550 Years Ago Today

[napoleon526]

On May 29, 1453, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet's troops stormed and finally captured the great city of Constantinople after a 50 day siege.

This was truly a momentus historical event. Historians have used 1453 as a convinient date for the end of the middle ages and the beginning of the modern world. Others have speculated that fear of total Ottoman control over shipping lanes in the Eastern Mediterranean started the Age of Exploration, though this seems a bit unlikely.

So, here's my question: Just what were the effects of the fall of Constantinople?

 

[pawpaw]

by 1453 i think the fall had very like impact on the western world. while the idea that the great city of the romans had fallen mite seem shocking to many at the time, the true was constaninople was far from the city of old. the city had protected western europe from invaders for hundreds of years no longer did so, the ottomans had been in greece, serbia and albania for close to a 100 years. the commerce of the east no longer flowed thru the city but thru venice and genoa. the city had once been the relious equal of rome at one time but no longer. they rise of the renaissance in italy and else where made the city nolonger the cultural or scientific center of the west. constantinople had been a corspe waiting to die every sense the sack of 1204 by the crusaders. this changed the relation from great city to be admired and fear to something to be explioted and used and her fate was sealed.

 

[Yoda Power]

lol how odd, today I played a game with the Ottomans where I destroyed the Romans

I almost agree with pawpaw, exept that if Constantinople had´nt fallen, the renaisance would have been slowed down. Because many of the scolars from Constantinople immigratet to Italy after 1453.

 

[thedirk]

I think YP is right. The real impact of the fall of Constantinople was the mass exodus of Greek scholars (and the texts they brought with them) to Italy and other parts of Europe. This played a big role in the rennaisance.

 

[Porphyrogenitos]

I must disagree with Yoda Power and the dirk on the issue about the exodus of scholars. Byzantine scholars were already in abundance in Italy and had influneced the Renaissance before the Fall of the Great City. They had been offered lucrative positions in universities since 1204 (Venice, Florence etc). This date is also the start off point for the flood of relics and texts which inundated the Western World during the Renaissance. In 1453, it is true more scholars left but many of them made their way to the Morea and its capital Mystra. In any case 1453 was not the opening of the scholarly floodgates many have assumed it to be. Nor was it a shift in European economy. This shift had occurred again in 1204 when Venice uprooted the silk industry (along with many other things) which Byzantium had monopolised for so many centuries.

What the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 did do was two things:

1. It brought an end to the Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantium and with it went the heirs of the Roman Empire.

2. It cemented the Ottoman position in the then world and gave them the keys to Eastern Europe. It also gave them an imperial capital from which to draw eminence.

PS My trivia question in the History Quiz was inspired by the anniversary (May 29).