Empire

Abstract

This chapter assesses whether Byzantium was an empire. The characteristics of empires, once they have come into existence by the conquest of territory and established a unified central administrative system, have been expressed by one scholar as consisting of their capacity to administer and exploit diversity; the existence of a transportation system designed to serve the imperial center militarily and economically and of systems of communication allowing administration of the subject areas from the center; the assertion of a monopoly of force within their territories; and an “imperial project” that imposed some type of unity throughout the system. One might add to this list the existence of a legal framework. Byzantium had all of these, even though it grew out of an earlier imperial system, and its territorial extent varied greatly over time. It also demonstrated a remarkable determination to maintain itself, through the continuity of imperial office and ideology, sustained by a learned culture, access to which the emperors themselves sought to control. It maintained this symbolic continuity even in the face of the constant instability of the throne itself. The chapter then addresses how the consideration of Byzantium as an empire has been complicated by the model of a “Byzantine commonwealth,” put forward by Dimitri Obolensky in his well-known book published with that title in 1971.