids) or holding the line against rotating groups of peoples pushed further west in the Balkans and Germania left the Roman state without obvious paths to expansion. That does not mean that Hellenistic states "conquered them culturally".

If you think the West was some unified area with "Latin-speaking" culture, heritage, bureaucracy, and self-identity, you'd need to write a thesis-length paper justifying it no matter what century. Even the Italian peninsula was none of those things until long after the establishment of the Principate, at which point wealth had already precluded the existence of men like Cincinnatus.

Maybe my perception is a little off, but I think of the Romans as having outsourced their "high" culture from the very moment they could afford it--formal education, medicine, and theater were for Greek slaves to do. A dignified Roman was more suited to the manly pursuits of farming, conquest, and engineering.

This is completely arbitrary. Both from the sense that, as you mentioned, there are a number of inflection points prior to that, and in "Greek-speaking" being distinctive at all.

If the classical Roman citizen weren't horrified at the organizational changes under Diocletian, or the difference in response between Adrianopole and Cannae, or moving the Imperial seat, or Romanized barbarians leading legionary armies (all of which were 100+ years before the fall of the west), they'd keep going.

The fact that the population in the East spoke Greek (and Syraic, and Aramaic, and a bunch of other languages) is a meaningless distinction. The West never truly had a formalized language anyway, at least among the citizens. The East had the same history, the same institutions, the same government

I think the same arguments could be applied to the USA

Can you imagine a USA where half spoke Spanish, half English and less than 1% both?

I can image in a USA where the population is divided in half, each half with so widely different world views that they might as well be speaking different languages…

Like different species! I mean, I don’t think they interbreed…

Give it a few hundred generations and we’ll see!

I don't think your wikipedia link supports the assertion that institutions and bureaucracy changed very little. Even 'continuation' is fairly shaky since, as the page itself points out, unlike the subsequent Ottoman one, the Byzantine empire wasn't much of an empire by the time the Ottomans took Constantinople (and for quite a stretch before that).

The Ottomans were already ruling most of the Byzantine empire by the time they took Constantinople.

I think it's a little difficult to say objectively what the truth is, but I'm here in Istanbul now and it doesn't really seem that the Turks think of themselves as hostile occupiers. I would say the vibe in the city and attitude among the Turks is more spiritual successors of Byzantium, rather than an occupying force.

I think the fact that they conquered Byzantium is perceived more as legitimizing their rule, since the Romans at that point were weak enough to fall. In any case, it's more symbolic than anything, because the Ottomans had already taken most of the important stuff before and really just needed the city for the straight.

They are not hostile occupiers any more,Istanbul has been Ottoman for many centuries.

But the city was called Constantinople. Istanbul in Greek phonetics means "We are in the city” and was renamed after the capture. It is Ottoman, not part of the Byzantine tradition but Ottomans promoted a continuity narrative without any of the preexisting thousand year old Greek Christian traditions. Those populations had to be forcibly removed or changed faith up until the 1950’s.

I am not sure what exactly you mean by your explanation, what traditions, who is forcibly converted until 1950's?

I mean the Byzantine folk and religious traditions do not exist in the current owners. There were extensive pogroms and population exchanges. Although Istanbul in particular was exempt from those based on treaties, in reality the treaties were ignored. Regarding the last major events in the 50s I have found this, don’t know how detailed it is:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanbul_pogrom

If you start looking into 1000 years history of the area you will find maybe worse incidents happening from the "Byzantine folk / religious traditions" side as well, I don't think this one sided implications are warranted.

> The Roman bureaucracy, civil institutions, and daily life changed very little.

From what I’ve read the bureaucracy was entirely replaced by the Sultan’s court. Daily life might not have changed much for the Roman in the street, but the Res Publica was gone for good.

A big clue that a culture shift has occurred is when the language changes. It isn't total, but it's big. If Istanbul residents spoke some Romance language, that case would be more convincing.

By that logic the Italians today are still living in a western Roman Empire.

Well, the Holy Roman Empire existed into the early 19th century, so the idea isn't entirely absurd ;)

This is normal behavior. Some early Roman emperors also dreamed of becoming like Alexander the Great. Today Putin dreams of becoming like Napoleon Bonaparte.

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