Fall of Constantinople
SiegeWikipedia
14
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7
EPISODES
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Search complete. 14 mentions across 7 episodes found for "Fall of Constantinople".
Sep 12, 2026
speaker_6NARRATOR
And, we may add, the Renaissance would have been shorn of some of its brilliance in the next century if the dispersion of the Greeks had taken place before Italy was quite fitted to receive them and turn their learning to account.
speaker_6NARRATOR
But in other respects it is hard to see that much harm would have resulted from the fall of Constantinople in the end of the fourteenth rather than the middle of the fifteenth century.
speaker_6NARRATOR
While Murad I was conquering the Serbians and Bulgarians, John Palæologus was dragging out a long and unhonored old age.
speaker_6NARRATOR
His reign was protracted for over a half a century, but his later years were much vexed by the undutiful behavior of his children.
Çetin İnançSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Just as I was figuring out where I came from and who I wanted to be, fantasy films started to appear.
Çetin İnançSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
The first movie I ever watched in my life was The Conquest of Constantinople, a Turkish movie about Sultan Mehmet II, the conqueror of Istanbul.
Çetin İnançSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
I watched that movie seven times.
Çetin İnançSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
I used to constantly play out scenarios in my imagination, wondering how a person becomes a superhuman.
Pamela NagamiNARRATOR
In no place in Italy was the mortality greater.
Pamela NagamiNARRATOR
Troubles also arose from antagonism to the government and vain attempts to shake the despotism of the Council of Ten.
Pamela NagamiNARRATOR
The most famous of these attempts was headed by the Doge himself, Marin Fallier, 1354-1355, who wished to destroy the aristocracy of the city and make himself uncontrolled ruler.
Pamela NagamiNARRATOR
The plot was discovered through the tender-heartedness of one of the conspirators anxious to save a friend from the coming destruction.
Pamela NagamiNARRATOR
Vengeance was prompt and impartial.
Pamela NagamiNARRATOR
On the other hand she had endless troubles from internal factions and family disputes, the Visconti in Milan were incessantly threatening her independence and her government was less united and strong than that of Venice.
Pamela NagamiNARRATOR
Nevertheless Genoa reaped most advantage from the first war with her rival which arose from quarrels in the Black Sea, 1350-1355.
Pamela NagamiNARRATOR
She won a great naval victory off the island of Sapienza in 1354 and Venice, disheartened by the conspiracy of Marin Fallier at home, concluded peace and gave up her demands.
Winston MarshallHOST
I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Winston MarshallHOST
And before I invite you to our Substack, where our Substackers have a handful of questions for you, is there anything to this story that you, or the Siege of Constantinople, that you think is important that I might have missed? Or, uh, is that for the book?
Roger CrowleyGUEST
You've read the book [laughs]
Winston MarshallHOST
[laughs]
John FieldhouseGUEST
The assimilation by the migrants is a huge part of how they win.
John FieldhouseGUEST
Um, the Siege of Constantinople, uh, most of the artillery pieces were actually manned by Christians.
John FieldhouseGUEST
Um- And basically all of their cannons were produced by Christians.
John FieldhouseGUEST
Um, the Mongol conquest of, uh, China, all the siege engines were, uh, you know, various Chinese people, usually ethnic Chinese specialists.
Roderick BeatonGUEST
Let's ask
Morteza HajizadehHOST
about the fall of Constantinople.
Morteza HajizadehHOST
It's one of the moments that really jumped out of the book for me, the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
Morteza HajizadehHOST
Europe had already lived through the collapse of Rome and Vikings' invasion, centuries of warfare and crusades and black death.
Morteza HajizadehHOST
But I mean, there was a lot of crises, let's say.
Morteza HajizadehHOST
And it was, to me, it was really interesting that Pope Pius II's reaction, he didn't just mourn the fall of great Christianity, he talks about it as a disaster for Europe itself.
Morteza HajizadehHOST
as a shared European consciousness.
Morteza HajizadehHOST
Can you talk about this turning point? Why does this fall of Constantinople trigger that language of Europe and Europeanness more powerful than earlier crises that Europe faced?
Roland RamblerHOST
The final consequences of this collapse stretched far beyond the shattered city limits.
Roland RamblerHOST
The fall of Constantinople struck absolute panic into the collective psyche of Christian Europe.
Roland RamblerHOST
Suddenly, the formidable eastern firewall was gone, and the Ottoman Empire had tightened its iron grip on the Bosporus.
Roland RamblerHOST
By dominating this vital maritime chokepoint, the Ottomans controlled the lucrative trade routes flowing between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.
11 MINS LATER
Roland RamblerHOST
But the Ottoman specter that those early sailors projected onto Caribbean flora was merely a phantom of the Empire's actual grip on the eastern Mediterranean.
Roland RamblerHOST
While 16th century explorers were busy mapping their geopolitical anxieties onto a cactus, the Greek populations who remained behind were learning to endure genuine Ottoman administration.
Roland RamblerHOST
Their survival in the centuries following the fall of Constantinople required adaptations far more complex than trading pink fruit to a lizard.
Roland RamblerHOST
Leaving these colonial Caribbean digressions behind and finally bringing my own itinerary back to its intended destination, I realised that the historical necessity of bargaining with strict, opaque authority had simply evolved into modern forms.