Neagu Djuvara and his oppinions

Really? What history books said that?
Now i really start to doubt your knowledge

Well, after Vlad Tepes and Stephen the Great resistance ottomans renounced to idea to transform Romanian countries in ottoman provinces.
Yes, taxes was payed, when armed resistances was too costly (actualy the paying the taxes and go to war was mixed as politics), but the establishing of muslims or building mosques north of Danube was forbiden and the fact that we dont have the problems that are in former Yugoslavia (Greece had and have too with turks, bulgarian have 12% of population as turks i think) is due to that resistance.

Battles was won, or was lost, but on long term it was a win situation. In fact my opinion is that armed resistance stoped when the firearms become preeminent on the battlefields, and we didnt had the possibilities to arm, equip and train armies big enough to face similar armies equiped by much larger empires. When we was able to do that, results was imediatly (we have Horea, Closca and Crisan revolt in Transilvania, Avram Iancu defeating hungarians attempt to control the same Transilvania, and ofcourse 1877-1878 campaign)

My knowledge? Yes, it is limited and I will be the first to say that.
Please teach me. What was the size of Stefan's army at Vaslui? And what is the source of YOUR information?
Radu

I do not dispute the fact that the "principalities" fought many enemies or even each other. It has been said that "while we fought the Turks, they built cathedrals". That was what I was aiming at. It is a stupid saying and has no bearing on reality.
Radu

And I was trying to substantiate your view. I tried to explain on this board (which now looks to me more like a private discussion club) why impressive cathedrals were not built here, the problem being not related at all to religion. Had we ever been in the position to have built something grandiose? We lack even the impressive mosques which our South-Slavic neighbours have in their countries. There were no impressive cathedrals built here? No problem, we will catch it, and build them now.

This post has been edited by Amicus_Plato on January 31, 2011 12:06 pm

http://www.stefancelmare.ro/Izvoare-s4-ss1...#polona-Dlugosz

http://www.stefancelmare.ro/Izvoare-s4-ss19.htm#lituaniana

From history books that i read quite long ago, i remember the number of 45,000 moldavians vs 120,000 turks. Same numbers had probably the turkish army who fight with Vlad Tepes, even if their chronicars give even 300,000 as number.

Are you kind enough to provide some sources for your maximum 12,000 soldiers you said?

This post has been edited by udar on January 31, 2011 10:47 am

But does it matter how many troops did one ruler have in one battle? Honestly! In the long run they lost the war and were subjects of the Ottoman Empire until 1877.
This whole concept of "they built cathedrals while we fought the Turks" is ignorant, has no basis in reality and no bearing on this discussion. It is a facile diversion that works for "bizon".
The Orthodox Church missed the Renaissance. The Catholic Church supported and benefitted from the Renaissance. THAT is the issue.
Radu

no. they did not rise large peasant armies because of their uselessness against a trained foe. the german peasant war showd this quite clearly.
during the 15th century it became clear that properly trained and armed infantry could defeat armoured heavy cavalry, everybody hired swiss mercenaries first and german landsknechts. the size of an army was directly dependent from how big the warlords purse was. western european armies during that time usually faced an equally equipped and trained oponent, which made the filling of ranks by ill equipped levies useless, if not dangerous.
for example, at the battle of lützen, the imperial general wallenstein tried to conceal the absence of an elite formation by pushing camp followers into battle formation, with desastrous results. when the enemy cavalry threatened to attack, the camp followers fled from the field spreading panic.

during the 17th century imperial troops increasingly met the turks in battle, mostly numerically inferior but usually better trained and equipped.
and after the 2nd siege of vienna, the emperor became determined to put an end to the turkish threat. it took 2 large campaigns and despite the interference from france, after the austro-venetian turkish war, the turks stopeed to be a serios threat for central europe.

none of those numbers, for the turks at least, are realistic. there is a tendency to swell turkish numbes until well into the 18th century. initially it was claimed that the turks had over 300.000 men at belgrade (1717). today the number is estimated more realistically at 150.000 including the garrison.
usually these numbers (deliberatly?) include camp followers, the supply train and whatnot.

