Phokia, on the coast of Anatolia, was rich in alum, while Chios was famous for its mastic, apparently generating over 100,000 gold coins a year in revenue.
You may recall that Chios had been lifted from the empire by the Zachariah family, the Genoese merchants who Michael VIII had leased the town of Phokia to.
And rather than being the wellspring of democracy, Athens was " something of a latecomer" to a form of governance that appears to have been first tried in Libya and on the islands of Samos and Chios.
In 1335, the Genoese lord of Phokia allied himself with the Duchy of Naxos, the Hospitallers on the island of Rhodes, and the Genoese to seize the Roman island of Lesbos, just to the north of Chios.