Customer Reviews

Contesting the Crusades (Contesting the Past)

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In this book, Housley aims to provide a much needed historiographical survey of crusading scholarship as of 2005. Toward such an end, the text is a great success. Housley deftly outlines the current "states of the question" of numerous issues within Crusading historiography, as broached by scholars from the English, French, German, and Spanish-speaking worlds.

However, it should be noted that the author does not intend to provide the reader with a survey of the Crusades themselves; such knowledge is presupposed. If one is already acquainted with the Crusading era, broadly conceived (~11th - 17th centuries), Housley's masterful synthesis will provide an excellent sense of both the ground which recent scholarship has covered and the directions in which historians are presently heading. Written eloquently yet accessibly for the myriad historians whose first tongue is not English, Houseley's work is an invaluable resource for any scholar of the Crusades.

Like all the books in this series, this is a summary of the last half-century or so of academic research and debate, regarding one topic or period of history - in this case the Crusades. It is therefore fitting that the author starts by defining his terms; and it comes as a surprise, for the non-academic, to realise that the crusaders themselves did not use the word `crusade': they used the term `passagium', amongst others. Even then, neither the terminology nor the theory of crusading was fully worked out until the pontificate of Innocent III (1198-1216), which came after the first three Crusades, though it coincided with the Fourth.

This is a compendious and very fine survey, concisely and attractively written. Amongst other questions, the author discusses the origins and importance of the First Crusade and whether this was influenced by the view that the world was coming to an end; whether the crusades as a whole were driven by the top ranks in society, or by the bottom; whether they were primarily devotional or military; and whether the expeditions which were not directed at Jerusalem were really crusades at all. The book poses as many questions as it answers; but that is the purpose of the series and anyone who has an open mind will enjoy it.

When I studied history as an undergraduate in the 1960s, I read Steven Runciman's great three-volume history of the Crusades, while R.C. Smail's `Crusading Warfare' was almost a set-text. It was therefore a great pleasure to read Housley's masterly summary of the scholarship of recent decades. The importance of monastic charters as a source was something quite new to me; and I had not realised how the fashion for a socio-economic explanation has fallen out of fashion here, just as it has in relation to the so-called `English Revolution' of 1640. Housley is very good on the minutiae of the debate; but he is also aware of the broader picture and its relevance to current events.

At one point the author refers to 9/11, a seminal event which appears to raise the question of whether, once again, Christianity is at war with Islam. (President Obama, of course, repeatedly affirms that it is not). This book shows how complex the relationship between the two faiths was, even in the so-called Age of Faith. The position of `The Crusade' in Christian theology was often unclear and was certainly not always the same. It would be interesting to know whether debates such as those touched upon here are also discussed amongst Muslims, in relation to `The Jihad'.

Stephen Cooper

This is a great work by Housley. He obviously has done his research on many different historian's perspectives are on the Crusades, which is largely what this book is about. Unfortunately it's rather boring. I did find the last chapter rather intriguing, however.