It is matter because if you had at every couple years to bring in army each 1 from 10 or 20 peoples, if you had your economy or agriculture affected on important parts of the country, or money you can use for building big construction you pay as taxes.

I am not saying that they manage to build those exclusevly because we keept the turks at bay or something like that, but is impossible to deny that they was more protected by the history storms.

Yes, maybe Orthodox church missed the Renaissance, but not exactly because she want that. And Catholic church (and later protestant one) wasnt the main element who bring the Renaissance, even if, as you said benefitted from that in some degree, but on another way they blocked too the development (see the inquisition and the witch hunts, or how bad was medicine compared with roman times). Sure, those churches benefitted from many things, from selling thoose "indulgences", corruption and politics, up to a word that i read somewhere, of an african from XIX century who said that :

"when they (colonists from western Europe) come here, we had the land and they had the bible, now we have the bible and they have the land".

This is another reason of western Europe development, colonies they had and their exploatation.

@udar:
Vikings
... so much for "more protected by the history storms"!
Re: colonies - indeed, but the main advantage is geography; more precisely, geopolitics. The westerners colonised because they had a place to do it. We didn't do it because:
1. We were too few / too weak to do that
2. We had no real reason to expand
3. We had no place to expand (Black Sea?!?!)
Also, when the great colonisation process began, those states were already more advanced than others. It had to do woth centralisation, science and not the least, Religion! (Church, if you want it that way...)
PS: by "WE" I mean the Romanian states existing in that age.

The fighting systems was usualy diferent in west compared with us. The enemies was usualy diferent. Here most of the peasents was free men (razesi, mosneni etc.), not serfs as in west. This peoples all had weapons and trained with them, i remember i read somewhere about the laws issued by Stephen the Great if i am not mistake, about the days they need to training.
Battles or campainges was many times guerrila actions, until enemy reach a position considered good to fight, where you can use the terrain in your advantage, surprise attacks etc., to compensate his usualy superior numbers.
Our cavalry was usualy light and medium one, few was the heavy knights style used in west, and was much more mobile and adaptable. Swiss pikemen wouldnt be of use here, or against armies as here.

This is the reason why we stoped fights and agree with paying tribute, the preeminence of firearms on the battlefields, which was used by professionals soldiers. Here was too hard to equip and train a big enough mass of soldiers equipped in that style. Even if sometimes armed struggles occur, usualy our armies wasnt able to field a large enough number of troops to compete with bigger empires arround. Just much later we was able to do that, and not with bad results

120,000 turks is a realistic number, 300,000 is very probable an exageration

Actualy i did mentioned in a previous post that after dark age and viking raides (vikings was more like pirates) the western Europe didnt had any big scale invasions. But in the same time they didnt build anything significant during those times, and actualy they was less developed then in roman times.

There is a connection, but lavish art and architecture is the product/effect/consequence of develpment, not its cause. It may have a multiplier effect in economy like any other public investment, but without the existence of funds in the first place that effect is not set in motion. You're not poor because you didn't invest in architecture and lavish art projects, you didn't invest in architecture and lavish art projects because you were poor or had to invest in guns not butter.

Nevertheless, why is everyone here focusing so much on the small, agrarian Romanian Principalities as the foremost expression of Orthodox Christianity in relation to development? Look at Russia. A great Orthodox power and there are plenty of examples of lavish art and achitecture there.

nobles would be *extremly* reluctant to arm serfs, or peasants in general (Dozsa György anyone?). this coupled with the often proved uselessness of peasants on the battlefield made armies of the late middle ages and renessance epoch a mercenary force. they did not call up peasants because it would not increase their military capabilities.

