Smuggling of silkworm eggs into the Byzantine Empire
en.wikipedia.orgByzantine history is so important to understand the modern world. It gives us the context for the orthodox/west divide; it gives us an example of a economic and intellectual superpower needing to live with the realities of barbarian neighbors, and being destroyed! It shows us great statecraft lasting a thousand years. It even shows us why generals and senior civil servants were eunuchs and how the next best thing was celibate people. This is the reason why catholic priests should be celibate and therefore the answer against nepotist corruption. We all know how nepotism is a serious issue in states everywhere in the world.
I became a fan of the Byzantines and seriously found team Roman Catholic to be a bunch of barbarians. I say team Roman Catholic because this small book[1] makes Byzantine history and trivia so humorous.
[1] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-cabinet-of-byzanti...
The religious parts of this I'm not sure I can agree with really.... I'm orthodox if it matters or seems relevant.
The catholic/orthodox differences are largely just because of a thousand years of divergence, of speaking different languages and having relatively little interchange, of each individually having movements in response to internal pressures and trends not experienced by the other. Not going to get into a filioque debate on HN but the initial theological dispute, however significant you find it to be, is not the source of the most tangible differences in the two branches today. They've just each been doing their own thing for a millennium and their unique histories took them to two different places during that time.
I don't see how byzantine eunuchs indicates anything about priest celibacy, especially since orthodox priests are usually married. Eunuchs and celibate priests still come from families, they experience love and duty and allegiance and enmity. To the extent a position is admirable people will want to be in it and to the extent it's powerful people will use that power to benefit the people and things they value. No restriction on who can hold an office will by itself address those factors. Byzantine eunuchs got up to plenty of corruption and betrayal in their own right.
I assume by "barbarians" you mean the ottoman turks, but we have to be careful in reading byzantine history not to absorb byzantine attitudes about their rivals. The ottomans were a long-lived, sophisticated, and nuanced entity in their own right. Even their precursors and other byzantine neighbors were not as simple or simply motivated as byzantine or byz-sympathetic sources would indicate.
Oh yes, the Ottomans very mighty sophisticated. They just didn't know how to build cities, so they took other peoples'.
Orthodox? Which kind? I grew up Greek Orthodox but then I grew up more atheist.
I'm american and my parents were converts so I don't think of myself as being particularly affiliated with any of the ethnic jurisdictions. I usually just find a parish where I like the people and the services are in english.
Often that's OCA (russian-tinged american) but in the past it has been serbian or greek. As you're probably aware it's all technically the same church so there's no barrier or ritual to changing. The differences are mostly just musical style and other aesthetic traditions.
Thanks, I don't really know the customs of the other Orthodox churches, but they are different organisations. I don't know them well, by any means. I'm reading about them on wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Orthodox_Churches
Apparently there are six Oriental Orthodox churches that are all "autocephalous" (i.e. they do their own thing). I think the Russians and Serbians are closer to the Greek church in custom.
And btw, that's why I asked. The Orthodox Greek diaspora are probably the largest group of Orthodox Christians outside Russia, but I was just curious.
Somehow I also find it curious that your parents were converts to an Orthodox church. I didn't think that happened. If I may pry, what were they converted from?
I'm Greek, btw.
Yeah the jurisdictions are an unbelievable mess you virtually need a degree in history to understand. Downside of not being under a single bishop like the catholics.
The oriental orthodox iirc reflect an even earlier schism than the one with rome, and aren't in communion with the eastern orthodox (despite those words meaning the same thing) which is the greek & russian churches mostly, plus a bunch of smaller slavic & balkan ones, plus some middle eastern churches. Within those bounds though it's different organizations but one communion eg I could receive eucharist at a greek church one week and be a godparent at a russian one the next without having to ask permission or even tell anyone.
In the US there seem to be a lot of converts recently, it's a big ongoing... thing... in american orthodoxy. Most ethnic churches just serve their communities and that's that. But the OCA and antiochian archdiocese specifically try to welcome converts with some success. Orthodox is liturgically and theologically the closest thing to catholicism, so we catch a lot of people leaving that church bc of child sex abuse scandal, anger at the liberalism of the pope, or whatever.
