IMC 2016: Sessions

This is the third of four related panels. Byzantine relations with the states and nations that encircled the empire are a familiar topic of discussion and debate.  But Byzantium’s geographical position and established political and economic networks meant that the empire was the central lynchpin for a complex and global web of transnational relationships as well. Byzantium linked the Vikings and Rus in the north; the Catholic lands of Europe and (after the mid-8th century) the Umayyad caliphate of al Andalus to the west; Abbasid and then Fatimid Egypt and the North African coast to the south (with tentacles reaching down the Nile to Ethiopia and through the Sahara to the Niger valley); and, to the east, Palestine, the caliphates of Damascus and then Baghdad, across the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas to the Indian Ocean and, along the so-called Silk Routes, China. These transnational relations manifested themselves in many ways, among others: economic links through trade routes; military and political links through conflict or diplomacy; and cultural links through the social mobility promoted by economic opportunity and transferrable expertise (the classic sub-field of transnational studies in contemporary history, which is however only part of the field as a whole).  With a few notable exceptions, however, Byzantine transnational relations have been little discussed, and never compared.