The Encounter of Two Societies: Western Conquerors and Byzantines in the Peloponnesus after the Fourth Crusade

THE SECOND HALF of the eleventh century witnessed the turning of the tide in the history of the eastern Mediterranean. The Norman conquest of Byzantine Italy and Muslim Sicily and the growing activity of Western merchants in the Byzantine Empire, the Muslim Levant, and Egypt provide two facets of the same phenomenon: together they may be considered as the initial thrust of a rejuvenated 'West, announcing its imminent military, economic, and demographic expansion eastward. The Crusades were part and parcel of this general phenomenon of Western or Latin expansion, yet they have made a particular imprint in its framework. They brotught to Byzantine and Mtuslim territories the establishment of permanent Latin rule imposed by conquest, resting tupon a Latin elite, and reinforced by immigration from the West. The initial phase of conquest is tied to the First Crusade, which enabled the creation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Latin states of Tripoli, Antioch, and Edessa; Byzantine Cyprus was captured by Richard I of England almost by accident in 1i 91. A second wave of conquest came in the wake of the Foturth Crusade, wlhen 'Western knights, the Venetian state, and several adventurers acting in their owvn behalf imposed their rule on Byzantine territories. Finally, Catalans conquered the duchy of Athens in 1311, and Genoese the island of Chios in 1346. As a restult of conquest relations between the Latins and the population of these areas underwent a major change. Commercial activity of Western merchants in Byzantium or Muslim cotuntries in earlier years had called for purely economic and social intercourse with local inhabitants. Temporary or even permanent residence had no bearing on their position as aliens, a status that was further emphasized by their enjoyment of commercial and judicial privileges. But conquest, whether gradual or abrulpt,