There are also a lot of ex-evangelicals but their reasons are incredibly varied in my conversations with them. Often they are extremely pious and it's part of a deep and sincere effort to connect with what they consider the true or original church founded by the apostles. Sometimes, less wholesomely, it's simply "trad" fetishism and our historical connections with slavic racial superiority movements and ethnonationalism.
In cities with multiple orthodox churches there is usually an informal "convert parish" made up of at least half americans who converted as adults.
My parents were devout southern baptists who left their church in disgust during the civil rights movement. Archbishop Iakovos famously marched with MLK, and I think became a sort of symbolic figure for white southern christian supporters of the civil rights movement. It's a much longer story than that but it was enough to get them to explore the greek church and eventually convert before I was born.
Thanks, that's a great insight into the Orthodox community in the States that I couldn't easily find otherwise. I do have some family in the States but they're third- and more distant cousins and I don't have any contact with them.
I think I remember about Iakovos marching with MLK. It's even a little surprising and I wonder if it wasn't all down to Iakovos' personality, kind of like the current Catholic pope is a bit of a maverick. Certainly, in Greece the church is not known for its support for civil liberties. I reckon there's many Greeks who have distanced themselves from the church exactly because of its extreme reactionary stance in many everyday issues, so the opposite of what happens in the States. Well, those are different countries :)
Thanks again for your unique perspective!
lol calling ottomans sophisticated and nuanced tell me you are very misguided and are influence by Turkish propaganda. Nonetheless, the ottomans were nothing more than what Russia is today, barbarians, who is always looking to control other civilizations that were more sophisticated. What you see in turkey today is the aftermath of raping and pillaging of south east Europe.
One thing I learned recently is that 12th Century Fourth Crusade actually culminated in sacking Constantinople and establishment of the "Latin Empire", as the intended successor of the Byzantine Empire, which only existed for a brief time before it was recaptured by a rump state founded by exiled Byzantine aristocrats. Apparently (and understandably) this led to major deterioration in East-West Christian relations, and furthermore the resulting weakening of the Byzantine Empire is what might have enabled the Ottoman Empire to eventually conquer the Byzantine Empire in the 15th Century. The level of geopolitical chaos involved in such an event is unimaginable today. Even the messiest of 20th century wars seem downright orderly by comparison.
The Fourth Crusade was preceded by:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Latins
which was a reaction to the empire becoming near completely dominated by westerns both economically and (to a lesser degree) politically.
The last coup attempt/civil war (which was also a near permanent issue in the empire) before the massacre was between a French Princess ruling the empire as a regent for her underage son and her stepdaughter who was married to a Frankish nobleman from the Outremer (he was -the second highest ranking official in the empire and seemingly the heir apparent together with his wife). Had they succeeded the Empire would probably have had its first Latin Emperor (or at least co-Emperor) without even being directly conquered. Of course instead it ended with late emperor's cousin* murdering (he forced the 12 year old emperor to sign her mothers death warrant and before having him assassinated soon after). mothers everyone and taking the throne for himself after he masterfully utilized the widespread public hatred towards the Latins amongst the general population..
*Andronikos Komnenos, who was in his middle 60s at the time and while being quite a terrible person had a very interesting life. Amongst other things (while in exile due all kinds of scheming) he seduced the former queen of Jerusalem (who happened to be his niece..) and up having two children with her after they ran away to the Turkish Sultanate of Damascus. Eventually she was captured by the emperor who used her to lure Andronikos into Constantinople and then (unfortunately for the emperor's son) decided pardon him and exile him to a remote province instead of executing him.
This is why it makes my blood boil when TV shows and movies that recount historical events try to dramatize everything and add their own silly unnecessary fictional touches. The actual events that happened are dramatic enough!
Andronikos Komnenos would not have been out of place in Game of Thrones.
Thanks for sharing, i read a lot of history and while I was generally aware of the western sacking of Constantinople during the crusades.. I wasn’t aware this preceded it.
AFAIK, an important reason eunuchs were preferred as generals and high officials is because a person who was castrated or had any other deformity could not be emperor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_mutilation_in_Byzant...) Exceptions did occur, e.g. Justinian II, but rare. It was also common practice to castrate sons of deposed emperors.
