“Economically it was about as inconsequential as can be imagined.”
Trabizond was the second largest trading city in the mediterranean. I’ll give you one guess as to the first.
Sure, they were much less powerful than they had been before, but still, they were an incredible prize.
Methinks you miss my point.
Every single item of the Eastern trade goods that changed hands at Constantinople, which was indeed a center of commerce right up to the end, though its commerce was almost completely controlled by that time by Italians, had first to transit a Muslim state. When Constantinople fell, nothing changed in this regard, therefore its fall was not consequential with regard to whether Western countries could get spices and other eastern goods without using Muslim middlemen.
Nit.
Trebizond is on the Black Sea, not the Med.