Modern history, both early and late, was made by Europeans, who “built a world around Europe”, as historians “know”, according to Braudel. That is indeed the “knowledge” of the European historians who themselves “invented” history...

In this sense, Byzantine culture embodies the French historian Fernand Braudel’s notion of the longue durée, the long term: that which survives the vicissitudes of changing governments, newfangled fashions or technological improvements, an ongoing inheritance...