Beyond Time and Space: The Fall of Constantinople and its Consequences

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On May 29, 1453, the Turkish army commanded by Sultan Mehmet II captured Constantinople. This city, also known as Byzantium, had been for about a thousand years, the capital of Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, the repository of the Hellenistic legacy from Greco-Roman world, the bastion of Christendom in the Eastern Mediterranean, and Europe's gateway to the East. Many historians point to this event as the milestone that marks the end of the middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Age. Nevertheless, its significance goes beyond set a historical limit. Its repercussions have reached our days. Our times are an indirect product of the fall of Constantinople. This is thanks to two direct consequences: the Discovery of America, and the Renaissance.

The city of Byzantium (now Istanbul, Turkey's capital) was located on the Bosphorus Strait, which links the Black Sea to the Marmara Sea that connects to the Aegean and the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles Strait. For centuries, the city had assured the European merchants, especially Genoese and Venetians, the access to the Black ...

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