The East Roman Empire's extraordinary longevity came from deep internal resilience, not luck — its territorial losses were always caused by sudden external shocks it could not have foreseen, while for centuries at a time it consolidated, regrew, and never saw provinces try to secede or fragment on their own.

205:20you never see movements to split away. That is, there's no separatist movements, at least not on the part of any Roman provincials. There's one separatist movement, which is Bulgaria. We mentioned Bulgaria was conquered, right, in 1018. There's a couple of independentist movements rebellions. Um, eventually one succeeds in 1185, so just under two centuries. So Bulgaria is the only part of this empire that actively seeks to break away and does so.

205:50But for the rest of the 1,200 years, you don't find provincials wanting to leave this system. However much they complain about the taxes, they don't want to leave, and they make no move to do so. You also never have a moment when the center loses its ability to tax its territories, right? You don't have, like, widespread peasant uprisings or provinc- or, right, agricultural rebellions or these kinds of things,

206:18Which happens in every other one of these empires. They also never decide to partition it. The Franks partition theirs, right, like after Charlemagne. No. There are no, like, Roman warlords that try to carve out a piece of the territory for themselves and rule it independent. Nope, that doesn't happen either. So if you're looking at the kinds of factors that cause states to fail, fragment, you know, become ungovernable, these never happen.

206:47- This is so incredible. This is truly incredible. In the history of human civilization, just an incredible study of what human societies can form. So, so what, what, what, what are the whys? Why? Why? Why was it so stable? - Well, now look, there are other stable... Like, for example, The, the British monarchy. That's been around for quite a while. - Yeah, that's true. - Right? States like Portugal, Japan, they have one thing in common.

207:18They're all tucked away at the edges. Like, they're off, they're little islands or whatever. They're not like, right? We're talking about a society that was right in the- - In the, yeah - ... middle of one of the main corridors of empire building and new religions in the world. This is the most dangerous neighborhood, right, that you can possibly live in. So no wonder it didn't survive. Like it would've been