Kairos and Crisis: Strategies of Decision-Making in the Byzantine Military from the 6th to the 12th Centuries

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Michael Grünbart
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 464848232

The project will focus on the dynamics and processes of decision-making in the military sector as a central operational area in the Byzantine realm. Military commanders (i.e. the emperor himself or military officers entrusted with leadership) had to make constantly decisions during a military operation basing their actions on variable parameters. These parameters concern logistical principles and strategic knowledge. A decision is intentional and had to be prepared for an obvious (future) decisive action: Deciding is therefore a teleologically based action, in which the decisive battle can be defined as its culmination. In addition, there is the challenge for the commander to manage contingent events efficiently. In the organisation of the project the term decision is to be understood in a complementary way as the end point of the process of decision-making and therefore it is outside the focus of investigation. The following aspects are considered in the project:1. The forms and dynamics of military decision-making will be examined systematically from the 6th to the 12th century. The starting point is promising, since decision-making is thematised in Byzantine military tactical and historiographical sources. It becomes apparent that there was both a consciousness of various decision-making practices and an explicit knowledge of decision-making, which was reflected on an abstract level. 'Decision-making' is understood as a well-considered, serious and momentous action of the commander and represents a volatile process in military affairs, the consequences of which determine success (victory) and failure (defeat).2. Military decision-making is controlled and limited by the specific time regime of strategic and tactical processes: In a nutshell, the word kairos (the right, critical or opportune moment) expresses the timeliness of the recognition of a possibility for action and at the same time the situational appropriateness of an action. At the head of the complexly organised Byzantine army was the commander as the decision-maker with ultimate responsibility, ideally acting prudently, attentively, sustainably and efficiently. It is also crucial that the commanders keep their own plans unpredictable and secret as long as possible until a surprising moment.3. In order to make the decision-making process clearer and richer in options, that action could be improved by including external resources (advice by experts or written knowledge). 4. It will also be necessary to find out how decision-making processes look like in critical military situations, i.e. when new decisions are made against manual knowledge or in which contexts decision making does not take place at all. Such situations are often portrayed in narrative sources, as they reveal on the one hand the fortunes of the military commanders or on the other hand the culpably caused military disaster.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants