Customer Reviews

The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire

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I have previously reviewed Mr. Luttwak's "The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire" (which I gave 5 stars) and I can say with all veracity that Mr. Luttwak has truly surpassed his previous book. "The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire" is truly a wonderful book. I personally found chapters eight (Bulghars and Bulgarians, 26 pages) and nine (The Muslim Arabs and Turks, 38 pages) to be especially fascinating. In short, both chapters cover the major events of the players involved. While I realize that one could write entire novels about the interactions of the three states, Mr. Luttwak gives the reader a very good overview of the major events in a modicum amount of pages. For example, in chapter 8, Mr. Luttwak starts with why a Bulgarian state was so dangerous to the Empire, then moves on to the first interactions between the two, and then moves on to the war of 811 (the Empire's failed attempt to extirpate Bulgaria). Finally, it concludes with Emperor Basil's II successful war that destroyed Bulgaria and ensured that "...Byzantine rule was restored from the Adriatic Sea to the Danube for the first time in three centuries" pg 195.

Another point that I believe is interesting is Mr. Luttwak's re-examination of Emperor Justinian I. In spite of all the Justinian bashing that is commonplace in this era; Mr. Luttwak puts forth good arguments that Justinian's ambitions were not acts of megalomania, but rather reasonable goals. Mr. Luttwak believes that it was the unforeseen "Plague of Justinian (also known as the plague of 541-542)" that wrecked Justinian's plans. Indeed, Mr. Luttwak states "...the new biological evidence...compel a reassessment of Justinian and his policies. He could have been just as successful in his military ambitions as he was in his jurisprudential and architectural endeavors. It was Yersinia pestis that wrecked the empire..." pg 92. In my humble opinion, despite Mr. Luttwak's good arguments, I still believe that the fundamental problem of Justinian's expansion was that it proceeded with too much celerity. After conquest, a period of consolidation to ensure total Byzantine authority should have occurred before the next advance. Just my opinion.

One minor problem I have with the book is that very little is said the Fourth Crusade, which resulted in the loss of Constantinople on April 13, 1204. In fact, only a few scattered sentences and two connecting paragraphs (pgs. 232 and 234) are written about it. I believe Mr. Luttwak could have written about the flaws in Byzantine strategy before and during the Fourth Crusade. Then, Mr. Luttwak could have written what the Emperor's should have done to prevent the calamity. The first sack of the city in nearly nine hundred years could have been added in. But this is a minor complaint.

In conclusion, this is a magnificent book about the Byzantine Empire, which for far too long as been disregarded. I would highly recommend this book. I will end with what the front panel of the dust cover states, "It will appeal to scholars, soldiers, classicists, and readers of military history."

What can America learn about strategy from a vanished empire whose very name means "devious?" Almost everything, according to "The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire," by Edward Luttwak. A leading strategic theorist and intellectual provocateur, Luttwak's previous writings include the much praised "Strategy: the Logic of War and Peace" and "Coup d'état: A Practical Handbook." Here he brings his keen research and analytical skills to explaining how Byzantium, surrounded by hostile powers that possessed superior natural resources, managed to not only survive but flourish, outlasting the Western Roman Empire by almost 1,000 years.

Yet this work is not an academic exercise - throughout Luttwak offers an implicit roadmap for US decision makers, a plea that they shed their narrow dogmatisms with its search for "the end of history," and replace it with Byzantium's subtle practicality. "The Byzantines knew better. They knew that peace was a temporary interruption of war, that as soon as one enemy was defeated, another would take its place...Even the destruction of the enemy was not a definitive gain, because in the unending war, yesterday's enemy could become the best ally." And as everywhere, their success abroad rested on sound finances at home, Byzantium's advanced tax collecting methods, unmatched at the time, providing the Empire a deep purse.

Practical rules abound. Avoid war at all costs (since war is expensive and even victory's results are unpredictable). Maintain a military as if war could come at any time (which is the most efficient deterrence). Use force prudently. If enemy strategies or techniques prove superior, adopt them, without hesitation. Invest in gathering intelligence. Embrace diplomacy. Eschew occupations and over-commitment in favor of flexibility and mobility.

For Luttwak, realism and judiciousness are the hallmarks of a successful sustainable national program. Nor is this an abstract book. Leader by leader, conflict by conflict the author distills valuable lessons as well as offering an excellent overview of the empire's strengths and weaknesses, their successes and failures, often drawing useful analogies to more recent history. Even details that many think would be dry - the importance of composite bow technology and the over-emphasis on the stirrup by historians - are presented in a way that is not only digestible, but entertaining. His command of detail, from small unit tactics, to the impact of epidemics on Byzantium, to immigration patterns of the tribes of the Asian steppes, would make this amateur historian the envy of most professionals.

