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Rated The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire 6/10

A good study on Byzantium's strategic realities and how the Empire dealt with them. While the tools of warfare and communication have changed, the basic threats faced by the empire, and the responses to those threats have changed little since the fall of the Western Empire. Rising and shifting geopolitical rivals, the ebb and flow the tax base, and a shrinking military were met with retrenchment, soft power, and proxy wars, making this study relevant to the modern policy maker.

However, the author's occasional racist editorial comment makes it hard for me to recommend this book without caveat:

It is with a high compliment that the author of the Strategikon begins his comments: "The light-haired races place a great value on freedom." Earlier he had described the Persians as a "servile" lot, who "obey their rulers out of fear"—some things never change after millennia…

Passages such as this are a little jarring, but fortunately not found widely. Also be aware of his tendency to be inconsistent in the transliteration of names. This doesn't appear to be an issue with the greek names, but the Umayyad caliph is at one point rendered both "Sulayman" and "Suleiman" in the same paragraph.

If one keeps in mind the authors biases, this is still a good read.

#book

Published 2026-04-03 22:30 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere