Contact And Conflict In Frankish Greece And The Aegean 1204 1453

The conquest of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade shattered irreversibly the political and cultural unity of the Byzantine world in the Greek peninsula, the Aegean and western Asia Minor. Between the disintegration of the Byzantine Empire after 1204 and the consolidation of Ottoman power in the fifteenth century, the area was a complex political, ethnic and religious mosaic, made up of Frankish lordships, Italian colonies, Turkish beyliks, as well as a number of states that professed to be the continuators of the Byzantine imperial tradition. This volume brings together western medievalists, Byzantinists and Ottomanists, combining recent research in the relevant fields in order to provide a holistic interpretation of this world of extreme fragmentation. Eight stimulating papers explore various factors that defined contact and conflict between Orthodox Greeks, Catholic Latins and Muslim Turks, highlighting common themes that run through this period and evaluating the changes that occurred over time. Particular emphasis is given on the crusades and the way they affected interaction in the area. Although the impact of the crusades on Byzantine history leading up to 1204 has been extensively examined in the past, there has been little research on the way crusading was implemented in Greece and the Aegean after that point. Far from being limited to crusading per se, however, the papers put it into its wider context and examine other aspects of contact, such as trade, interfaith relations, and geographical exploration.

The conquest of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade shattered irreversibly the political and cultural unity of the Byzantine world in the Greek peninsula, the Aegean and western Asia Minor. Between the disintegration of the Byzantine Empire after 1204 and the consolidation of Ottoman power in the fifteenth century, the area was a complex political, ethnic and religious mosaic, made up of Frankish lordships, Italian colonies, Turkish beyliks, as well as a number of states that professed to be the continuators of the Byzantine imperial tradition. This volume brings together western medievalists, Byzantinists and Ottomanists, combining recent research in the relevant fields in order to provide a holistic interpretation of this world of extreme fragmentation. Eight stimulating papers explore various factors that defined contact and conflict between Orthodox Greeks, Catholic Latins and Muslim Turks, highlighting common themes that run through this period and evaluating the changes that occurred over time. Particular emphasis is given on the crusades and the way they affected interaction in the area. Although the impact of the crusades on Byzantine history leading up to 1204 has been extensively examined in the past, there has been little research on the way crusading was implemented in Greece and the Aegean after that point. Far from being limited to crusading per se, however, the papers put it into its wider context and examine other aspects of contact, such as trade, interfaith relations, and geographical exploration.

An examination of the changing nature of crusade and its participants in the late medieval Mediterranean.

Despite the enormous literature on the crusades, the Frankish states in the Aegean (set up in the wake of the Fourth Crusade in 1204) have been seriously neglected by modern historians. Yet their history is both compelling in itself - these were the last crusader states to be set up in the eastern Mediterranean and among the last to fall to the Turks - and also valuable for the case study they offer in medieval colonialism. Peter Lock surveys the social, economic, religious and cultural aspects of the region within a broad political framework, and explores the clash of cultures between the Frankish interlopers and their Byzantine subjects. This is a major addition to crusading studies.

The conquest of the Byzantine Empire by the armies of the Fourth Crusade resulted in the foundation of several Latin political entities in the lands of Greece. The Companion to Latin Greece offers thematic overviews of the history of the mixed societies that emerged as a result of the conquest. With dedicated chapters on the art, literature, architecture, numismatics, economy, social and religious organisation and the crusading involvement of these Latin states, the volume offers an introduction to the study of Latin Greece and a sampler of the directions in which the field of research is moving. Contributors are: Nikolaos Chrissis, Charalambos Gasparis, Anastasia Papadia-Lala, Nicholas Coureas, David Jaccoby, Julian Baker, Gill Page, Maria Georgopoulou and Sophia Kalopissi-Verti.

Using interdisciplinary methodologies and making a case study around the military aḳıncı institution, a relic of early times, this study discusses the emergence of the Ottoman polity in dealing with various warlords and across different identities and political affiliations.

In Conflict, Commerce, and an Aesthetic of Appropriation in the Italian Maritime Cities, 1000-1150, Karen Rose Mathews analyzes the relationship between war, trade, and the use of spolia (appropriated objects from past and foreign cultures) as architectural decoration in the public monuments of the Italian maritime republics in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.