ERE and multiculturalism

was ERE multicultural
if so, did it start out this way
or when did it become multicultural

did it lead to their downfall, or was it something else

The Eternal Latin destroyed it

the Roman Empire was multicultural even during their Italian conquests, with the original Latin peoples being an extreme minority despite being the founders. The Latin language spread, but the people in Roman-annexed territories were still Gauls/Britons/Iberians/Egyptians/Greeks and so on so forth.

the term Roman is pretty much the same as American in the modern day, Roman is a status of citizenship, rather than an ethnicity.

>multicultural

In a way, it was certainly ethnically diverse. However, it had strong Hellenising pressures, not least the manner in which it conducted it's governing in Greek. Many ethnicities were semi-autonomous tho, such as Armeanians.

>was ERE multicultural

Yes, as was the WRE.

>if so, did it start out this way

Yes.

>did it lead to their downfall,

No.

>was ERE multicultural
Multiculturalism describes the existence, acceptance, and/or promotion of multiple cultural traditions within a single jurisdiction.
Did other cultures exist within the ERE? Yes.
Were they accepted? Insofar as they didn't conflict with the dominant greco-roman culture, yes.
Were they promote? Fuck no.
Up to you to determine whether the ERE was multicultural.

>if so, did it start out this way
The ERE, yes.
>or when did it become multicultural
When Caracalla opened the doors.
>did it lead to their downfall, or was it something else
It was something else.

Weren't significant proportion of their population Armenian though?

At least there were plenty of Armenian descended military leaders and a few emperors iirc

While it was multicultural I would not say that it practiced Multiculturalism; there were implicit pressures to adopt the ruling culture and the ruling culture in the Roman Empire was willing to adopt and improve upon methods found in other cultures.

Multiculturalism, on the other hand tends towards dumping a bunch of people of different cultures near one another but then prevent them from actually working towards a common culture in the name of "diversity."

The Eastern Roman Empire was brought down by legions of Social Justice Warriors who demanded MUH FEELS and all that shit for all the various OPPRESSED peoples of the empire.

tl;dr -> Greeks too whimpy. Too many conquered peoples feels for them to handle.

[/sarcasm]

Any sources on the enforcement of a dominant culture in ERE?

>ERE multicultural
Beginning yes, middle and end no.
>did it start out this way
Yes, as an extension of the Roman Empire, which was also multicultural
>did it lead to their downfall
No, Venetians and Turks my friend, Venetians and Turks.

>was ERE multicultural

No. Sure, there were many cultures within its borders, but the Roman culture and the Orthodox Church was the only form of acceptable culture which actively suppressed and undermined all others. This led to a series of riots and revolts against Constantinople, and eventually helped the Arab Conquests along.

It mattered where you came from, how well you could speak imperial languages, and if you were not a heretic or pagan.

all pre-19th century empires were more or less multiculti.
before that, few people cared about national identity. empires had to conquer lands, gain access to new resources, new tax income and new cannonfodder, the nationality of cannonfodder rarely mattered.

ofc there were some nationalist seeming rebellions, like Jews rebelling against every foreigner, or Greeks looking down on everyone else for being barbarians, or Goudicca trying to rally Britons against Roman invaders, or Vercingetorix against Caesar... but it was less about "our nationality" being better, mostly it was just an attempt to defend your own lands from foreign invaders.

rarely was any empire so populous that "lesser nationalities" would be neglected or genocided in the name of "nationalism", the more taxpayers the better.

true multiculturalism is one of the staples of empires, and by true multiculturalism I mean the balanced existence of multiple separate national entities inside a single organic state, which is different from what passes as "multiculturalism" these days

Source on that?

>before that, few people cared about national identity
This has always seemed weird to me. I understand that they wouldn't have allegiance to the 'nation-state' as it came about in the late 18th-19th centuries. However, cultural differences have always existed, and there's bound to bad feelings between different 'nations' (in the 'population with a shared culture' sense), if simply because of cultural misunderstadings.

>was ERE multicultural
>People lived in their own countries with their own cultures, the only "international culture"
>Greco-Roman culture was the only "international culture"
>Practiced Christianity

It's not equivalent to the muslims shithole know as Europe.

Constantinople had mosques, too.

I feel like Multiculturalism implies the existence of a secular state, with all cultures being equal together, rather than simply the presence of many different cultures in a nation
Greek was the dominant culture and nothing about that was changing, they've seen Greek culture as being the superior since they genocided the fucking Pelasgians, everything else was barbarism

can't have an Empire without the presence of minority cultures in its borders though

There were signifigant amounts of Armenians in both the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire and Neo Persian/Sassanid Empire. Heraclius was in fact an ethnic Armenian and some of the best support cataphracts in the Sassanid army as well as many of their top marzabans were Armenians.

Does anyone in this thread have any sources and proofs for their statements about multiculturalism in the ERE or are they just talking out of their asses?

This isn't a subject that will have very many sources, since we're all just generalizing broadly across several centuries of Byzantine history. That there were religious riots, court chauvinism, and non-Greek emperors isn't something that needs to be sourced since they're basic things anyone who studied the ERE would know, and there's no real way to source our conjectures.

I'mwhat do you want a source on?
Greeks feeling superior to their neighbors seems well documented to me, especially considering they invented the word Barbarian to describe non-Greeks, but if you want something specifically from the ERE for that I'd suggest reading the Alexiad