ISLAND ONE, a prime time family sitcom set on the High Frontier

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Alan Patrick"
>
> Re Byzantium
>
> > The only historical events attributable to its fall were the
spread
> of Christianity northward into Russia and the creation of said
> empire.
>
The Byzantines may have delayed Moslem expansion in the east but they
simply took North Africa and moved into Spain. STopping at France.
Once they took Byzantium which was something they had been doing
peice by piece for generations, they kept moving into Euorpe stopping
at the Balkans.

As for the Huns, they moved into Russia

The only ones who really stopped their expansion were the Moslems.

> Byzantium stopped Muslim infiltration of Europe from the East until
the 13th
> century, and saw off many Steppe Nomad hordes between the Huns and
Mongols.
> Russia was Christian long before Constantinople fell, in large part
due to
> Byzantine efforts.
>
Byzantine had been under attack for Generations. Much of its
territory being eaten away. The Sack of 1204 was hardly a killer
blow. It lasted a couple centuries afterward.

The killer blow to Byzantium was when Constantinople was sacked by
the 4th
> Crusade in 1204, it took 100 years to reconquer most of its
territory, and
> that plus the effort of holding off the Turks eventually
overwhelmed it.
>
A lot of Classical learning came into western hands with the recovery
of Spain.

> A lot of classical learning (and texts) fled to Italy after the
fall of
> Constantinople, setting off the Renaissance, from which arguably
the West
> has been able to dominate the world for 500 years...
>
> The fall of Constantinople allowed the Muslim Turks to enter
Eastern Europe,
> this ideological war has festered for centuries of atrocities, and
arguably

World War One was the result of heavy alliances and nationalist
rivalries. (One can look to the Seven Years War Bewteen Britain and
Prussia on one side and France Russia and Austro Hungira on the other
for a similar situation). Germany in peticular was looking for new
gains.

The shot that set it off could have come from anywhere. It just
happened to have been fired in the Balkans.

The Russian Empire, like the Austro Hungarian one were so sick from
internal corruption, Anything would have pulled them down.

Japan could have done the Job if it had had the resources in 1905.

> was the cause of World War 1, the defeat therein of Russia leading
to the
> 1917 Revolution, and the resulting 1919 Treaty of Versailles
largely causing