Western medieval society was relatively open for the free, non-serf population, in terms of marriage and landholding rights across the whole of Christendom, provided that the individuals concerned paid their allegiance, taxes, and if necessary military obligations, to higher authorities, whether kings, barons, or city councils. Given the small scale of the Frankish emigration to Greece during and after the Fourth Crusade, many local Greek notables could thus be conveniently and usefully incorporated into the Frankish power and landholding structure, although they retained their Orthodox faith. In fact the Catholic Church made little headway in converting Greeks to the Latin rite, except for the heavily Italianized Cyclades where a more significant immigrant population existed. As we have observed in previous chapters, later Byzantine society had been moving inexorably toward a semi-feudal structure, making intercultural cooperation that much easier. The elite families from both local and colonizing groups intermarried and we can see mutual influences in dress, ceremony, art and architecture, and ceramics.
The serious undermanning of Frankish fiefs in Greece was a more general problem with Crusader states in the Eastern Mediterranean, since large numbers ofWesterners participated through allegiance to their overlords for the duration of specific campaigns of conquest, and having obtained, they hoped, some wealth from gifts of land and a share of booty, would leave for home (Phillips 1997). However a distinction needs to be made between this picture, typical for the Mainland landed Frankish elite, and that in the capitalist-minded regions dominated by Venice, such as the Cyclades, Crete, the Ionian Islands, and key fortified ports on the Mainland, where larger colonial populations resided and a more intense link between commercial estates, industry, and trade were encouraged by the highly interventionist Republic of Venice.
In terms of economy, Italian merchants were already a dominant force in the Aegean before the conquest of Constantinople, and were even more significant in the mature Frankish era and beyond. There is widespread evidence that the concurrent expansion of Italian commercial networks and Frankish colonization stimulated new levels of international trade and cultural exchange throughout the Mediterranean. Craftsmen may also have settled in the major centers, such as the Italian glassworkers suggested by Whitehouse (1991) to have set up production in Corinth.
World History