I do find it curious that not that much science came out of the Byzantine empire- Yes there was some, but (with my admittedly limited knowledge) it does seem to pale in comparison to the earlier stuff from Greece, Rome or even the Arab Caliphates with their scholars in Mathematics and Physics.
It seems like it was intellectual, but didn't have a proportional output of science or art that has stood the test of time.
Feel free to disagree and tell me why I'm wrong
Unfortunately for the Byzantine empire it spent most of its centuries in a population/territory/economic decline.
Back in 541-542 an outbreak killed about 40% of the city’s population. But even during the period 1347-1453, a total of 61 plague reports were noted.
They only had the wealth, peace and population to focus on science to a very small degree. That they managed to stay afloat for as long as they did is a testament to the science the original Romans left them, and which we can thank the Byzantine's for preserving.
>> Back in 541-542 an outbreak killed about 40% of the city’s population.
An outbreak of the plague.
Yes! And that's the same Justinian, btw. Not a lucky guy.
There is a strange trend of downplaying Byzantine heritage.. for instance modern Greek society seems to uphold the ancient Greeks much more, when in fact there are much closer ties to the Byzantine... a few hundred years ago it wouldn't have occurred to any Greek that they are connected to the ancients, and this trend has started with European Romantics.
But they did produce significant art and science, and especially architecture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_science
There would have been no transmission of the classics without the Byzantine, and possibly no Renaissance in Europe.
I’m impressed by how you manage to disparage both the very real intellectual achievement of both the Byzantine empire and the Abbasid Caliphate in such a short comment. It’s even more amusing that you do that while comparing them to the Greek achievements without realising that the main reasons you know about them is due to translations made by intellectuals of the Byzantine empire and especially of the Caliphate.
It seems like you're just kind of arguing that every culture everywhere at all times was the most awesome culture ever and had the most awesome scientific achievements and saying that relative comparisons are possible is uncouth
Even though I'm an oaf, I do think it's nice that they maintained copies of the Greek stuff
Well, Christianity is a big reason. It was so successful for so long in part because it aggressively repressed any ideologies which could have threatened its hegemony. Since the Church considered the ’scientific’ domain to be part of its curriculum, new science was generally a threat.
> Since the Church considered the ’scientific’ domain to be part of its curriculum, new science was generally a threat.
I don't think that's true. Church only opposed science that was in contradiction with the Bible, which was a small minority of all science discoveries. Church never had any qualms with Newton laws or laws of conservation of mass (in chemistry) etc.
> Church never had any qualms with Newton laws or laws of conservation of mass (in chemistry) etc.
That was a much later church separated by more than one schism. The Orthodox Church of the Byzantine empire was much less tolerant of any thoughts that might contradict doctrine. More that one philosopher was convicted of heresy.
Were these philosophers generating science?
Christianity was not locked in during the time of the Byzantines and in many cases discussions were common about it's different interpretations. Monphysitism, Iconoclasts, various flavors of Arian (named for the monk Arius), etc. were all floating around.
Constantinople had a reputation for having constant theological debates; writers mentioned how common townsfolk were debating the nature of Christ, etc.
Historically, looking back at them we see "unenlightened" folk -- perhaps the way future people, the ones who survive WW4, will look back at us and our debates about race and gender -- but at the time they were wildly well educated and highly versed in religion, politics, and philosophy.
And they did have science -- we have yet to fully understand Greek fire. Innovations in armor and horse breeding created the Cataphracts, based on Eurasian horsemen that the Byzantines routinely clashed with.
And, as the article points out, they smuggled silk and created a new industry from scratch. We scorn them for not being as advanced as we are 1000 years later but for a while Constantinople was, to quote Napoleon, "the city of the world's desire".
Citation?
one random tidbit that struck me was that the term "Byzantine Empire" was actually an invention from the 1500's.
the "byzantine" people actually called themselves Romans, and the empire was called "Roman Empire".
They were the Roman Empire. The distinction we make today is mainly of two reasons:
- In the East side of the empire, Constantine, the Roman emperor who moved the capital to Byzantium ("New Rome") was half-Greek, and the Greek element in the East meant this half of the Roman Empire had a stronger Greek ethnic presence.
