What caused the Byzantine Empire to collapse?

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Ottoman cannons.

>>384227
Fourth crusade next question?

Not paying their debts.

Muslims. Also earthquakes.

>>384252

The Crowns of France and England, etc. should have fallen a hundred times over if that were the case. The Romans were the least worst at paying debts.

>>384239
This.

How is this a question?

>>384227

>slaves to tradition
>political instability
>political and religious isolation

a catholic byzantine empire would still exist. sad but true.

>>384227
>Perfidious Venetians
>Crazed Crusaders
>Ottermons
>Dissolution of Themes
>Everyone hates us oh fuck.
Etc.

They couldn't afford Hungarian cannons which the Ottomans bought instead

>>384227
Civil wars, instability, over reliance on other nations and meme tier diplomacy.

Turks brought Slav Mercs and they got fucked from both ends

The abrupt death of George Maniakes at the climactic battle of his rebellion. The ruling emperor Constantine was a weak hedonist bankrupting the Empire and centralizing all power to corrupt civic courtiers.

The heart of the Roman Empire was always its superior military forces and some of the best Emperors were military men that could lead their troops into battle personally and maintain the safety and security of their borders. George Maniaces was such a man. Described as both terrifying in his wrath and huge in stature he literally made the enemies of the Byzantines cower in fear. Had he not died in that battle he would've crushed the unpopular Emperor whose troops had already started to desert to Maniakes side. After that rebellion the corruption just got worse and worse and the military continued to degrade. Had their military not degraded they would not have needed to call for western aid and started the crusades leading to the 4th crusade and so on and so forth.

Crusaders were housed inside Constantinople and sacked it from the inside, also muslims sacked it from the outside not long after.

>>384227
Because Civil War was their favorite pass time.

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>>384227
civil wars and turkish expansion

>>384294
What do you mean "Dissolution of Themes"?

>>384788
>The theme system was a method of providing troops for the Byzantine army. It was introduced by the emperor Constans around 650 AD.

>Citizen farmers were given land to work in return for military service when required. The system was hereditary, so the citizens actually owned the land; however, the obligation for military service was also hereditary, but this meant that the empire had a constant supply of manpower for the military from generation to generation.

>As both the empire and the farmers were prosperous, the theme system allowed the Byzantines to put large, well equipped armies into the field. Each theme was able to produce 12,800 front line troops, and in 700 there were 10 themes for producing soldiers, and 3 for providing manpower for the navy. This meant the Byzantines could put over 120,000 well equipped troops in the field at any given time.

>The theme system started to decline from 963, when military reforms introduced by emperor Nikephoras II Phokas emphasized the role of the Tagmata, the regular standing army portion of the Byzantine military based in Constantinople, rather than thematic troops, which therefore declined in numbers and quality (by 1000 AD there were 30 themes, but the army was still around the same size).

>Following the disastrous defeat for the Byzantines at Manzikert (1071) by the Seljuk Turks, most of what is now modern eastern and central Turkey was overrun and conquered by the Seljuks. This was the land that had provided the thema; without it, the source for troops for the Byzantine army no longer existed.

>>384829
Sounds like what happened to the Abbasids themselves when they abandoned the junds and diwan registers for standing armies of ghulams.

>>384829
The decline of the themes also had a lot to do with the growth of big plantations. As more and more free citizens were reduced to serfdom and their land annexed to the local robber baron's latifundia, the pool of battle-ready citizens shrank drastically until the empire became almost totally reliant on foreign mercenaries. Having a strong yeoman farmer class is a huge asset that often gets overlooked in history

>>384240
why do people say they were greeks who were pretending to be roman

>>384829

Large themes are dangerous, however. One could never be sure what the Strategoi were plotting. And the Tagmata were exceptionally effective.

By 963, the Empire's commerce had recovered sufficiently to begin to sustain standing armies once more. Feudalism sacrifices a hell of a lot for the sake of fielding large armies, and it certainly didn't save the Sassanids. It was always a measure born of desperation, not a stable solution.

It also stands to reason that even in defeat the Turks may have dispersed and settled the Anatolian plans anyway. That's what happened with the Galatians.

>>385088

To allow the neither holy nor roman emperor to save face.

>>385095
>insert Voltaire smug face here

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>>385015

Where have I heard that one before?

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>>385015

Your off by several centuries. The Latifundia system was the reason for the decline of the west. In the East, the Basileus had learned from those mistakes, and routinely broke up the landowners in favor of the yeoman class. That is why there were thirty themes instead of 10, when the themes are too powerful, the emperor can exert little control over the territory.

>>384227
The Byzantines carried on the tradition of corruption and political infighting. Sure, there were outside threats like the Arabs, Turks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Catholics, etc... but what made all of those people able to take on the Byzantines was the fact that the Byzantines were weakened by infighting. The same can be said for practically any other empire in history. Sure, events like the Islamic Conquests, Seljuk invasion, and 4th Crusade all did significant damage to the empire. What kept the empire from recovering was a lack of good rulers/good rulers being killed and replaced by bad rulers (see: Komneians).

>>384227
A variety of factors

Mehmets
Venetian fucking shits
Fucking retarded emperors who preferred civil wars to anything else
Fucking retarded emperors in general
Fucking retarded bureocracy and general organization
Fucking retarded concepts concerning religious ortodoxy which caused parts of empire to want to secede and go with the arabs and mehmets rather than stay with the Byzs.

>>385091
>and it certainly didn't save the Sassanids
That's because of the nearly decade long plague that ravaged Persia after the end of the final Byzantine-Persian War of 602-629. Losing about half your entire empire's population and more importantly, your veteran commanders and leaders including the Shah himself will have disastrous effects on your military.

>>385455

Imagine how lucky it was that Justinian survived the plague.

>>384227
The failure of the Komnenoi to take back their Anatolian homelands (instead sacrificing their energies on short sighted campaigns into Italy and Syria; although admittedly those regions were richer) and to curb the powerful barons which became increasingly independent of the state apparatus. The latter can be blamed on the giving of privileges by Alexios and the failure of Andronikos to clean house.

Also they didn't expand the bureaucracy as much as they should have to better keep the nobility in check. Quite ironic considering how, to Western standards, how big it was.

>>386019
>the failure of Andronikos to clean house.

poor Andronikos, blamed for the massacre of the Latins when he had nothing to do with it

Muslims and Jews. Also the decentralization of The Holy Roman Empire didn't help in the decision making process regarding sending reinforcements to Constantinople.

a lot of factors, but lets be real here, holding out for 973 years after the fall of West Rome is a fucking good run for their money.

but to list it off as TL;DR:

>technology caught up to them, gunpowder rendered most Byzantine defenses useless.

>political infighting, emperors and dynasties rising and falling every couple generations.

>Fourth Crusade as a whole, how the Empire even survived it and retake Constantinople is a fucking miracle in itself.

>soured relations with the western catholics, help could have been available, but the Pope saw to it that western help was as negligible as possible in the last days.

>bad diplomacy. In the last centuries the Byzantines were great at making enemies and very few friends outside of Kievan Rus and Armenia.

but on the whole, the Byzantines did a lot more right than they did wrong. For the Empire to have preserved itself for as long as it did showed that the Empire could rely on its sheer wealth and professional military to fight off most threats for nearly a thousand years.

>>384239
He says, posting a Russian cannon....

>>385523
You talking about the proto-Black Death in the 6th century? Yeah from what I understand that shit straight up caused necrosis.