Perhaps most interesting, Luttwak shows how the empire was several times driven to the brink, only to reemerge more vibrant than before. In a period marred by pessimism, this work offers hope, and that should be reason enough for anyone with a serious interest in international affairs to reflect on "The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire" and recognize how much they have to teach us.

This book has many problems. I'll start with where many books on Byzantium begin: the preface. A large number of books on Byzantium have a preface that describes the transliteration style that the author has chosen. This book does not have that, and that is not a problem, but what is a problem is Luttwak's completely inconsistant methods of transliteration. Terms transliterated in different ways show up on opposite pages, for example. Sometimes multiple transliterations are given when a name or term is first introduced, but that is not a hard and fast rule and it changes at random throughout the book. It also has numerous grammatical errors - mostly missing words and whatnot, but a thorough edit could easily have taken care of this issue. He also uses a lot of modern military vocabulary, which goes somewhat beyond the Byzantine context and simply serves to make the book seem stilted at times.

As for the content, Luttwak is mostly well-read and well-informed and is up to-date with modern Byzantine scholarship, and as such, I expected a lot more from his work. There are a couple of minor details, such as the fall of Syria to the Arabs and the dating of the sea walls of Constantinople where he has simply been forced to go along with one scholar over another, as no consensus exists. My main problem is with his historical method and organization. For a book on grand strategy, I would have hoped that he would have come up with one for the organization of his book, but Luttwak does not. It starts with the Huns and ends with Herakleios in Persia, and is organized more as a series of minor, poorly-directed essays combined into a book. The issue here is that Luttwak does not provide any sort of analysis to his work. Most of the page space is spent telling the historical story behind his point or performing some half-baked source criticism. There is no new information in this book whatsoever, and it suffers for it. Most of it is made up of rote recitation of the sources or modern scholarly opinion. He also misses an awful lot of events that certainly exemplify Byzantine strategy - for example, the crusades are almost ignored, as is the Empire post-1204. The maps are also very poor, and one can see that they were edited with a pencil, and where the cartographer erased earlier marks.

This leaves me wondering who exactly is the target audience for this book? Scholars are going to find almost nothing of value here - John Haldon's 'Warfare, State and Society in the Byzantine World' is a much more informative and academic text. This book is also not a great general military history of Byzantium with a focus on strategy, as it almost completely ignores some topics, like the theme system. And yet it seems to be written for those who have little or no experience with the Byzantine military. A good 100 pages of the book are just spent reciting what the military manuals have said. Now admittedly parts of this are useful - for example there is no complete English edition of Nikephoros Ouranos' massive work, and good luck finding Kekaumenos' text, but four of the major ones discussed in the text are easily available in editions translated by George T. Dennis, and a fifth, the 'Taktika' of Leo VI, is due out Summer 2010. He occasionally goes off on tangents about who he believes the authors of these various military manuals are - sometimes in violation of academic tradition. It is perfectly acceptable to make such statements, but one should try and back them up with some sort of historical research and a good argument, in which Luttwak fails to do and this just goes on to demonstrate his inability to properly analyze history in its historical context.

So far, it sounds like I am writing a review for a one-star book, but I have given it three. This is because, for all of the flaws of historical method, organization, no clearly-defined audience and the apparent lack of a good edit, Luttwak's conclusions are valid. While at times he takes them outside of their context and frequently refers to them in modern military parlance, his assessment of Byzantine strategy is correct, even if this book does not reveal any new information.

In sum, this is a decent and easy read, but adds little or nothing to Byzantine scholarship. It is deeply unbalanced, and ignores the vast majority of Byzantine history. Most of the points that Luttwak discusses were briefly made in Harris' Byzantium and the Crusades (Crusader Worlds) in regard to Byzantine strategic thought. Many other reviewers have gone on ad naseum about how this book can be applied to modern military strategy. This is irrelevant, as this book claims to be a study of Byzantine strategy, even though it reveals little or nothing in that regard. I would suggest that you read John Haldon's Warfare, State And Society In The Byzantine World 565-1204 (Warfare and History) instead, because it covers everything this book does, but has much deeper analysis and far more erudite conclusions.

