The fall of Constantinople to the crusaders in 1204 had far-reaching results. The event itself, the subsequent looting of Constantinople, and the years of Latin occupation remained a powerful memory for a very long time, and doomed from the start any efforts either for cooperation between Byzantines and western Europeans or for union of the Orthodox and Catholic churches. Moreover, the Fourth Crusade resulted in the fragmentation of the political space that had been the Byzantine Empire. The weak and short-lived Latin Empire of Constantinople was but one of the successor states. There were three Greek ones: the Empire of Nicaea and the Empire of Trebizond in Asia Minor, and the Despotate of Epiros. The Venetians acquired part of Constantinople, the ports of Modon and Coron, Crete in 1211, and conquered Euboea and a number of other Aegean islands. In the Peloponnese, the Principality of Achaia soon emerged as the strongest of the Frankish possessions. In the Balkans, the separatist tendencies of the Bulgarians led to the coronation of Kalojan, while Serbia had become independent some years earlier, and Stephen the First-Crowned was given the royal title by Pope Honorius III in 1217.
The fragmentation had begun before the fall of Constantinople, as both Greek and Italian lords took over small areas in Greece, in Asia Minor, and in the Ionian islands, as well as Rhodes and Cyprus (Oikonomides I9j6b: 13-28). However, the Fourth Crusade greatly accelerated separatist trends, as well as adding new states.
Map 7 The Byzantine Empire in 1204
As a result, and despite eventual Byzantine reconquests, the political space remained fragmented until the Ottomans united it once again, in the fifteenth century. In the late thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, the Venetians and the Genoese brought to the area economic unity, under their own control and in order to serve their own interests.
The recovery of Constantinople soon became the overt and acknowledged policy of three of the successor states: the Despotate of Epiros, the Empire of Nicaea, and the Bulgarian state, especially under John II Asen (1218-41). In the meantime, both of the Greek states acquired state structures and institutions. The best-known are those of the Empire of Nicaea and the Despotate of Epiros.
World History