- In the West side, the local Roman elite along with newly arrived Germanic peoples (the Franks) were Christianized and established the Papal states, of whose the Pope was king, the Catholic church, and realms that continued from the Roman Empire that was split into West and East. To make their claim over the Roman Empire stronger, there were fabrications of legitimacy (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation_of_Constantine ) and a lot of religious infighting with the East.
In short, in terms of a continuum of emperors the Eastern empire was essentially uninterrupted.
Even before the breakup of the empire, Romans were a bit obsessed with lineage and being descendants of powerful Romans. This cultural element carried over in the next two millennia by many people claiming the role of the Emperor of Romans, until the victories of Napoleon forced the rest of Europe to dissolve the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 to prevent Napoleon from claiming the title for himself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Holy_Roman_...
Well that and that the city of Rome wasn't part of it.
Ethnonym versus toponym; they are not the same.
That's because Byzantium was the eastern wing of the Roman Empire. Justinian I (the emperor in the wikipedia article) is remembered for being behind the last almost successful attempt to take Rome back from the hands of the barbarians and reunite the Empire's two heads.
The two heads in the Byzantine flags, that is. Byzantines called themselves "Roman", and everyone else in the area called them "Rum" (i.e. "Roman") because they were Romans.
And this guy was the Last of the Romans:
Ah yes! This is an interesting tidbit I learned while listening to the excellent Fall of Civilizations podcast. The episode about Byzantium was so good. Paul and his team do such a good job on the audio and visuals.
Ironically, those outside of Byzantium (namely the Western Europeans) called them "the Greeks". The Byzantines in turn, called those Western Europeans "The Latins".
A good compromise is to call it the Eastern Roman empire, though some folks in the Vatican would undoubtedly be annoyed.
Turkish people (as the successors of the Ottoman Empire) always call it the Eastern Roman Empire. Byzantine is almost exclusively used when talking about "Byzantine system" (i.e. intrigue, and plots).
and then the Ottomans came...
> It even shows us why generals and senior civil servants were eunuchs
The place the Byzantines got those eggs from tried that too, didn't always work out too great in terms of stability and good governance, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Attendants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zong_Ai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Tigers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wei_Zhongxian
> It even shows us why generals and senior civil servants were eunuchs
That was the case for "only" around a third to a half of the empire's existence. But by the 1000 ADs appointing eunuchs to high posts fell out of fashion with emperors appointing family members or leading in the field directly (unlike in Justinians day when emperors spent almost their entire reign being cloistered in the palace).
Somewhere between the first and third crusades there was a non-insignificant chance of the empire becoming much more integrated with Latin/Catholic west. Later Komnenian emperors started adopting Western customs, had fairly good relations with most Crusader and Western States and were attempting to reunite the both churches officially.
Of course this process culminated when a French princess became an effective ruler of the empire as a regent for her underage son, she surrounded herself with Latins and parceled off pretty much everything she could off to Italian Merchants. This was met with an extremely violent backlash culminating in her and her son being murdered and a literal genocide (or at least a massive pogrom) of all the westerns living in Constantinople (10-20% of all the people living in the city). And the split was made permanent by the even more violent sack during the 4th crusade by the westerners.
In some sense, the final sack by the Ottomans imposed a certain modicum of order and peace to the Polis. And that's saying something.
Yeah, unless your entire property was stolen, house burned and you yourself murdered (reports on how violent the sack was differ though). The again the city never really recovered after the Crusader/Venetian sack.
Carrying that logic further, then, would it be better if public servants had no friends? If everyone anywhere but the lowest rung of the corporate ladder (from which one does not typically make hiring decisions) also had no family? For only the least (conventionally) successful to reproduce seems problematic.
> Carrying that logic further
Or rather, "carrying it to an extreme". But we don't have to carry it that far. Eliminating inherited positions is a huge and sufficient improvement. If you go all the way to "no family or friends at all", yeah, I'd agree the problematic aspects might outweigh the benefits.
> senior civil servants were eunuchs and how the next best thing was celibate people
Ralph Nader comes to mind.