Edward Luttwak has devoted much of his career to the analysis of the concepts of strategy especially what is called `grand strategy'. In this book he has attempted to distill the basics of the grand strategy used by the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire to out last the Western Roman Empire by almost 1000 years. Since grand strategy is a modern concept, Luttwak had to analyze the history of the Byzantine Empire and infer the strategic designs that it followed from relevant historical evidence, including events, fragmentary comments, and official writings. All in all, he has done a pretty good job of it.
Constantinople (Istanbul) was at the center of Byzantine strategy since for much of its history it was the most prosperous and populous city in Western Christendom. Its unique location made it highly defendable and indeed until it was successfully captured in the Fourth Crusade (1204) it was the anchor of the Empire. The Byzantines used the magnificence and wealth of the city as well as the carefully staged extreme opulence and ritual of the imperial court to overawe enemies and allies alike. Operating from this nearly impregnable bastion, successive Emperors and their bureaucracies were able to employ a complex mixture of intelligence information, bribery, diplomatic maneuvering including duplicity, and military force to thwart all imperial enemies even in the face of much stronger military forces. Perhaps their greatest enemy was the high cost of their strategy for in spite of a very effective system of taxes Byzantium was very near to bankruptcy several times in its history.
Since the very survival of the Empire was at stake, the Byzantines studied and analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of their potential enemies in a very modern and effective manner. Their military forces evolved over the years, but until the last 200 years before the destruction of the empire, always included a strong navy and an army consisting of a core of well trained native troops supplemented by large contingents of mercenaries. After the Emperor Justinian (ce 6th Century) the empire was largely on the defensive. As Luttwak explains in considerable detail the Byzantines developed a strategy that enabled them to defend and maintain the empire against a variety enemies bent on its destruction. This is an interesting and well researched book

This book was a complete disappointment. I had expected much better and much more from the author of "The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire." In fact, some of the flaws contained in this previous book are just amplified in this one.

Both books' title are misleading, because they only cover part of the relevant Empire's history, but this is especially the case of the one on the Byzantine Empire:
- it essentially has very little to say about the Byzantine Empire after the mid-11th century and even less for the period after 1204
- as a matter of fact, most of the book is centered on the first 250 to 300 years of the Empire (roughly from 330 to 630, or, as another commentator put it more accuratly,
from the Huns to the victory over and the end of the Persian/Sassanide Empire), what modern scholars now tend to call Late Antiquity and over the 10th Century
- there is no discussion of the theme system and the reasons for it and not half of what would have been needed about the struggle against the Arab Caliphates (632 to around 900), probably because these may not fit well with the author's preconceptions
- there is a lot of paraphrase about the Byzantine military treaties (some of which are missing) and the reluctance in using force but no strategic analysis of the Empire's constraints in terms of geography, transport and communications and resources
- the book is rather a compilation of existing scholarship, and not a very good one either (there are numerous mistakes anhd approximations, starting with the maps).
- More than anything else, it is a political essay - or even a pamphlet - that attempts to draw lessons for the US from bit and pieces of a simplified and stylized history of an Empire that survived its Roman Western half but faded away during a protracted period of decline (the last 3 to 4 centuries of the Empire) which is not even described. In other words, this is NOT a history book.

If you really want to read something about Byzantium, its military and its transformation from the East Roman Empire, then read Haldon's "Warfare, State and Society in the Byzantine World (565-1204)" or Whittow's "The Making of Byzantium 600-1025". Note that neither covers the whole of what is conventionally presented as Byzantium's history, but at least it is explicit. They also do a far better job of presenting the Empire's real "strategy" and how it adapted (and therefore survived) for so long to waves of onslaughts without being pretentious and pedantic...

A great book on strategy that is tempered with the practicality of living in a dangerous and volatile world, as seen through the grand prism of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. The lessons to be learned from the Byzantines are as relevant today as they were back then. The book is filled with colorful information about Byzantine culture. And in an engaging way, uses recent history (e.g. WWII events) to illustrate what can be learned from the Byzantine Empire.

I own a copy of this book. I have read it. I am not writing a review of the book.

The author or an assistant should make sure the maps are accurate. The eastern border on Map 5 is inaccurate. A line from mid-way down the eastern border should be drawn northeast through Lake Van from there two-thirds the way to Lake Urmia and then double back to the border on the coast as shown. The imperial border did not extend that far east from Antioch: as shown it would have included the city of Aleppo, which was not part the Empire.

Map 7 for the year 668 does not show that the northern half of Tunisia and eastern coastal Algeira which still belonged to the Empire. Even though semi-autonomous, the region was still a part of the Roman Empire. The extreme southeastern border on the coast west of Antioch should be moved back about 40-50 miles to the Iron Gates, passes through the mountains from the plains of Cilcia (shown as ocuppied by Byzantium, but in fact unde Arab control). The passes provided a strong barrier to invasion, when fortified and garrisoned. The actual situation of the border in 668 is more accurately shown on Map 8, 780 AD.

In 780, Map 8, Sicily was still part of the Empire, but is not indicated as it should be. Invasion from Tunisia came in the year 827 and was fiercely resisted until the last stronghold, Taormina was taken in 904. On Map 9 parts of the Italian boot are shown to be under Byzantine control. All formerly-held imperial territory had been lost with the fall of Taranto in 1071.

Map 11 shows Trebizond as a part of the Empire. Not so. This area was ruled by a branch of the Komnenos family as an independent Empire until a few years after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

The book is very good as it not only outlines the military history of the Byzantine Empire it also collapses the reasons for its eventual defeat.

