After the Byzantine Republic (2015), Romanland is another bold step in Kaldellis' ongoing deconstruction of Byzantinists' traditional worldview. As always, expectations are high, and the readership is promised groundbreaking new insights. Statements on the dust jacket refer to the author's challenge "to set aside an immense tradition of misdirection" and equate his work with Edward Said's Orientalism. And indeed, Romanland is a brilliant, big-picture analysis of the highest caliber with a time frame stretching from the third to the eleventh century (including some glimpses on late Byzantium) and a geographical scope encompassing Italy, the Balkans, and Asia Minor. Kaldellis' text is bristling with stimulating observations and compelling arguments and invites us to rethink numerous well-established scholarly opinions. In a nutshell, the author aspires to demonstrate that the Byzantine Empire was neither "Byzantine" nor an"'empire," or at least what scholars traditionally consider to be a multiethnic imperial state. Byzantium, he argues, should be seen as a medieval Roman nation-state dominated by a largely homogeneous and clearly defined ethnic group, the Romans. Apart from a brief preface summarizing the key points of his thesis, Kaldellis develops his argument in two parts, which represent two opposite approaches to the problem of Byzantine ethnicity. Part I ("Romans," 1-120) focuses on the empire's predominant majority group. The author briefly refers to medieval western polemics originating from the Byzantine-Carolingian antagonism and to the decay paradigm of the enlightenment period, which combined laid the foundations for modern notions of a Greek empire and medieval Greeks. The appropriation of the Byzantine heritage by the modern Hellenic Republic so as to underscore its own claim to ethnic continuity is also mentioned as a contributing factor. The result, in Kaldellis' view, was a "history of denial," i.e., "the denial of the Byzantines' Romanness," which is in sharp contrast with the self-image reflected in virtually all Byzantine sources. As a matter of fact, the generally accepted modern notion of a seventh/eighth-century transformation, which led to the emergence of a profoundly altered politico-cultural entity consisting of Roman, Greek, and Christian elements, is nowhere clearly articulated in the sources. Kaldellis thus draws a sweeping arc linking Carolingian, enlightenment, and modern attitudes: "The part of Louis' [II, western emperor and king of Italy, 844-875] letter that codified the bedrock of western denialism for centuries is its claims about ethnicity, speech, and geography" (21). Western imagination is still haunted by "Enlightenment caricatures" (26), although the author acknowledges that some scholars, non-experts, and belletrists did not buy into mainstream opinions (32-37).
Eight snapshots from key sources of different periods of Byzantium (3-11, 38-42) form the basis for Kaldellis' alternative view of what he calls "Roman ethnicity." Modern ethnicity theories referring to ever-changing "social constructs" (44), constituents forming a clear-cut cultural profile of an ethnic community (46-47), as well as similarities in the use of the Greek terms of ethnos, genos, phylon, and laos with modern notions of nation (51-52, 63-73) underpin his argument. In tune with recent scholarship on the Constitutio Antoniniana of 212, which granted Roman citizenship to all free subjects, Kaldellis sees therein a key moment of Roman identity formation determining matters of inclusion and exclusion for centuries to come (52-58). The idea of Romanness thus gained a strong unifying effect, levelling out center-periphery gaps and social cleavages. Being Roman was no longer confined to a capital-centered elite culture but henceforth encompassed all people living in the empire irrespective of provenance and social standing. A full-blown kinship language premised upon terms of family and fraternity, ideas of political and even biological continuity, and a sense of living together in a common fatherland (patris) are expressions of a "national Roman collective." This also includes the idea of Roman superiority as against the many foreign groups or ethnikoi surrounding the empire (66-67). Kaldellis especially argues against any notion of "rhetorical fiction," stressing that the same views can be found in sources reflecting a low-level provincial background and in foreign, mostly Arabic, sources (73-80).
Part I concludes with a discussion of "key indicia of Roman ethnicity, specifically [...] homeland, language, and religion." Romanía, a widely used self-designation, is described as a kind of pre-modern nation state (93) characterized by territorial and jurisdictional unity and supported by a strong sense of patriotism among its citizens. In terms of language, contemporary views distinguish between Latin as the empire's ancestral language and Greek/Hellenic, which in vernacular texts and thus in everyday usage is called romaïka (97-106). Against the widespread opinion of (Orthodox) Christianity being a salient identity feature of medieval Byzantium, Kaldellis argues that the former is certainly closely connected with Romanness but the two notions are not interchangeable. Rather, they are "mutually reinforcing" (111). Kaldellis also rejects an "ecumenical bias in modern scholarship," which tends to overemphasize the notion of universal Christian inclusiveness. A crucial mechanism of Romanogenesis is the process of Romanization through which ancient foreign groups and provincial populations were fully absorbed into the Roman nation (113-120).