The author of this book was a guest on the History of Byzantium podcast. It's a great listen that picks up where the History of Rome left off.
I could never get into that podcast even though I have a strong interest and want to delve into the empire's history. In being disappointed by History of Rome's "sequel" I doubt I'm alone. Though I will check out this specific episode since I'm intrigued by this book; thanks for the heads-up.
> It even shows us why generals and senior civil servants were eunuchs and how the next best thing was celibate people
ok. why?
They're more likely to choose their successors based on merit than familial ties for a start. That's really enough, but they may also have less need to enrich themselves as they don't need to plan for inheritance.
I wish the original poster had put that. It makes sense. Thanks
I'm curious, is there a list somewhere of these world-changing industrial espionage incidents? Here's two more I remember off the top of my head. Not sure why the top results are the Smithsonian Magazine but here are some links:
Samuel Slater brings cotton mill technology to America in 1789: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-esp...
Robert Fortune learns Chinese tea production methods and brings them to British India in 1848: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-british-tea...
Someone (maybe you!) should write a book about this!
Theres the smuggling of wild rubber tree seeds, which eventually got to Malaysia.
https://geography.name/how-rubber-moved-to-asia/
> The Brazilian monopoly suffered a fatal blow in 1876. In that year the English explorer Sir Henry Wickham (1800–67) gathered about 70,000 seeds from wild rubber trees in the forest close to the city of Santarem, in the state of Para. Wickham smuggled the seeds out of Brazil and took them to Kew Gardens, London, where they were sown. Many of them germinated, and 3,000 seedlings were sent from London to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). In 1877, 22 rubber plants were sent from Ceylon to the Singapore Botanic Gardens. The trees were growing there when in 1888 Sir Henry Nicholas Ridley (1855–1956) arrived as the gardens' first scientific director. Ridley spent years studying the trees, and in 1895 he discovered a technique for tapping the latex without seriously harming the tree. That made it practicable to cultivate the trees commercially. In 1890 Ridley exhibited the first cultivated rubber trees, and in 1896 the first rubber plantations were established in Malaysia. Most of the trees were grown from Ridley's seeds. Growers went on to produce hardier, disease-resistant varieties, and large rubber plantations were developed in Ceylon and Singapore as well as Malaysia.
The US actually encouraged "IP theft" well into the 19th century and did not recognise foreign copyright.
On their side the UK not only banned export of certain technologies to the US but they also banned emigration of the people knowledgeable about them.
This similar to Chinas stand on IP: copying is ok so long it doesn't happen to our IP. But this is how small economies can grow quickly, by ignoring IP. So nearly every western nation had a period of ignoring copyright and/or IP.
That not so weird Taiwan does the exactly the same with their semi conductor engineers that want to go to China.
>“Foreigners seemed to prefer having a mixture of Prussian blue and gypsum with their tea, to make it look uniform and pretty, and as these ingredients were cheap enough, the Chinese [have] no objection to [supplying] them as such teas always fetch . . . a higher price!”
This quote and the preceding paragraph about the distrust of the Chinese tea manufacturers are quite something. I hadn't considered the "made in China" stereotype for quality had been around for centuries.
Historically (before ~1800 let's say) China was known for its very high-quality goods. In fact, the Silk Road trade and later trade with the Spanish was almost exclusively Chinese goods flowing out and gold and silver specie flowing in - mainly because their domestic production was good enough that foreign goods couldn't compete. This was enough of a thing that the Romans became concerned at the amount of specie flowing out of the empire to pay for silk and other Chinese goods.
> mainly because their domestic production was good enough that foreign goods couldn't compete
Most international trade (well intercontinental anyway) was restricted almost exclusively to luxury goods. And Europe didn't have to export in that regard besides glassware up until the 19th century. Transportation costs were way too high to export/import anything that might have taken up more space across long distances (especially over land).
After the industrial revolution imports to China remained at relatively very low levels due to heavily protectionist policies by the imperial government until the opium wars.
Obviously opium was the most egregious example and by modern standards China clearly had the right to restrict its imports. Opium just happened to be the most profitable one, however importing anything else (like cotton, furs, steel tools, mechanical items) besides gold/silver was very hard as well which why (amongst other thing) many Chinese people living on the coast weren't that keen on supporting the government (of course China was in sate of near permanent civil war and endless revolts during most of the century).
