Byzantine history is so important to understand the modern world. It gives us the context for the orthodox/west divide; it gives us an example of a economic and intellectual superpower needing to live with the realities of barbarian neighbors, and being destroyed! It shows us great statecraft lasting a thousand years. It even shows us why generals and senior civil servants were eunuchs and how the next best thing was celibate people. This is the reason why catholic priests should be celibate and therefore the answer against nepotist corruption. We all know how nepotism is a serious issue in states everywhere in the world.

I became a fan of the Byzantines and seriously found team Roman Catholic to be a bunch of barbarians. I say team Roman Catholic because this small book[1] makes Byzantine history and trivia so humorous.

[1] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-cabinet-of-byzanti...

I'm curious, is there a list somewhere of these world-changing industrial espionage incidents? Here's two more I remember off the top of my head. Not sure why the top results are the Smithsonian Magazine but here are some links:

Samuel Slater brings cotton mill technology to America in 1789: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-esp...

Robert Fortune learns Chinese tea production methods and brings them to British India in 1848: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-british-tea...

Someone (maybe you!) should write a book about this!

During the 19th century there was an attempt to establish a silk industry in New England. The industry failed, but the White Mulberry (morus alba), imported to serve as the food source for the silkworms, is thriving in North America. It's invasive in many areas and has displaced the native mulberry, morus rubra.

It seems there's a lot of interest for Byzantine History on HN, that's fantastic! My friends and I have run a book club for the past four years on Ancient History with focus on the Eastern Roman Empire.

Most books we read were kind of dry. Here's a list of books I found readable and engaging if you want to delve deeper:

* Byzantium trilogy by Norwich. If you don't want to get all three, I suggest getting The Apogee (2nd volume). Fantastically readable and solid historical work with a generous side of gossip.

* Alexiad by Anna Komnene. Written around 1140 after Anna was deposed to a convent, this biography of her father, Alexios, has an immediacy that history books cannot match. The end will probably bring you to tears.

* Anecdota (Secret History) by Procopius. For pure titillation factor cannot be beat! Severe attack against Justinian, Theodora, Belisaurus, and his wife Antonina. "Severe" is an understamenet really, here's Procopius on Theodora's depraved youth:

  On the field of pleasure she was never defeated. Often she would go picnicking with ten young men or more, in the flower of their strength and virility, and dallied with them all, the whole night through. When they wearied of the sport, she would approach their servants, perhaps thirty in number, and fight a duel with each of these; and even thus found no allayment of her craving. Once, visiting the house of an illustrious gentleman, they say she mounted the projecting corner of her dining couch, pulled up the front of her dress, without a blush, and thus carelessly showed her wantonness. And though she flung wide three gates to the ambassadors of Cupid, she lamented that nature had not similarly unlocked the straits of her bosom, that she might there have contrived a further welcome to his emissaries.

* Chronographia by Michael Psellos covers the reigns of 14 emperors and empresses in a 100 time period

And 1400 years later my grandfather farmed silkworms a few hundred kilometers from Constantinople.

I like how easily television puts the event into a show set seven centuries later. That'd be like including the signing of the Magna Carta in a show about WWI.

Super cool article, thank you. These 2 guys significantly changed the world and we don't know who they are.

Perhaps a naive question: What was so special about silk? It seems it was just a luxury article for the rich. I assume unlike today, not many people had a lot of disposable income to spend on luxury products. So I don't understand how silk could have been economically relevant compared to other non-luxury goods.

It is interesting how concepts of commercial secrecy and rule of law evolve over the centuries. In modern terms we might call this "knowledge transfer incident" a form of commercial espionage / intellectual property theft.

It is unclear if the affected entity ever imposed sanctions or other form of punishment on the perpetrator (presumably they did notice that there was no longer demand for their silk in certain markets??). It also appears that the perpetrators promptly established a monopoly of their own (on the basis of somebody else's know-how which is also somewhat odd with today's eyes :-).

Somehow it is all predicated on very sparse communication between different parts of the world. The flip side is that in today's hyper-connected world you might be able to tell if a secret has leaked just by triangulation.

Byzantine history is interesting and vastly underappreciated (IMO). If you'd like to learn a bit more, the "12 Byzantine Rulers" podcast is a good place to start. It starts off a touch stiff, but loosens up and is great overall.

https://12byzantinerulers.com/

There is a great podcast (https://thehistoryofbyzantium.com) that is carrying on from Mike Duncan's excellent history of Rome podcast. They just got up to the 4th Crusade sack of Constantinople.

Silk has been produced for 3-4k years, can you imagine what a son-of-a-bitch that was back then? Was silk like gold and bitcoin? Somehow valuable because its such a bitch to produce? Feels like all of it is a goof on the people who accept it at face value.

Related, the Melvyn Bragg podcast on Marco Polo is excellent https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01hxpxh

It is so fascinating that I can find "ottoman" keyword at least 6 times on this thread even-though this smuggling had happened way before the ottomans concurred the Byzantine.