At the age of twenty-two, Andronicus II became sole ruler of Byzantium. His father, Michael VIII, had been a dashing figure--a good soldier, brilliant diplomat, and the liberator of Constantinople from its fifty-seven-year Latin occupation. By contrast Andronicus seemed colorless and ineffectual. His problems were immense--partly as a result of his father's policies--and his reign proved to be a series of frustrations and disasters.
For forty-six years he fought to preserve the empire against constant encroachments. When he was finally deposed in 1328 by his grandson and co-emperor, Andronicus III, almost all of Asia Minor had been lost to the Turks, Westerners had taken over the defense of the Aegean, and the Catalan army he had invited to help him fight the Turks remained to fight the emperor.
In this penetrating account of Andronicus' foreign policy, Angeliki E. Laiou focuses on Byzantium's relations with the Latin West, the far-reaching domestic implications of the hostility of western Europe, and the critical decision that faced Andronicus: whether to follow his father's lead and allow Byzantium to become a European state or to keep it an Eastern, orthodox power.
The author, who argues that foreign policy cannot be understood without examining the domestic factors that influence, indeed create, it, devotes a large part of her study to domestic developments in Byzantium during Andronicus' reign-the decline of the power of the central government; the spread of semi-independent regional authorities; the state of finances, of the army, of the church.
She concludes that, contrary to common opinion, Andronicus II sincerely desired the union of the Greek and Latin churches, when, in the last years of his reign, he realized that the political situation made such a union necessary. Maintaining also that the conquest of Asia Minor by the Turks was not a foregone conclusion when Andronicus II came to the throne, she discusses at length the errors of policy and the manifold circumstances which combined to precipitate that loss.
Author(s): Angeliki E. Laiou
Series: Harvard Historical Studies, 88
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Year: 1972
Language: English
Pages: 400
City: Cambridge, MA
Acknowledgments
Contents
Abbreviations
Introduction
I. The Sins of the Fathers
II. Diplomatic Realignments, 1282-1296
Religious Policy
The Balkans, Greece, and Achaia
Western Claims to Byzantium
Ill. Retrenchment and the Turn to Asia Minor, 1282-1296
The Italian Maritime Cities
Asia Minor
IV. The Failure of Retrenchment, 1296-1302
Asia Minor
The Balkans
The Venetian-Genoese War and the Byzantine Empire
The Means of Defense
The Social Background
V. Reaping the Whirlwind
The Peace of Caltabelotta
The Catalan Campaign
Byzantium, the Genoese and the Catalans
VI. The Catalan Attack and the Byzantine Defense, 1305-1309
Toward a Byzantine Defense
The Defense of Thrace
Diplomatic Efforts
The Catalans and Europe
The Byzantine-Genoese Agreement of 1308
The Cost of Byzantine Foreign Policy
VII. The Catalans, Charles of Valois, and Byzantium, 1302-1313
The Plans of Charles of Valois
The Catalan Campaigns of 1307-1311
The Catalans in Athens
Diplomacy in the Balkans
Charles of Valois, Venice, and Byzantium
VIII. After the Storm, 1311-1321
Domestic Policy of Andronicus II
The Papacy, the Angevins, and Byzantium
The Italian Maritime Cities
Aragon
The Northern Neighbors
IX. Seizing the Crown, 1321-1328
Civil War
Byzantium and the Ghibelline Powers
The Unionist Approach
Appendix I. Some Letters of the Patriarch of Constantinople, Athanasios I
Appendix II. Two Letters to Charles of Valois and Catherine of Courtenay
Bibliography
An Essay on Sources
I. Unpublished Sources
II. Published Documents
III. Narrative Sources
IV. Secondary Works
Index
Map 1. The Byzantine Empire, 1282
Map 2. The Byzantine Empire, 1328