Part II ("Others," 121-268) discusses the flip side of the ethnicity coin by concentrating on ethnically defined foreign groups or minorities and matters of ethnic assimilation. Kaldellis holds that Byzantium throughout its history achieved a high degree of integration of foreigners through cultural and religious assimilation premised upon ancient concepts of Roman expansion and settling barbarians within the confines of the empire. The nine-century Iranian Khurramites, real and fictitious characters of Muslim origin, and Slavic groups in Macedonia, Thrace, Thessaly, and the Peloponnese illustrate the overall efficiency of Byzantine mechanisms of assimilation. Constantine VII's description of a deeply Slavicized Peloponnese is interpreted as a literary hyperbole directed against an internal opponent (147-150). A large sub-chapter scrutinizes well-established opinions about a strong Armenian presence in Byzantium. Kaldellis debunks the notion that high-ranking dignitaries and even emperors built their careers on the grounds of Armenian family background and loyalties as an "Armenian fallacy" introduced by nationalist trends, and demonstrates how tenuous the evidence of an individual's Armenian descent is in most cases (155-195). The last two chapters on the state of Byzantine affairs in the tenth (196-232) and the eleventh century (233-268) shift the focus to the problem of empire and, more specifically, to the question as to whether Byzantium in these two moments of its development can be characterized as an empire or not. Kaldellis embraces a definition of empire that stresses social and ethnic differentiation between a conquering elite and foreign groups as a core feature of an imperial entity. Moreover, he points out that the Byzantine basileus was primarily perceived as the monarch of the Roman people (202). After drawing a broad picture of Byzantium's ethnic profile in about 930 and 1064, he concludes that Byzantium in the former stage can hardly be seen as a multiethnic mosaic and was no empire, except for some traits of imperial rule in Italy. After the completion of the Byzantine expansionist movement in the east, however, numerous foreign groups, such as Armenians, Georgians, Arabic-speaking Melkites, Syriac non-Chalcedonian communities, and Muslim Arabs actually came under Byzantine rule and changed the state's ethnic composition. Kaldellis defines this situation as Byzantium not being, but having, an empire, which existed alongside its "core national state" (267).
No doubt, this study has great merits and provides numerous new insights into issues of Byzantine identity. Kaldellis makes us aware of conceptual pitfalls and shortcomings in the debate of ethnicity in the Middle Ages, he points out new ways of approaching the intricate relations between Byzantium and ethnic-political groups in its orbit of influence, and his analysis of the Armenian fallacy problem is superbly persuasive. For all its merits, the writer of the present review will most probably continue talking about the "Byzantine Empire" and drawing a distinction between late antique Rome and medieval Byzantium, and this not because of intellectual inertia or conservativism.
One important reason is that Kaldellis' thesis of denialism oversimplifies or outrightly ignores an extremely rich, diverse, and multilayered set of medieval western perceptions of Byzantium and Greek-Orthodox Christianity, which goes far beyond Carolingian and Ottonian claims to Rome and exhibits complex diachronic developments before, during, and after the crusades and the conquest of 1204 (e.g., see now S. Neocleous,Heretics, Schismatics, or Catholics? Latin Attitudes to the Greeks in the Long Twelfth Century [Toronto, 2019]). Moreover, the barbarian successor kingdoms and their medieval heirs underwent their own processes of ethnogenesis and identity formation. This of course included the integration of Roman culture and Romanized population groups in former territories of the empire, as well as an ideological positioning towards the Roman heritage. The composition of origo gentis narratives, for instance, was an important outcome of this process. Louis II was happy to call himself imperator Romanorum after 871 but he would have hardly understood why Kaldellis calls him "German" (20). The crystallization of a regnum Teutonicorum was an extremely complicated evolutionary process.
Equally multifaceted are western statements about Byzantine rulers, ambassadors, intellectuals, cultural achievements, theological differences, and so forth. Expectedly, they may range from admiration to contempt and from a sense of affinity to open hatred, but they do certainly not deny the existence of a distinct politico-cultural, perhaps even ethnic, entity, even if they refrain from calling it "Roman" or reject Byzantine concepts of exceptionalism. The history of the East-West schism and the subsequent movement of unionism, an aspect totally ignored by Kaldellis, is in its essence a centuries-long mutual endeavor to come to terms with each other's claims and particularities. Apparently, progress in this respect was hampered by political, ecclesiastical, and dogmatic issues and, naturally, by the dispute about the idea of Rome as a concept of imperial authority and legitimacy. Matters of ethnic identity may at times have been instrumentalized in this conflict, but they did not stand in the heart of it.
