The End of Byzantium

`A remarkable book, which offers numerous fresh insights and weaves a gripping and deeply moving story that constantly startles us with its newness, its originality, and its balance. Byzantines, Turks, Latins - Harris breahes new life into these long-dead characters and makes us understand both their choices and the circumstances that led them to make those choices. This is history as it should be written - an epic tale that rouses our imaginations and captures our sympathies as effectively as it explains and informs.'---Colin Wells, author of Sailing from Byzantium

`A welcome and highly readable treatment of one of the most important events in world history, and a fine work of scholarship. Jonathan Harris handles his subject with narrative momentum and descriptive flair, and he never loses sight of the humanity involved in these twilight years of a once-great empire.'---Norman Housley, author of Fighting for the Cross

By 1400, the once-mighty Byzantine Empire stood on the verge of destruction. Most of its territories had been lost to the Ottoman Turks, and Constantinople was under close blockade. Against all odds, Byzantium lingered on for another fifty years until 1453, when the Ottomans dramatically toppled the capital's walls. During this bleak and uncertain time, ordinary Byzantines faced difficult decisions to protect their livelihoods and families against the death throes of their homeland.

In this evocative and moving book, Jonathan Harris explores individual stories of diplomatic manoeuvres, covert defiance, and sheer luck against a backdrop of major historical currents, and he traces Byzantium's legacy through those emigrants and refugees who reached and influenced Italy, Russia, and beyond. Weaving together letters, chronicles, travellers' accounts, and other little-known archival documents, Harris dispels the myth of constant warfare between Islam and Christianity in the Middle Ages and offers a new perspective on the real reasons behind the fall of this fascinating cmpire.

Jonathan Harris is Reader in Byzantine History, Royal Holloway, University of London. His previous books include Byzantium and the Crusades and Constantinople: Capital of Byzantium.