Thread

1. digilypse · 1790982779 · focus · HN ↗

   A few decades later, Venice brilliantly exploited the Fourth Crusade’s debt (and the fact that they built all the Crusade’s ships) to proceed on a debt-collection/revenge tour along the Adriatic, sacking Zara, getting the entire Crusade excommunicated, and ultimately diverting the entire force to Constantinople where they sacked the city in 1204 and replaced the government with the Latin Empire.

   I found City of Fortune by Roger Crowley to be a very entertaining read, the full story of the Crusade is absurd. Venice completely dedicated its entire economy to producing the Crusade’s ships for years to make this happen.

   1. inglor_cz · 1791022983 · focus · HN ↗

      The sack of Constantinople might have been the worst and most stupid crime that the Medieval Christendom inflicted upon itself, with consequences visible until today.

      There is an alternate reality in which the Eastern Roman Empire survived until today and the entire eastern Mediterranean region looks totally different.

      Venice was not a good neighbor. A plutocratic psychopath polity, doing absolutely anything for anyone and to anyone for money. Even for the standards of their time and place, they were deeply immoral.

      1. klrefg · 1791036237 · focus · HN ↗

         The sack was preceded by a literal genocide of all Latins/Italians living in Constantinople a few decades earlier. Coincidentally Venetians weren’t really affected since they were already exiled before that. However still it probably made it easier for the members of the fourth crusade to justify the atrocities they committed.

         Prior to the massacre of the Latins the relationship between the east and west was pretty good, in fact the Byzantine ruling class was quite heavily westernized and the economy dominated by Italian merchants. The French princess ruling the empire on behalf of her underage son also wasn’t exactly popular amongst the masses. The subsequent coup and massacre pretty much permanently splintered a somewhat productive alliance that allowed Christians to retake much of Asia Minor ane the Levant in the preceding century.

         1. 59percentmore · 1791044346 · focus · HN ↗

            >Prior to the massacre of the Latins the relationship between the east and west was pretty good, in fact the Byzantine ruling class was quite heavily westernized and the economy dominated by Italian merchants.

            I don't know much about this subject, specifically, but I struggle to think of examples where, "Foreign merchants controlled the economy," turned out well, and plenty where, "They killed all the foreign merchants," was the outcome. So to see a characterization like, "Before they killed everyone, the relationship was great"... It feels like there's something missing; maybe a bit of awareness. Great for who?

            >Prior to the LA riots the relationship between the stores and the customers was pretty good, in fact the property owners were quite heavily down with it and the economy dominated by Korean merchants.

            >Prior to the American/Haitian/French Revolution the relationship between the landowners/monarchy and laborers/colonists was pretty good.

            1. klrefg · 1791106258 · focus · HN ↗

               > Before they killed everyone, the relationship was great

               Yeah, probably I didn’t express it that well. I mean the ruling class was quite Latinized and had decent relations with the Crusader Kingdoms and often intermarried.

               This was not at all popular amongst the masses (and more so the economy and trade being dominated by Italians and high taxes used to fund to fund all the mostly failed military campaigns). Andronikos utilized that in addition to general hatred towards the aristocracy during his coup which lead to the massacres and a permanent political shift. The Empire also lost most of the economic and political control it had over the Crusader States as after that (the Kingdom of Jerusalem was in practice a vasal state of the empire at the time and was reliant on Byzantine funding).

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