The History and Culture of Byzantium is a great scholarly undertaking with an impressive array of contributors who between them have created a multidisciplinary handbook for Byzantine civilization and culture. There are many interesting topics covered within this volume, ranging from narrative sweeps of the main political events to more niche topics such as hospitals, pottery, travel, state budgets and much more. All sections have dedicated bibliographies, allowing the reader to study topics of interest in their own time. The list of contributors boasts some of the most eminent historians within Byzantine studies alongside other more specialist academics who have contributed on nuanced and interdisciplinary topics.

The book opens with a historical survey of the Byzantine state, AD 395–1453, though it wisely also covers events of antiquity that pertain to the permanent division of the Roman Empire in 395. The survey is not simply a running historical narrative of political events, but covers a wide array of interconnected themes, such as ‘internal transformation’, or ‘ecclesiastical policy’. The different sections of the historical survey are diverse in character, substance and viewpoints, reflecting the authors who wrote them. Such variety can attract wider audiences, but it can lead to some questionable choices of content and tone. For example, the sudden divergence from the chronological account of the reigning emperors after Leo Vin the ‘Byzantium ca. 600–1000’ section of the historical survey, alongside the decision to end the section in 1000, rather than 1025, when the next section, ‘Byzantium 1025–1204’, begins. Indeed, there are some other peculiarities found elsewhere, such as the decision to split the topic of ‘ethnicities’ found in ‘Demographics: Languages, Ethnicities, Migration’ (164–69) from the later section ‘Minorities in the Empire’ (526–31).

There is indeed throughout the volume an element of confusion as to who the Byzantines were and how they identified. Sometimes contributors use the term ‘Byzantine’ or ‘East Roman’ while others use ‘Greek’ or ‘Greek-speakers’ as descriptors. The chapter entitled ‘The Idea of Empire and Emperor’ does shed light on how the Byzantines saw themselves and understood their polity, but the diversity of language in terms of identity indicators perhaps needs closer attention. The same could be said in the case of defining the main facets of integration as a ‘willingness to adapt in language and religion’ (527), which arguably paints an incomplete picture of how assimilation actually took place, specifically the adoption of Roman customs and traditions as stated by the primary sources. It may have been prudent to include a section where the ‘Area Editors’ could define the discipline of Byzantine studies and what ‘Byzantine’ actually means. Modern historiographical debates have never been the most interesting topic within the study of the past, but to ignore how historians have shaped our collective understanding of this civilization and culture is a strange omission. Obviously, this is a work of reference, and the editors may have felt that students of Byzantium should be able to access material on core, or even specialist, themes without the strongest voices in the field overly influencing the reader. Indeed, without such a discussion and grounding, a work like this can become quickly irrelevant, as online resources can be regularly updated to adjust to popular themes of identity, ethnicity, race, etc. However, in the opinion of this reviewer, a stronger guiding hand is needed in navigating the complex field of wider Byzantine scholarship although one can acknowledge that some examples of these discussions can be found in certain sections (for instance, pages 59–60). This physical reference work will no doubt gather dust on a library shelf as readers to its online counterpart, which benefits from wider accessibility and the potential to update materials as new ideas and arguments are put forward.

On the whole, this is a marvellous piece of scholarship and a foundational cornerstone for Byzantine studies in the twenty-first century. The aforementioned areas of concern only reflect the reviewer’s own historical interpretations, and it will be interesting to see how the field changes when the next generation of scholars come together to produce such a weighty tome.