The Late Middle Ages | The Fall of the Byzantine Empire (Lecture 19)

Lecture 19: The eastern half of the Roman Empire outlived the western half by nearly 1,000 years; not until 1453 did the Byzantine Empire (as later historians dubbed the eastern Roman Empire) fall, when Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople. The Ottomans had emerged in Asia Minor along the Byzantine-Turkish frontier in the early 14th century, and well before the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottomans had expanded into southeastern Europe. Their defeats of crusader armies at the Battles of Nicopolis (1396) and Varna (1444) cemented their gains and guaranteed Islam a prominent place in subsequent Balkan and European history.

Symbolically, though, the conquest of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire marked the Ottomans’ greatest victory. When Byzantine scholars emigrated to Italy afterward, this final collapse of the eastern half of the Roman Empire helped to fuel the antique revival then taking place in the west.

Suggested Readings:
Franz Babinger, Mehmed II and His Times.
Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks.
Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State.
Donald M. Nichol, The End of the Byzantine Empire.

Lecture 20: https://www.bitchute.com/video/dp5ESMXAEgzC/