Re: Larry Niven: Terrorize Latinos to Solve Health Care Crisis

Mike Schilling wrote:
> 
>  W. Citoan wrote:
> > ["Followup-To:" header set to rec.arts.sf.written.] Mike Schilling
> > wrote:
> >>
> >>  John Schilling wrote:
> >>
> >>> ...wait a minute, the Dark Age of the seventh and eighth centuries
> >>> was one continent over.  The miserable Arabs, etc, seem to have
> >>> skipped that part.  Never Mind.
> >>
> >>  In fact, if you believe Pirenne (which I tend to), Islam was a
> >>  major cause of the Dark Ages in Europe.  Not because it's Evil,
> >>  but because the Islamic conquest of the Middle East and North
> >>  Africa and the consequent domination of the Mediterranean
> >>  destroyed the trade patterns which dated from the Roman Republic
> >>  (and even before). It took centuries for the new Europe based in
> >>  the northwest of the continent rather than its south to emerge.
> >
> > That would seem to ignore the existence of Constantinople.
> 
>  How so?

Constantinople remained a vibrant, powerful city centuries past the fall
of the western empire.  If Islamic impacts to trade were the cause of
the Dark Ages in Europe, then those affects should have been seen in
Constantinople before they were felt in the West, not after.

The Dark Ages ran from 476 to 1000.  Islam didn't start until the 600s
and didn't reach Constantinople until 674.  

The times simply do not match.

The successive barbaric invasions caused immense turmoil.  The Franks
may have provided longer term stability than they did if they did not
have that custom of dividing the land among all the sons.  Fracturing
your kingdom is not a good idea in the long run.

>  Note that the Byzantines were having some success in Italy
>  and might have been able to reconstitiute some of the western empire
>  before the rise of Islam, but had no chance at it afterwarrd. 

They would have had a lot more success if Justinian (or perhaps rather
Theodora) hadn't been paranoid about Belisarius.  

The Byzantines had to deal with other groups than just Islam.  The Avars
and the Bulgars were a serious threat as well.  

- W. Citoan
-- 
.... [While] sanity is a rather rare phenomenon, I am convinced that it
can
be achieved and would like to see more of it.
-- Aldous Leonard Huxley