As the recent poll shows, the Byzantine Empire is the most hated empire before 1900. What could the so called "Eastern Roman Empire" have done to save its reputation before and during the modern age?
Maybe if the Empire's early reformers hadn't come to power, they would be still vulnerable to the problems that where beginning to plague the Byzantines beforehand. That could potentially destroy the whole empire, if not weaken them.Destroy it before 1900 and people will think about how great it would have been if the empire never fell.This forum has a thing for history’s losers.
The real problem is their modern attitude. The Byzantines have never apologized for the genocide of about ten million Arabs in the Ecumenical War.
Reported for being a genocide apologist.You can’t pin the entirety of the concluding devastation of that war on them, though, or call it just genocide. There’s a good deal of evidence to back up the Byzantine claim of the Caliphate’s goal of a massive nuclear strike on Byzantine and allied cities had they not struck first.
Reported for being a genocide apologist.
As the recent poll shows, the Byzantine Empire is the most hated empire before 1900. What could the so called "Eastern Roman Empire" have done to save its reputation before and during the modern age?
OOC:It‘s already been established earlier on that the ERE managed to reform and became far more powerful than they were in OTL and actually managed to kill 10 million Arabs in a modern war.They are also in a position to occupy Armenia.I actually genuinely think the Byzantines pretty much sucked. They lost most of their territory within 164 years of existing (476 to 640). They then fell into a dark age, lost nearly all of their territory (and what little remained was raided and pirated constantly). They failed to produce any notable advances in science, medicine or technology, produced no innovation in the arts, and their contribution to poetry and philosophy is virtually non existent.
Their only achievement is that they managed to survive, barely. But given how intolerant, undynamic and unproductive their society was (scholars fled Byzantium to teach in Baghdad at the House of Wisdom after persecution), that's not much of an achievement.
The Byzantines were repeatedly trounced by the Bulgarians in battle, dismantled their own empire in civil war and literally handed over the keys to Anatolia to the Turks. They then managed to get their own capital sacked by so called co-religionist Christians in 1204. The remaining years were a total failure, and most of the population went over to the Turks pretty rapidly as they saw the system was not working for them. By 1355, the "empire" was basically a collection of villages amid ruins behind a wall.
In 1453 a far more dynamic and vigorous civilisation put them out of their misery. Honestly I can't see why one would bother making such a dismal failure of an empire as Byzantium more popular. They deserved to fall centuries earlier than they did. They probably should have fallen in 717. If they had later history might have been interesting and probably somewhat more productive.
Maybe no iconoclasm vs iconophilia period. Reading a large book about Byzanz history, 100 years this particular sectarian issue alone.As the recent poll shows, the Byzantine Empire is the most hated empire before 1900. What could the so called "Eastern Roman Empire" have done to save its reputation before and during the modern age?