Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Byzantium

The external policy of Byzantium during the reigns of the Andronicoi 

Page 8

Byzantium and the rise of Serbia; Stephen Dushan (Dusan). The possessions of Byzantium in the Balkan peninsula, at the end of the thirteenth century, embraced the whole of Thrace and southern Macedonia with Thessalonica; but the lands lying farther to the west and south Thessaly, Epirus, and Albania only partially recognized the power of the Empire, and not in equal degree. In the Peloponnesus the Empire under Michael Palaeologus had reconquered from the Franks Laconia in the southeast of the peninsula, and then the central province, Arcadia. In the rest of the Peloponnesus and middle Greece the Latins continued to rule. As to the Archipelago, Byzantium possessed only a few islands in the northern and northeastern portion of the sea.

Parallel with the Ottoman danger in the East, another threatening danger to Byzantium was growing up in the Balkan peninsula, in the first half of the fourteenth century, from Serbia. The Serbs and the closely related, perhaps even identical, Croats made their appearance in the Balkan peninsula in the seventh century at the time of Emperor Heraclius and occupied the western part of the peninsula. While the Croats dwelling in Dalmatia and in the region between the rivers Sava and Drava began to enter into closer relations with the West, adopted Catholicism, and in the eleventh century lost their independence and came under the power of the Hungarian (Magyar) Kingdom, the Serbs remained faithful to Byzantium and the eastern church. For a long time, that is, up to the second half of the twelfth century, in contrast to the Bulgars the Serbs failed to form one unified state. They lived in independent districts or zupy, at the head of which were zupans. A tendency towards unification did not appear among the Serbs until the twelfth century, and coincided chronologically with the Bulgarian movement towards the foundation of the second Bulgarian Kingdom. Just as the Asen family led the movement in Bulgaria, so the family of the Nemanjas played a similar role in Serbia.

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