Under John II and Manuel I Byzantium remained a wealthy and expansionist power, maintaining the internal structures and external initiatives which were necessary to sustain a traditional imperial identity in a changing Mediterranean world of crusaders, Turks and Italian merchants. The revival of imperial interest in the crusader states had permanent consequences in that it led to a renewal of Byzantine links with Western Europe. Yet the period following Manuel's death and the overthrow of the regency government of Alexios II saw reversion to something like the isolationism of John II's early years. The Byzantine state was one of the most centralized in the medieval world, and never more so than in the period 1081-1180, when the loss of central and eastern Anatolia forced the empire's military elite, as well as its bureaucratic elite, to identify with the capital as never before. Under the successors of Manuel I, the Comnenian system, centred on Constantinople, was programmed for self-destruction.