Communication and Empire

Abstract

The Roman world in the second century was remarkably homogeneous,\n and the ties that bound it together remarkably thick and apparently\n strong. But what happened when the western half went its own way,\n when imperial territories were limited to bits of Asia Minor and the\n Balkans, when the construction of new monumental buildings had\n slowed to a trickle or stopped entirely, when the epigraphic habit had\n died? How did political communication work in the Roman empire\n of the Middle Ages that we know as Byzantium? The answer requires\n conjuring up a picture of people on the move; of soldiers, priests, students,\n pilgrims, appellants, merchants, tax collectors, administrators,\n painters, and builders. And it requires thinking about the messages\n they received and passed on. Placing the Byzantine experience in\n comparative perspective to Song China, this chapter surveys the\n evidence of Byzantine political communication to investigate both\n the means of transmitting news and orders as well as the underlying\n networks of shared discourse and identity. It shows that the survival\n of the Byzantine state depended largely on its ability to create an\n imagined community as the nation-state of the Romans. The decline\n of Byzantium and the rise of Muslim identities in its former territories\n can thus be linked to a failure to maintain effective long-distance\n communication networks that projected a ‘Roman’ narrative across\n the entirety of the empire.