The Roman Empire was a successful military power. It's heavily armored infantry were a tactical innovation which allowed it to dominate battle fields till around 300 AD. From that time onwards the ways that wars were fought changed and mounted archers became the dominant force on the battlefield.

One of the reasons for the long survival of the Byzantine Empire was its adaption to an army whose most important component was its cavalry. Unlike the old days when the Romans were dominant and would win 8 out of 10 battles the Byzantines' army was well trained and professional but not invincible. It might have a better than even chance of winning but it would be looking at losing maybe every third time. This led to a much more cautious approach to military affairs. Whilst the Romans fought wars of extermination the Byzantines were reluctant to fight any wars at all. They realized the importance of war and they always had a army which was intensively trained. Luttwak quotes military manuals of the time to show that it took well over a year to train a horse archer. To be good it was necessary not only to ride but also to master the composite bow. Whilst the Roman's were able to muster replacement armies after defeats quickly the lead time for the Byzantines to train an army were much longer.

The other problem faced by the Byzantines was the impossibility of winning wars as opposed to winning battles. From Hungary to China stretches a vast grassland. This was the home to the Huns, the Peschegs, the Alans and the Mongols. Over the centuries tribes of horse archers would drift across the steppes and invade the Byzantine provinces. Whilst the Byzantines might win defensive battles they simpy could not occupy the steppe and any nomadic tribe could simply retreat into it.

Luttak thus describes how the Byzantines responded to their weakened state. They developed a strategy of paying off enemies. Making alliances and playing off foreign tribes against each other. They kept a strong army but were reluctant to risk it unless they had to. In modern parlance Byzantine has become associated with complex devious schemes. This book shows the reason why. In reality the strategy was largely successful and led the Byzantines to outlast the Western Empire by 800 years.

The strength of the book is that it conveys the feel of the realities of the time. It is a far stronger book than the normal narrative histories of the time.

As a great admirer of Luttwak's earlier book, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, I was looking forward to the idea promised by the title of The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire. If Luttwak's brilliance from his prior achievement could only have been extended to a companion piece on the eastern empire! Alas, the project was bungled in a number of respects.

I first criticize the publisher for what I consider many production mistakes. The maps, for example, generally lack scales, despite the frequent references in accompanying textual narrative to specific distances. They also show little information beyond coastal boundaries and vague demographic or geographic labels. For comparison, look at the much more informative cartography in Luttwak's first book. As another illustration, some of the chapters are shockingly poorly proofread, with numerous misspellings of foreign and transliterated words. For a scholar of Mr. Luttwak's erudition and a work that tries to wear its learning on its sleeve, this slipshod treatment is indefensible. I would also suggest the publisher failed to exercise editorial restraint on the author's overexuberant attempts to display how broadly and deeply he has researched the subject. One does not need constantly to clutter the text with alternative names or spellings--that is what footnotes are for.

Turning to more substantive faults, I question whether the author consistently or convincingly established a thesis that there was a Byzantine grand strategy or that the elements he describes can be demonstrated (even if only by inference) from the historical record. I did not detect this shortcoming in his prior book, despite the similar historiographical problems of scanty records and undeveloped bureaucracies. Admittedly, he marshals much evidence on topics that might be related to grand strategy, ranging from dynastic marriages to military tactics, but fails to integrate them into his primary subject. In this respect, you might find parts of the book useful as an introduction to other sources on Byzantine tactical thinking and methods, but that falls far short of the goal set by the title. Mr. Luttwak has a natural predilection for precision and thoroughness, but in this book he seems to have overindulged in displays of references to historical minutiae that, while possibly demonstrating the width of his reading, really do not clarify or advance or organize his argument.

This should have been two separate books: one (by far the larger) volume for specialist readers such as wargamers and Byzantine military history specialists; and one slim volume distilling the meaning of all the events recounted, delivered in Mr Luttwak's usual mordant style. Whereas this book is an unhappy marriage of both. It is way too unwieldy and detailed for students of strategy and seekers after worldly wisdom, but too discursive for those searching for (military history) facts.
Also, in the very few areas where I came to the subject with a little prior knowledge, I found errors of fact, which was disappointing from someone of Luttwak's stature, and undermined confidence in the whole. Specifically, and contrary to a map therein, the Balearic island of Menorca was re-incorporated in the Empire (albeit briefly); and the site of the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 is not in Greater London. There are two Stamford Bridges in England, including the 'correct' one in the far north. All of which is to risk being called pedantic I realise, but I did wonder what other errors were present that I lacked the wisdom to spot. A good sub-editor could and should have intervened here.

Taken as a whole I was disappointed by this book - and I speak as an admirer of Mr Luttwak's writing since his Coup D'etat (1968). However, I will still buy his next book - and I'd also welcome that above-mentioned putative `slim volume' of Byzantine-prose about Byzantine behaviour...