mercenaries armies of the late 15th and 16th centuries were mixed forces. pikes to hold off cavalry and to fight the the infantry engagements. musketeers up 1/3 of the force. and the "zweihänder" soldiers.
as the armies turned more and more to gunpowder troops, they started to employ more and more musketeers until, with the socket bayonett the pike dissapeared completly. this however, is how the armies generally looked like, even the armies of the 17th century which eventually defeted the turks.

to cause widespread destruction you don't need an "invasion". the entire middle ages are full of feuds between nobles, wars between cities and so forth. to a peasant whose village has been torched ar to a citizen whose city has been plundered, countless occurances throughout the entire european history, it matters little if the attacker is a turk, arab, viking or an enemy noble from the neighbouring province.
while all these feuds are rarely mentioned, they did they place. you don't need a big field battle to cause destruction. 1688 the entire palatinate was raided by the french for exeample, cities like mannheim, heidelberg or trier destroyed, many villages burnt and all this without a single field battle worth mentioning.
the 30 years war was one of the most destructive conflicts in history.
the empire lost 1/3 of the popultation (about 7-8 million from 21 million in 1618).
1500 cities, 18.000 villages plundered and burned by the swedish army alone.
no ottoman invasion comes even close to that level of destruction.

therefore, no, they didn't sit back and ejoy a quite life of economical and cultural development while "others" "held the turks back".

I think you missed my point. Access to funds is important, but having all the money in the world will never build you a cathedral unless you have the people who know how to build a cathedral.

I will give you an example. I was watching a documentary about the building of some giant sky scarper in Dubai. The building had to be clad in glass. They needed a type of glass that was light enough in order to reduce the total weight of the building standing on sand. The glass needed to be able to withstand the desert weather, sand storms, bird strikes and offer UV protection. There was no such glass. The architects asked a number of specialised people such as computer designers, physicists, chemists, glass manufacturers, etc. to develop this glass. They did. It turns out that the glass is also useful in aviation, marine and military. So, here you have it, this is a clear cut case of how Architecture brings a benefit.

The same thing happened during the Renaissance. Everything that was built, carved, sculpted, painted, composed, required the development of new techniques, new tools, new instruments, and these found further use in other fields. This is knowledge. This knowledge was disseminated using the new invention of Gutenberg's moving type and was taught in the newly-created universities. This explosion of knowledge raised the world from the dark ages. Sure, money is important, but money comes and goes while knowledge endures. This is as Jesus said: "give a man a fish and he will eat for one day, teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime".

You mentioned Russia... In fact that is a bad example because in Russia the "split" between the Church and the "flock" is immediately evident in the architecture. Take any of the greatest Russian buildings, the Hemitage, Moscow Kremlin, Staraya Ladoga, Ismaylovo Kremlin, Smolensk Kremlin and you will immediately see that they are NOT built in an Orthodox style. You will never see an "onion bulb" dome on a lay building. In fact, Moscow Kremlin is the most obvious example of this split. You can see immediately that the fortress/palace look nothing like St.Basil basilica that stands right next to it. Inside the walls, there are two more smaller churches and they are even more striking by their contrast with they surroundings. Maybe the building of these churches yielded no new knowledge that could benefit the flock. Maybe the church itself wanted to preserve its knowledge from the people. After all, there are numerous legends of "ctitors" who maimed (blinded, cut tongues) or even killed their architects in order to prevent them from sharing their knowledge or repeating their feat.

Maybe it is this "Mesterul Manole" aspect of Orthodoxy that Neagu Djuvara refers to... it is this jealous guarding of their knowledge... that they would leave a gifted architect to die on a roof or leap to his death rather than let him teach others... that there is no gratitude or respect for their benefactors.

Radu

This post has been edited by Radub on February 01, 2011 07:29 am

But who cares what style they were built in, the point is they were built by Orthodox people who also built a great world power. Something that allegedly is impossible since Orthodoxy allegedly prevents/blocks development/progress according to Djuvara.

This post has been edited by Imperialist on February 01, 2011 08:21 am