Fourth Crusades In The Eastern Mediterranean World,

The crusades were far-reaching events in Europe medieval history. The crusaders held"holywar"banner to restore the"sacred place"from the West to the East, and expulsed the infidels.They wanted to expand the Christian world and its impact. The Fourth Crusade in all of thecrusades had the obvious features of their own, and it happened"diversion"to capture theConstantinople, which was the capital of the Byzantine Empire. So the Byzantine Empirebecame split and decline. The results also brought many changes of major international powersin the Eastern Mediterranean region. At the same time, the crusades campaign objectivelypromoted exchanges and interactions in the Eastern Mediterranean region and brought farreachingimpacts about the development of the East Mediterranean region.The full text is divided into three chapters:The first chapter discusses after the looting of the Fourth Crusade, the Byzantine Empirecollapsed instantly, which was originally looked strong and unified. The history of the ByzantineEmpire had changed, and the country became splitting. The Latins established their rules in thisregion, that was, the Latin Empire. Because of lack of solid foundations and the weak of thenational power, the existence of Latin empire was very short. In the year 1261, the recover ofConstantinople did not bring the prosperity to the country, but even poorer and weaker, theconsequences of the Fourth Crusade were serious.The second chapter analyses the fall of Byzantine Empire brought the tremendous changes tothe international situation in the Eastern Mediterranean. Maritime Republic of Italy began todominate the destiny of the Eastern Mediterranean. Venice monopolized trades in this area morethan half a century, and it founded a huge colonial empire; Genoa coveted maritime interests ofVenice, so Genoa and Venice started to fight for the trade interests in this area, which triggered along-term hegemony war between the two countries in the Eastern Mediterranean region. Thesplit and the decline of the Byzantine Empire also gave an opportunity to the Sejuks to rise. TheSejuks gradually intervened internal affairs of the Byzantine Empire, which laid a great hiddendanger to the Byzantine Empire, The expansion of the Sejuks brought about a significant impactto the Asia-Europe political situation.The third chapter discusses although the Fourth Crusade brought the disasters to the Byzantine, it also brought a lot of positive factors objectively. East-West geographical barriers weretemporarily broken, the East-West exchanges and integrations appeared new phenomena andfeatures. Italian businessmen took advantage of the fruits of the victory of the Fourth Crusade,and established an unhindered commercial network in the Eastern Mediterranean. The EasternMediterranean region became the domain of Italian business, and the rudiment of trade circle hadappeared in the Eastern Mediterranean; when the Catholic Church entered into the OrthodoxChurch, religious conflict and integration was also a feature of this period; the Western Europeanfeudal system transplantation, was bound to impact on the Byzantine society, but it was also aprocess of adaptation and integration, and the integration and assimilation of East and Westaristocrats was also a feature of this period.