The British are often blamed for a lot of the social and political mess today, in particular, the resentment against ‘Western’ civilisation. But the Italians messed things up long before this. This is from The Medieval World Europe 1100-1350 by Frederick Heer:
“The Italians left one dangerous legacy to Western Europe as a whole. The incessant extrtions and plundering raids of the maritime cities, with Venice and Genoa at their head, which culminated in the conquest of the Byzantine Empire during the 4th crusade, aroused the undying hatred of the Eastern Church and its Muscovite successors. The Italians, with their naval and commercial fleets, their ‘nationalized’ economy, and their system of taxation, which they introduced into their Byzantine possessions, represented the ‘avaricius’, ‘war-mongering’ ‘unscrupulous’ West. After 1205 the Doges of Venice proudly styled themselves ‘Lord of one-fourth and one-eigth of the Empire of Romania’. Ie, Rome
