?This book provides a new military history of Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos's campaigns in the Balkans, during the first fourteen years of his rule. While the tactics and manoeuvres Alexios used against Robert Guiscard's Normans are relatively well-known, his strategy in dealing with Pecheneg and Cuman adversaries in the region has received less attention in historical scholarship. This book provides a much-need synthesis of these three closely linked campaigns often treated as discrete events revealing a surprising coherence in Alexios' response, and explores the position of Byzantium's army and navy on the eve of the First Crusade.
Recenzijos
This is a thorough and deeply-researched book that ultimately convinces. The step-by-step study of the chronology and events do much to shed light on these crucial decades and Meko makes use of a vast array of secondary literature in a huge range of languages . This book is anything but niche, and will serve as an exemplar of how to write pre-industrial military history at the operational level. (Lucas R. McMahon, International Journal of Military History and Historiography, Vol. 45 (1), 2025)
1. Introduction .-
2. Army and Navy in Eleventh-Century Byzantium .-
3.
Alexios I Komnenos .-
4. War against the Normans (10811085) .-
5. War
against the Pechenegs (10831091) .-
6. Kuman Invasion (1095) .-
7. Synthesis
.-
8. Conclusion.
Marek Meko is an assistant professor at the University of Hradec Kralove, Institute of History, Czech Republic.
