The Collapse of the Byzantine Empire in the Twelfth Century

Abstract

This chapter examines the collapse of the Byzantine Empire in the twelfth century. Between the tenth and twelfth centuries, the Byzantine state machinery was extremely sophisticated. It directed a systematic foreign policy and maintained a developed network of diplomatic relations with neighboring powers, controlled the minting and circulation of a stable gold currency, and ran a complex bureaucratic administration. However, the empire's economic organization was primitive. The chapter analyzes the fiscal and commercial aspects of the economic organization of a provincial area of the Byzantine Empire under the Angeloi during the period 1185–1204. It suggests that the conquest and sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade constitutes a collapse and disappearance of the empire in 1204, and that the establishment of a Latin Empire on Byzantine territory signals a definite break with the former Byzantine organization.