Janet Abu-Lughod's excellent "Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350) contextualizes the Fourth Crusade and the Venetian capture of Constantinople as a critical expansion of Venice's merchant pre-capitalist empire and ensuring the Venice would control European access to Asian spices/silks. It's fascinating how we were taught in school (or, at least, I was) that the Crusades were these purely religious ventures but in fact they were entirely indivisible from pre-capitalist imperial expansion.
Your posts on the Crusades are some of my favorites. You should write a book...
Janet Abu-Lughod's excellent "Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350) contextualizes the Fourth Crusade and the Venetian capture of Constantinople as a critical expansion of Venice's merchant pre-capitalist empire and ensuring the Venice would control European access to Asian spices/silks. It's fascinating how we were taught in school (or, at least, I was) that the Crusades were these purely religious ventures but in fact they were entirely indivisible from pre-capitalist imperial expansion.