This is was the reason for the Opium Wars with the English. The English wanted Chinas tea but the Chinese didn't want anything from the English so the English were bleeding gold and silver into China.
So the English forced Opium onto the people of China against the will of the King of China. China rebelled, the English conquered and forced the Chinese to open their ports and accept Indian-grown opium as trade for Chinese tea.
That continued until the English found the secret plants that made the Chinese tea. They stole those plants and planted them in India.
That's a very dramatic narrative. As if the English or the Chinese were united among themselves. As if Chinese traders and smugglers didn't collude, or that the opium ban was a purely moral one and not commercial.
Depends on which storyteller you listen to. The English would tell you that the Chinese were being unfair in their trade and had it coming it to them (the wars). The Chinese would tell you that they have had a century of humiliation[1].
Somewhere inbetween those stories lies the truth. However as with the current crisis, it was the English that invaded with their Navy, that would make them the aggressor and hence the bad-~guy~human. Taking todays value system and applying it to events that happened some 180 years ago.
The fact that the world's production of nutmeg until the 19th century was restricted only to the remote Banda islands I think falls in that category. The Dutch protected their source with vigilance.
Or just a List_of_ article or even just a category on Wikipedia. There are mentions, sometimes articles dedicated to, other cases but not organized across the topic that I can see, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_espionage#History
I cant recall where you can see footage, maybe on the documentary "Murder Mountain" where they talk about smuggling Cannabis seeds from Afghanistan to California in the 1960s or 1970s by sewing the seeds into the edge-trimming-folds of (wallets?) to get the seeds into the US... then creating cannabis farms in mendocino county california...
During the 19th century there was an attempt to establish a silk industry in New England. The industry failed, but the White Mulberry (morus alba), imported to serve as the food source for the silkworms, is thriving in North America. It's invasive in many areas and has displaced the native mulberry, morus rubra.
It seems there's a lot of interest for Byzantine History on HN, that's fantastic! My friends and I have run a book club for the past four years on Ancient History with focus on the Eastern Roman Empire.
Most books we read were kind of dry. Here's a list of books I found readable and engaging if you want to delve deeper:
* Byzantium trilogy by Norwich. If you don't want to get all three, I suggest getting The Apogee (2nd volume). Fantastically readable and solid historical work with a generous side of gossip.
* Alexiad by Anna Komnene. Written around 1140 after Anna was deposed to a convent, this biography of her father, Alexios, has an immediacy that history books cannot match. The end will probably bring you to tears.
* Anecdota (Secret History) by Procopius. For pure titillation factor cannot be beat! Severe attack against Justinian, Theodora, Belisaurus, and his wife Antonina. "Severe" is an understamenet really, here's Procopius on Theodora's depraved youth:
On the field of pleasure she was never defeated. Often she would go picnicking with ten young men or more, in the flower of their strength and virility, and dallied with them all, the whole night through. When they wearied of the sport, she would approach their servants, perhaps thirty in number, and fight a duel with each of these; and even thus found no allayment of her craving. Once, visiting the house of an illustrious gentleman, they say she mounted the projecting corner of her dining couch, pulled up the front of her dress, without a blush, and thus carelessly showed her wantonness. And though she flung wide three gates to the ambassadors of Cupid, she lamented that nature had not similarly unlocked the straits of her bosom, that she might there have contrived a further welcome to his emissaries.
* Chronographia by Michael Psellos covers the reigns of 14 emperors and empresses in a 100 time period
I’m not convinced that Procopius wasn’t just writing erotic fiction.
There's a long tradition in Roman literature of accusing people you don't like of various sexual improprieties:
And 1400 years later my grandfather farmed silkworms a few hundred kilometers from Constantinople.
I like how easily television puts the event into a show set seven centuries later. That'd be like including the signing of the Magna Carta in a show about WWI.
This event lead to the Byzantines having a silk monopoly in Europe. It follows that the Venetians didn’t have the means to produce silk. They may have therefore tried to acquire said means. The show apparently depicts that attempt, with inspiration from the story in TFA.
