8 Tsougarakis
ourselves that these tiny polities founded as a result of the Fourth Crusade out-
lived the crusader states of the Middle East by several centuries.
Historiography
The political history of Latin Greece has been the object of scholarly attention
since the publication of Du Cange’s Histoire de l’Empire de Constantinople sous
les Empereurs Français in the 17th century, in the wake of the appearance of
crusader historiography in the early modern period.2 It was the 19th century,
however, that saw the beginnings of the modern historiography of medieval
Greece, largely through the tireless work of Jean Alexandre Buchon and Karl
Hopf, much of which is still useful today.3
The nationalist currents of the 19th century brought about a shift in the his-
toriography of the crusades, which were now treated much more sympatheti-
cally than they had been by the scholarship of the previous two centuries.4 The
same nationalist currents brought about the exact opposite result in the treat-
ment of the crusades by the historians of the newly-founded state of Greece.
With Byzantium having been habilitated in the narrative of the national his-
tory of the Hellenes, the crusades and especially the Fourth Crusade and the
period of Latin rule that followed it, came to be seen by historians such as
Paparrigopoulos, and later Lampros, unequivocally as A Bad Thing.5 This pola-
rised view of the Latin period of Greece remained influential in Byzantine
2 Charles Du Fresne Du Cange, Histoire de l’Empire de Constantinople sous les Empereurs
Français, 2 vols. (Paris, 1657; repr. Paris, 1826; New York, 1971).
3 See indicatively: Jean Alexandre C. Buchon, Recherches et matériaux pour servir à une histoire
de la domination française au xiiie, xive et xve siècles dans les provinces démembrées de l’empire
grec à la suite de la quatrième croisade (Paris, 1840); idem, Nouvelles recherches historiques
sur la principauté française de Morée et ses hautes baronnies (Paris, 1843); idem, Recherches
historiques sur la principauté française de Morée et ses hautes baronnies, 2 vols. (Paris, 1845);
Karl Hopf, Geschichte Griechenlands vom Beginn des Mittelalters bis auf unsere Zeit, 2 vols.
(Leipzig, 1867–68; repr. New York, 1960); idem, ed., Chroniques Gréco-Romanes inédites ou
peu connues (Berlin, 1873; repr. Brussels, 1966); idem, Bonifaz von Montferrat, der eroberer von
Konstantinopel, und der troubadour Rambaut von Vaqueiras (Berlin, 1877).
4 For a brief overview of crusade historiography, see Christopher Tyerman, “Historiography,
Modern,” in The Crusades: An Encyclopedia, ed. Alan V. Murray, 4 vols. (Santa Barbara,
2006), 2:582–88; Giles Constable, “The Historiography of the Crusades”, in The Crusades
from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, ed. Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Paviz
Mottahedeh (Washington dc, 2001); Peter Lock, The Routledge Companion to the Crusades
(London, 2006), pp. 255–72.
5 For a synopsis of Greek historiographical attitudes towards the Fourth Crusade and Latin
rule in Greece see Chryssa A. Maltezou, “The Greek Version of the Fourth Crusade: From