The Queen of Cities is situated on the Bosphorus Strait. It is like a hand extending out from the West to meet with the East. The founding of Byzantium and its transformation into Constantinople changed world history. It became a crossroads of culture, and this blog post will explain the importance of geography for allowing it to become such a vital city for so many centuries.
When one looks at the geography surrounding the capital, one can see the importance of having it surrounded on water by three sides. This gave Constantinople an emphasis on Naval commerce.
Compare this with Rome. The Eternal City is located on the Tiber River, a rather benign river in comparison to the Nile which had its distinctive flooding and crocodiles which roam the waters. However, in spite of benign nature, it was not located on the coast, which mean that riverboats had to travel up the Tiber to deliver goods and grain to the city. A port city, Ostia, was set up as one of Rome’s first colonies and as the port to handle all the grain that would eventually be going to Rome. This mean that Rome was heavily reliant on external ports to give its important materials.
However, Constantinople was located on the Bosporus Strait, which meant it natural harbors which it gave it a pivotal spot on the Silk Road with China. All sorts of goods and important luxuries were flowing into Constantinople through its many harbors. Additionally, with its position on a peninsula, the cost of delivering goods was cheaper instead of having to use riverboats to complete the journey as was the case in Rome.
Constantinople’s position on the Bosporus allows for a meeting of hands with East and West. In the Early Byzantine Era, the capital’s position on the Bosporus Strait allowed for Emperors to respond quickly to threats, especially on the Danube and the Rhine Rivers.
As one can see on this map, Rome was located too far away from major rivers. The city wasn’t even located on the coastline, it was on the Tiber, and required a special port to deliver its many goods. The Tiber River isn’t very wide or even deep in a sense, creating some challenges in delivering trade goods to the city of Rome, which at this time was what historians called a “Consumer City”, which took in more than it gave.
Constantinople, which was located on the Bosporus Strait, had an advantage of being surrounded on water by three sides. For even the smallest villages along the Bosporus Strait, up into the late Ottoman era, they were only accessible by boat. The natural environs gave the city of Constantinople incredible amounts of flexibility to devote its attention to speedy movement of commerce through its streets and onto the ships that were passing through the area.
The surrounding area being of the Golden Horn and the Bosporus Sea were great in giving the capital an ability to focus its attention on building up its trading abilities. While Rome had to worry about an army surrounded it in a siege, all Constantinople had to worry about was being besieged by the sea.
In 626 and 717, Constantinople was able to use this geography to its advantage. In these two cases, the Byzantines were able to concentrate their efforts on specific choke points which gave them a huge advantage. With the development of Greek Fire around the time of Emperor Heraclius’ reign, the Byzantines were able to use this technology to secure the waterways around the Queen of Cities.
Once the Byzantine Empire was secure by the time of Leo III, the geography of Constantinople becomes more apparent here.
It was this meeting of hands between East and West is what gave the city life and allowed for the empire to prosper in Medieval Europe.
Constantinople in many ways in that time was the entrance to the Latin West. This counterpoint to Byzantine Orthodoxy was rather poor and lacked connections with the Arab traders that now dominated the Mediterranean. Constantinople’s positioning on the Bosporus Strait meant that silk from China, rice from the Near East and spices from India were able to go into Europe.
The positioning of Constantinople was a decision of great brilliance. The combination of economic and military concerns is why the city was able to endure for so long and be called the Queen of Cities. This shows the importance of geography in history and how the fate of empires rested upon it.
Byzantine-Empire.com 