Byzantium and the Question of Colonial Identity: An Examination of the Immediate Social Impacts of the Fourth Crusade on the Thirteenth Century Byzantine Roman World

Abstract

This dissertation argues that the conquest of Constantinople and Greece in 1204 by western European knights was a form of colonialism, whereby a colonial enterprise was established in the former lands of the Byzantine Roman Empire by the participants of what modern scholars refer to as the Fourth Crusade. As a result of this conquest, western European political and cultural elements were transferred to the Byzantine Roman territories while a degree of colonial hybridity was also formed in the newly conquered regions. The first chapter outlines the historical background of the Fourth Crusade and subsequent conquests of Greece and the Aegean by Western European knights, with additional discussion of Byzantine Roman-Latin relations before 1204. Chapter two examines the response of the Byzantine Romans to the conquest of their territories, providing a nuanced discussion of the varied immediate reactions from the indigenous population and the impact it had on their collective identity. Chapter three looks at the Western European colonial administration in more detail, arguing that it closely resembles rogue colonialism and was marked by certain characteristics, including the involvement of the papacy, cultural replication and cultural inheritance. Chapter four explores the presence of hybridity in the conquered regions, arguing that both a biological and cultural understanding of the concept can be discerned in Frankish Greece and the Latin Empire of Constantinople. The final chapter places the colonialism present in Byzantium within the larger global sphere, arguing that Western European colonization of Byzantine Roman territories was part of a much larger phenomenon occurring throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.