What went wrong Veeky Forums?

Eastern degeneration. Too comfy for keeping a civilization running.

Alienated themselves from the west and stood alone when the Ottomans came.

What I'm wondering is if the Christian Church had never split into Catholic West and Orthodox East, would Constantinople have remained in closer relationships with the West, withstood the Ottoman surge and remained Christian Europe's vanguard against Muslim Arabia? Would there be a modern state closer to Greece where Turkey is now?

They weren't that big or powerful and in the end nobody came to help them.

> Alienated themselves from the west and stood alone when the Ottomans came.
Ottomans came 100 years after the 4th crusade, no wonder Greeks were "alienated".

Dio Cleetus

This
Justinian was a mistake.

>longest living empire despite constant invasions of Persians, Arabs, Turks, Germanics and Slavs
Literally nothing went wrong. You live until you die, that's how it works.

Greeks are simply lazy

Romans*

he's over-simplifying, Basil had to replace Thematic armies with foreign mercenaries like Varangians since he couldn't prevent private estates (idiostata) from taking over the Themes through private purchasing of land
if he didn't then each idiostata would've had its own private army and you'd get civil wars out the arsehole like he did originally with Scleros and Phokas

because nothing happened that alienated them from the west before that

This.

Unfortunately however these mercenaries formed private armies of their own, and because they were outsiders they ended up creating their own private kingdoms with help from their ethnic cousins. From this we get the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, the Sultanate of Rum, Armenian Cilicia, and the Crusader States, not to mention several minor principalities and beyliks that were eventually overcome and reincorporated, but took up much of the state's resources to do so.

This

Hittites*

they didn't pay their debts

except Byzantine Empire never acchieved anything worthy of notice.
It was a dwindling Empire, living off the days of its former glory
HRE acchieved more than ERE

>except Byzantine Empire never acchieved anything worthy of notice.
What is fending off the Arabs, its scholars helping kick off the Renaissance and christening Russia.

It didn't, it didn't, and who the fuck cares.

You mean trying to use the same tactics the west did and failed. Bullshit lies. And who the fuck unironically cares?

Recapturing the former empire under Justinian, East-West schism, and unrelenting enemies at the gates.

Managing to infect slavs with their heresy isn't exactly a proud achievement.

If by capturing you mean devastating and by the former empire you mean adjacent lands then I guess yes.

>A string of in competent leaders
>The Battle of Manzikert
>Relying too much on a mercenary force
>Duel Monarchy system
>inadequate administration
>focusing too much on the nobilities parties instead of more important matters like strengthening the dominion of rule
>slow to reform the military

just a few things

I don't really know the in-depth details on the Byzantine empire. Any suggested books?

instead of asking why the Byzantines fell, try asking why it lived for so fucking long.

not many nations have made it into the 1000 year club

>it didn't
The two Arab sieges of Constantinople were far more important to prevwnting Arab expansion that the Battle of Memeoirs you westerners like to boast about.
>it didn't
It did.
>who the fuck cares.
Yeah why should we care about the formation of one of the largest, powerful and influential states in history?

Papal cocksuckers shouldn't be talking about heresies when their sect is a heretical one itself.

Geography, poor timing, and bad leaders.

The empire rarely had time to catch it's breath in between being attacked, had a constant steam of new foes from the eastern world to deal with, and often had to fight on two fronts. Now added in the simple geogrpahy of the empire making it hard to defend-and get around-and you're in trouble.

You need to be entirely focused on survival and operate near flawlessly to survive indefinitely in that situation.

They weren't.

>slow to reform the military
They really weren't by any standard. The eastern army changed a LOT, and sometimes very fucking quickly.

This.

By all rights, they should have long before they actually did.

It lived for so long in spite of itself - but mostly due to the actions of others.

The Bolghar Empires were the primary Western (geographically speaking) enemies of the empire; their first state threatened what little Balkan possessions the empire had until the Hungarians came and fucked them to death.

In the East, the early Caliphate made short work of the Empire's Levantine and African holdings. Anatolia, being so deeply hellenized, proved a tougher nut to crack. However, perfidious Greeks being perfidious Greeks, generals permitting Turks to settle in the war-ravaged interior if they swore loyalty to them. Because that totally worked with the Germans. Hell, the influx of Turks came about because the Greeks made Armenians move from the Eastern frontier in the Caucuses towards the interior of Anatolia to better assimilate them. Sultanate of Rum was making pretty good progress at pushing the "Romans" across the Hellespont for good before the Mongols came.

Then it happens again with the Ottomans who were doing great until Timur came and fucked them to death. Or he would've fucked them to death if perfidious Italian scum hadn't whisked the Kebab army across the sea of Marmara. Genoese and Venetians thought the devil they knew was better than the devil they didn't. At the very least he abducted their Sultan and probably had him choked to death for being a massive cunt.

It lived for so long in spite of itself - but mostly due to the actions of others.
Attention retard: They actively enticed people to come west and kill their enemies. The magyars are a great example of this.

I'm not even going address the rest of the idiocy in your post.

>They actively enticed people to come west and kill their enemies
And they always failed to gain anything meaningful from it.

Byzantophiles are the worst kind of fags.