Byzantine, Bulgarian, and Ottoman:
The Dynamics of Empire at the Crossroads of Asia and Europe
Tom Lum Forest
2650 SE Spruce Street
Hillsboro, OR 97123 USA
tforest@alum.mit.edu
To paraphrase Sternman, what is the relative importance of intensive versus extensive forces in the birth and death
of societies? Language and religion are two of the defining attributes of a society. Both are intensive -- they apply to
each member of the society. Militarily, economically, and politically, the society may be independent, or it may be
under another society's control. These attributes are extensive, emergent properties of the society as a whole and
the area it occupies. Historically, some societies have maintained distinct identities while under another's control,
while others have lost their identities in the same circumstances. Why has China typically been unitary? Why has
western Europe typically been fragmented? Why have the southern Balkans and Anatolia been alternatingly unitary
and fragmented? These are not well understood issues for the historian, whose model for understanding is typically
narrative and prosaic. But cast into the terms of System Dynamics, these issues can be comprehensively articulated
and tested. This paper will explore the underlying structures of these historical dynamics and describe the reference
modes in the dynamics of societies in Anatolia and the southern Balkans over the last 2000 years.
In my 1995 paper, | referred to the cohesion of a civilization as being a key state variable in determining its extent
and duration. In the current paper, | elaborate further: social cohesion is the confidence of a population in its social
paradigm. A society has members, who produce and consume goods and occupy land. The people have a
characteristic language and religion. In France and Italy, the current patterns of language and religion -- Latin
Christianity -- were set by 400 AD. In Spain and Portugal, that same pattern was changed in the 8th century, then
changed back by the 15th century. In South Asia, the patterns in Tamil Nadu - Tamil Hinduism -- were set by the 6th
century. In the Punjab, by contrast, there have been several changes since then. And at the crossroads of Asia and
Europe, the changes have been complicated:
year Anatolia SE Balkans SW Balkans
300BC Greek pagan (G)
400AD_ Greek Christian (G
700AD_ Greek Christian (G
900AD_ Greek Christian (G
1200 AD Turkish Moslem (T,
1500 AD Turkish Moslem (T)
(
1900 AD Turkish Moslem (T,
Greek pagan (G) Greek pagan (G)
Greek Christian (G) Greek Christian (G)
Bulgarian Christian (B) Greek Christian (G)
)
(
Bulgarian Pagan (G) = Greek Christian (G)
(
Greek Christian (G)
)
Bulgarian Christian (G)
(
(
Bulgarian Christian (T) Greek Christian (T)
(
)
Bulgarian Christian (B) Greek Christian (G)
Table 1. (G) = Greek rule, (T) = Turkish rule, and (B) = Bulgarian rule.
Greece has been Greek Christian since the 4th century. Bulgaria has been Bulgarian Christian since the 9th
century. Why did Turkey become Turkish after 300 years of Turkish rule, while Greece and Bulgaria did not?
Consider people in a society as members of a cultural paradigm. While political, military, and (to a lesser extent)
economic affairs are extensive and can be regulated from without, religion and language are intensive and not so
easily prescribed. Belief in the old society has to be eroded before a new one can take root, before people are
willing to shift allegiance to it. The conquest of Greece and Bulgaria by the Ottoman Turks in the 14th and 15th
centuries was a relatively quick political and military expansion by a society nearing its peak. The existing religious
and linguistic loyalties of the Bulgarians and Greeks were not tested, and no shift took place. By contrast, after the
1071 AD defeat of the Byzantine Greeks by the Seljuk Turks at Malazgirt (Manzikert), a relatively quick occupation of
interior Anatolia was followed by three centuries of back-and-forth conflict between a variety of small states: Turkish,
Greek, Armenian, and Frankish; Christian and Islamic. They reduced the confidence of the people in Anatolia, so
that when the strong and confident Ottoman Turks established themselves in the 14th and 15th centuries, Anatolia
became Turkish Islamic.
There are ‘puzzles’ that a cultural paradigm solves, but stress can disrupt the patterns of an existing paradigm. A
deficiency in the ability of one paradigm to provide by comparison to another will cause a migration between
paradigms.
