The Franks in the Aegean, 1204-1500

by Peter Lock

In 1204, at the climax of the Fourth Crusade, the western Latin army seized Constantinople, the capital city of the Byzantine Empire, from their fellow Christians. Although the Latin Empire they established there was ephemeral (Constantinople was back in Byzantine hands by 1261), six other Latin states were established along the western shores of the Aegean during its brief lifetime. Those states, and the Latin military caste who set them up and kept them going, are the subject of this impressive survey, the first comprehensive study of the Frankish Aegean since the early years of this century.