A superficial glance at East-West relations and Byzantine diplomacy in the ninth and tenth centuries reveals that questions of empire actually do matter in Byzantium's relations with the outside world. The Second Council of Nicaea and the papacy, the Photian Schism, missionary activities among the Slavs, the Christianization of the Rus, Byzantine claims to sovereignty in the Caucasus, and a network of Muslim vassal emirates in the eastern borderland demonstrate the existence of a highly sophisticated set of concepts and tools based on the idea of Roman imperial rule reaching far beyond the actual borders of the state. Roman authority, superiority, and prestige were a strong incentive for many of Byzantium's neighbors to engage with the empire through titles, payments, and treaties, but without seeking full integration or assimilation. Conversely, it can hardly be denied that there was a strong expansionist impulse in Byzantine foreign policy even without large-scale conquests and the exploitation of foreign subject populations. Obolensky's idea of a Byzantine Commonwealth may again not be entirely accurate for describing international relations in the Middle Ages, but it elucidates a very important aspect of Byzantium's overwhelming presence as a dominant cultural and political power. Even in the post-1204 period, we observe an unprecedented dissemination of imperial symbols and concepts of Constantinopolitan origin penetrating the political language of the Latin Empire, the Venetian maritime colonies, the Seljuk sultanate of Rum, and other local players. Apparently, the idea of empire mattered even after its fall and the competition with the Byzantine successor states about the Roman imperial language reached new heights. Instead, any form of ethnic or cultural uniformity could only be an illusion under the highly unstable constellations of the late medieval Aegean world.
Kaldellis is certainly right in his observation that the Roman identity features the sources refer to as signs and characteristics of unity, cohesion, and homogeneity come close to our modern understanding of ethnicity. However, the fact that some texts ascribe them to members of lower social strata and the provincial population does not necessarily prove that they naturally permeated all sections of Byzantine society to the same degree. Identity formation was and is essentially an elite-driven discursive event drawing heavily on education, intellectual traditions, and state propaganda. In this sense, Giannis Stouraitis' notion of Byzantine elite identity (BZ 107 [2014]), although repeatedly refuted in Romanland, should not be dismissed out of hand. Even provincial vernacular texts are still the product of a relatively small group of literati, who are influenced by Constantinopolitan elite concepts, elements of Byzantine high culture, and learned literary conventions. Despite the persistence of national myths, we may safely assume that the Romioi living in the early nineteenth-century Peloponnese had to learn from elites in Russia and Europe who they were and why they should rise up against the Ottoman sultan.
Likewise, modern views of Byzantium result from a broad range of intellectual traditions and can hardly be restricted to a conspiratorial rejection of Byzantium's Roman character. Humanism and philological interest in manuscripts and post-classical Greek, the interfaith dialogue with Orthodox Christians, and the superimposition of nineteenth-century nationalist concepts on the successor states of the Ottoman Empire, which in the beginning at least was an urgent matter of ethnic survival before it morphed into chauvinistic expansionism, inevitably set different priorities. As all other historical entities of cultural significance, Byzantium had to be instrumentalized for various purposes in order to become an academic discipline. Reducing it to a medieval Roman entity would have deprived it of many aspects of the cultural and symbolic value which gained relevance in the post-1453 period. Actually, it is this multiplicity of historical layers concentrated in the heritage of medieval Byzantium that makes it one of the great empires in history. The casa di Austria of the Habsburg dynasty developed into the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy and the rule of the family of Osman became the Devlet-i Aliyye-i Osmaniyye of the tanzimat period. In the very last phase of both states, we may discover the historical roots of the modern Austrian and Turkish nation, but just like Byzantium before them, both entities had a much larger impact on the cultural and historical formation of Central and Southeast Europe and the Middle East.
Doubtlessly, Romanland is a highly stimulating piece of scholarship that can be read with much profit and, to judge from the great interest of my graduate students, will be embraced with enthusiasm by the international community. However, I believe that this discussion requires a much broader notion of empire and a much more limited and careful use of notions of ethnicity and nation in order to do justice to all nuances of what Byzantium or the medieval Roman state represents.