Trebizond – The last Empire of Medieval Hellenism

"The empire of Trebizond was the result of an accident."

With these words, George Finlay begins to write about this medieval kingdom. This peculiar state, the result of the turbulent era that was for Romania the end of the twelfth to the thirteenth century, although it aspired to the liberation of Constantinople from the Crusaders, was limited  quickly, territorially, on the southeastern coastline of the Black Sea. Hence it was forced to chart its own course and fight hard for its survival, throughout its two and a half centuries of existence.

Because of this isolation from the European west, the history of the Trebizond empire, even today, is marked by dark spots. Finlay, with his work, is one of the first historians of the New Age who attempts to illuminate several of them. Relying on a multitude of different sources and providing rich descriptions of the character of the inhabitants, the monuments of the empire, but also the activities of the Great Comnenus family, the British Historian transports us to an almost forgotten past.

The glory of the Acritian empire of Trebizond and the desperate struggle of the last vestige of Byzantium, as recorded by the 1821 campaigner and eminent British historian George Finlay.