Key issues:
« Raising children
« Personal safety
« Economic prosperity
+ Ashift from hostile to friendly interactions between societies in an area, in conjunction with economic
discrimination, is the best combination of policies to promote a switch. If Turks conquer an area, then offer
incentives for people to convert, they will. There is an aspect of the prisoner's dilemma game, or a ‘cooperate
vs. compete’ decision, to social paradigm allegiance and shifts: negative incentives may work, to a point, but
positive incentives can produce far better results. Within an area, social cohesion is affected by economic
prosperity and military and political strength.
Ifa local paradigm weakens, the options are:
« Adopt a neighboring one (e.g., the 11'" century AD Anatolia).
+ Create a new one (e.g., the a century AD Arabia).
+ Abandon organized, structured culture (e.g., the qath century AD Yucatan) if insufficient resources are
available.
+ The wholesale conversion to Christianity in the first centuries after Jesus was driven by economic incentives.
So was the conversion to Islam in the Middle Eastin the first centuries after Mohammed. Both were sealed
(eventually) by political policy choices within the governments adopting and promoting their creeds. But the
time constant for intensive changes is much longer than the external ones (on the order of a lifetime). And the
changes only take place if there are a) favorable policies in place, and b) the internal confidence is already
shaken for other reasons.
Anatolia and the southern Balkans had uniform, cohesive, linguistic and religious identities in the period 1S* - 5th
centuries AD. The people were speaking Greek and observing classical Greek religions, then shifting together to
Christian beliefs. In Anatolia after 1071, the extensive aspects of society -- political, military, and economic -- were in
flux for three centuries, but eventually became Turkish. The intensive parts of society -- religious and linguistic --
also became Turkish. A simple model will suffice to explain this mode: intensive aspects follows extensive ones with
a delay.
The SW Balkans were Greek for over 2000 years. Their external social aspects became Turkish in the 15'" century.
But Greek Orthodoxy and the Greek language continued in common use. In the 19'" century, the extensive aspects
of society again became Greek. A simple model would suffice to explain this mode: intensive aspects are
unchanged by extensive aspects. To reconcile it with the previous example, the time constant for change had
lengthened since 1071.
The SE Balkans were Greek for several hundred years, then pagan Slavic in the eh century. They became
Bulgarian in the 7" century. They adopted a Greek religion in the 9"" century, were ruled by the Greeks in the 11 th
and 12" centuries, independent in the 13" and 14'" centuries, ruled by the Turks from the 15'" to 19" centuries, and
independent again in the 1870s. A simple model will not explain this mode.
For each area, consider a trio of state variables -- one for each paradigm, Turkish, Greek, and Bulgarian -- that
represents the internal cohesion of a society, as manifested in language and religion. Consider a second trio of state
variables for that area to reflect the extensive attributes of military, political, and economic control potential held by
Greeks, Bulgars, or Turks. Then the strength of each paradigm within the society will reflect the percentage of
adherents within the area, and the corresponding state variables will always add to 100%. Paradigmatic strength will
be affected both by extensive pressures within the area as well as by the influence of paradigms from surrounding
areas. It reflects both the number of adherents as well as the strength of each individual's affiliation. For instance, a
bilingual agnostic would be less strongly tied to the Greek paradigm than a monolingual devoutly Greek Orthodox
person. The strength of the Greek paradigm in the SW Balkans will be increased by the strength of the Greek
paradigm in Anatolia and the SW Balkans, as well as by extensive Greek strength in the SW Balkans. It will be
decreased by the strength of the Turkish and Bulgarian paradigms in the SW Balkans.
In the case of the SE Balkans, there was a depopulation in the 5‘ - 7" centuries as economic exactions from
Constantinople and military conflicts reduced productivity and loyalties as well as population. There was a
corresponding period in 11* - 13th century Anatolia. But whereas in Anatolia the new paradigm included Islam,
which could withstand comparison to and competition with Christianity, the new paradigm in the SE Balkans
compared adversely to the native Bulgarian beliefs, and within two centuries Christianity was reestablished.
More generally, depopulation is not required to effect a cultural paradigm shift. But a disparity between actual and
potential population greatly facilitates it, whether caused by depopulation or not. The advent of an agricultural
population in a nomadic area, or of an industrial society into an agricultural area, can have the same effect.
The historical pattern of societies is complex and depends on the past as well as the present. An understanding of
that pattern requires an understanding of both their intensive and extensive aspects as well as the systematic ways
they relate in time and space. A reevaluation of humanity's past in a systematic context can help the understanding
of our present and our ability to control our future.
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