Had there been in Asia Minor in the latter half of the thirteenth century a predominant element, with an historical past and with a strong leader, we might have seen a revival of the sultanate of Konia. Or we might have seen a revival of Hellenism, a grafting, perhaps, on fresh stock, which would have put new foundations under the Byzantine Empire by a reconquest of the Asiatic themes. But the Mongols and the Crusaders had done their work too well. The Latins at Constantinople, and the Mongols in Persia and Mesopotamia, had removed any possibility of a revival of either Arab Moslem or Greek Christian traditions. Sixty years of Latin rule at Constantinople, and in the lower portion of the Balkan peninsula, had demonstrated the futility of any further effort on the part of western Europe to inherit the Eastern Roman Empire. The Mongols, the strongest cohesive military power at that time in the world, had not been won to Christianity, and thus inspired with a desire to re-establish for themselves the succession of the Caesars in the Levant.[1] The Italians, imbued with the city ideal which had been so fatal to the ancient Greeks, and divided into factions in their cities, were beginning a bitter struggle for commercial supremacy in the East that was to lose its vital importance from the discoveries of Vasco da Gama, Columbus, and Magellan, and to render them impotent before the Osmanlis after centuries of misdirected energy and useless sacrifice. The last great crusade had passed by Asia Minor to spend itself in a losing fight against the one remaining Moslem power. As in other critical periods of history, then, an entirely new people, with an entirely new line of sovereigns, must work out its destiny in this abandoned country, or--to state what actually did happen--must come, with a strength and prestige gained in Europe, to subdue it and to possess it.