George Demacopoulos's premise is that the Fourth Crusade, which resulted in the capture of Constantinople in April 1204 and the establishment of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, merits analysis from the perspectives of colonial ideology and postcolonial critique as a means of shedding light on three issues: the modes of thought that enabled Latin Christians to justify the subjugation and exploitation of Greek Christians; how and why this “colonial encounter” led to the maturation of the schism between Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians; and how it simultaneously resulted in an ecclesiological rupture within the Orthodox Church that has persisted to today. To accomplish that task, Demacopoulos analyzes six key texts or sets of texts: Robert de Clari's memoir of the Fourth Crusade; Gunther of Pairis's Hystoria Constantinopolitana, which offers a sophisticated justification of the crusade's outcome; the correspondence of Pope Innocent III, which reveals the pontiff's shifting moods and thoughts; two canonical rulings of Demetrios Chomatianos that reflect colonial resistance to Latin occupation but also fractures within that indigenous community; the History of George Akropolites, which sheds further light on the fractures and dislocation within this colonized society; and the Chronicle of Morea, which provides a picture of a hybrid colonial society in the early fourteenth-century Peloponnese. Although Demacopoulos finds it useful to use colonial and postcolonial categories in examining these texts and the entire era of the Frankokratia, he is adamant in declaring that this premodern example of colonialism does not perfectly fit the pattern of modern colonial encounters, such as that of India under the British Raj. One major difference is that colonized Byzantium cannot be viewed in any way as a “subaltern” society that the colonizers marginalized.

Although Demacopoulos makes an overall convincing case for using these modes of analysis in his study of Latin-Byzantine relations during the thirteenth century and beyond, some of his peripheral arguments are questionable. As he correctly points out, Clari and Gunther employed a variety of “Orientalisms” as a means of explaining, justifying, and even spicing up the events of the Fourth Crusade, and in multiple ways, they anticipated the colonial literature of a much later era. But did they, consistent with Edward Said's critique of Romantic colonial literature, sexualize the Orient by incorporating themes of sexual conquest and ambiguous homoeroticism (21–26, 41–47)? This reviewer is unconvinced by the passages cited in support of such an interpretation. But this is a minor point and deserves only a muffled quibble at most.

Less minor is the author's failure to study Pope Innocent III's post-crusade efforts to Latinize the “uncanonical” rites of the Byzantine Church, the pope's overall lack of success in that regard, and his capitulation, or at least partial capitulation, at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Canons 4, 9, and 14 essentially recognized a Uniate Greek Church. An in-depth analysis of Innocent's tortured but fruitless attempts to have the Greeks “throw out the leaven” and “feast upon the azymes” (The Register of Innocent III, 8:56 [55]), would have substantially illustrated how, indeed, the captive Byzantine Church and its clergy were not subalterns.

As with any book, there are inevitable small errors of fact (and we have all erred in this regard) and some dubious assertions. Philip of Swabia was not an eventual leader of the Fourth Crusade (3). Technically, the Franks who were defeated at Hattin in 1187 were not “crusaders,” and Innocent III followed the precedent of Gregory VIII, not Gregory IX, in offering an indulgence to all who assisted in the upcoming crusade, and this grant was not just to “nonsoldiers who accompanied the army” (51). Also, the evidence does not allow one to state unequivocally that Urban II “had, at least in part, portrayed the Holy Land . . . as an untapped reservoir of land, resources, and opportunity for glory” (51). And King Henry II did not participate in the Third Crusade (149n5). But enough of that.

One other flaw merits mention. The book lacks a bibliography. The saving of a few pages renders the endnotes less useful and surely frustrates the academic reader.

These slips, oversights, and quibbles aside, this reviewer concludes that all students of the crusades and Latin-Byzantine relations should read this book because, on balance, the author's overall approach and judgments are solid.