I'd also add that holy men smuggling out the means to break monopolies in their walking sticks is a popular theme, to the point of being a trope.
Super cool article, thank you. These 2 guys significantly changed the world and we don't know who they are.
Perhaps a naive question: What was so special about silk? It seems it was just a luxury article for the rich. I assume unlike today, not many people had a lot of disposable income to spend on luxury products. So I don't understand how silk could have been economically relevant compared to other non-luxury goods.
It is interesting how concepts of commercial secrecy and rule of law evolve over the centuries. In modern terms we might call this "knowledge transfer incident" a form of commercial espionage / intellectual property theft.
It is unclear if the affected entity ever imposed sanctions or other form of punishment on the perpetrator (presumably they did notice that there was no longer demand for their silk in certain markets??). It also appears that the perpetrators promptly established a monopoly of their own (on the basis of somebody else's know-how which is also somewhat odd with today's eyes :-).
Somehow it is all predicated on very sparse communication between different parts of the world. The flip side is that in today's hyper-connected world you might be able to tell if a secret has leaked just by triangulation.
You might have a pretty good clue of who did what but today's winning strategy is to never admit any fault and form coalitions of protection. I suspect that is the winning strategy always, just stonewall, its not particularly honorable but what has that ever won anybody, an honor trophy? You can get trophys by cheating too, and much more!
Byzantine history is interesting and vastly underappreciated (IMO). If you'd like to learn a bit more, the "12 Byzantine Rulers" podcast is a good place to start. It starts off a touch stiff, but loosens up and is great overall.
I can also recommend the History of Byzantium podcast for anyone that wants to to extremely deep into the timeline.
I've listened to all 265 episodes so far, and I'm still thrilled every time a new one comes out!
There is a great podcast (https://thehistoryofbyzantium.com) that is carrying on from Mike Duncan's excellent history of Rome podcast. They just got up to the 4th Crusade sack of Constantinople.
Silk has been produced for 3-4k years, can you imagine what a son-of-a-bitch that was back then? Was silk like gold and bitcoin? Somehow valuable because its such a bitch to produce? Feels like all of it is a goof on the people who accept it at face value.
Silk has unique characteristics as a material, and in a pre-plastic pre-industrial world with relatively few viable fabric materials (and all of them profoundly labor-intensive by modern standards) it would have been valuable regardless.
Obviously its rarity, social connotations, and mysterious origins had a huge effect on its value. But like gold, its characteristics alone are enough to cause people to go through the trouble to acquire it initially, enough for those other factors to take over.
IMO we shouldn't have started wearing clothes to begin with, it was a bad call. If my ancestors could have just held off on that I'd have nice thick fur right now.
I mean… if you stick to the areas that mimic the early hominid climate you don’t really need them. Lots of modern tropical tribes wear functionally zero clothing.
Silk definitely had(has) the immediate day to day use case of a comfortable fabric to wear, I can imagine that alone drove up demand. I'm sure it being difficult to produce increased it's value.
Sure gold and bitcoin are stores of value and currency, but we don't usually make our boxers out of them.
silk materials relate to a sensual world, where the touch, feel and quality of the physical embodiment is valued highly.. It is possible that English-style commerce downplays this sensual value, preferring all forms of money, e.g. rare coins, stamps, securities and financial agreements, as higher value. It is an example of a polarity.
There is a rumor that Bill Gates will not pay for art because "that is not worth money" .. he famously had giant digital screens hung in his thirty thousand square foot home, displaying reproductions of famous art without paying for them. Yet, he has spent millions of dollars building and acquiring software patents, which are applied with attorneys to generate many times that income. I suggest that is directly reflective of that cultural difference.
> There is a rumor that Bill Gates will not pay for art
It's a funny anecdote, but he has well over a hundred million in art.
https://www.the-sun.com/news/2845331/bill-gates-art-collecti...
Related, the Melvyn Bragg podcast on Marco Polo is excellent https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01hxpxh
It is so fascinating that I can find "ottoman" keyword at least 6 times on this thread even-though this smuggling had happened way before the ottomans concurred the Byzantine.
Your comment would have upped the incidence of said keyword by 33% at the time it was published.