British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
The Eastern Mediterranean in the Thirteenth century:
identities and allegiances
Abstract
Byzantine Refugees and Captives in the Venetian World
Professor Sally McKee
The question posed by the organizers of the colloquium, "Where was Byzantium during the Latin Empire of Constantinople?" presents a challenging problem to social historians whose research in notarial registers often bears a close resemblance to finding needles in haystacks. The problem is especially difficult during the thirteenth century because of a scarcity of sources. To learn something about the fates of people once subjects of the Byzantine Emperor, it is necessary to move forward in time and look for signs that lead backward. This paper will propose three locations - archival and geographical - that merit investigation: the Venetian patriciate; the Venetian lagoon; and slave populations. Each location, however, poses methodological problems whose implications will interest historians of later periods.