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The Crusades: first round of European colonialism -- or an overdue response to centuries of Muslim aggression?
God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades
by Rodney Stark
If Western accounts of the Crusades were at once
adorned with pious and self-serving legends, today the near
opposite is the case. To sum up the prevailing wisdom: The
Crusades were promoted by power-made popes seeking to
greatly expand Christianity through conversion of the
Muslim masses; the crusaders march east not out of
idealism, but in pursuit of lands and loot; and the knights
of Europe were barbarians who brutalized everyone in their
path, leaving the enlightened Muslim culture in ruins --
planting the seeds of resentment that would bear their
rotten fruit in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Not so,
argues award-winning author Rodney Stark -- and in God's
Battalions, he takes on the long-held view that the
Crusades were the first round of European colonialism,
arguing instead that they were the first military response
to unwarranted Muslim aggression.
(continued from above)
In God's Batallions, Rodney Stark reveals:
- How the Crusades were precipitated, not by Christians,
but by centuries of bloody Islamic attempts to colonize
the West and by sudden new attacks on Christian pilgrims
and holy places
- Why, although the Crusades were initiated by a plea from
the pope, this had nothing to do with converting Islam
- Myth: The crusades were organized and led by the feudal
system's surplus sons in search of land and loot
- Fact: How they were actually led by the heads of great
families who were fully aware that the costs of crusading
would far exceed the very modest materials awards the
could be expected
- How most crusaders went at immense personal cost, some
knowingly bankrupting themselves to go
- The crusader kingdoms: sustained by immense subsidies
from Europe -- not onerous exactions on local peoples
- Why it is unreasonable to impose modern notions about
proper military conduct on medieval warfare
- How the failure of historians of the Crusades to accept
that war can ever be "just," reveals the pacifism that
has become so widespread among academics
- Why claims that Muslims have been harboring bitter
resentments about the Crusades for a millennium are
nonsense
- How, in fact, Muslim antagonism about the Crusades did
not appear until about 1900, in reaction against the
decline of the Ottoman Empire and the onset of actual
European colonialism in the Middle East
- How anti-crusader feelings did not become intense until
after the founding of the state of Israel
Stark's "politically incorrect" conclusion? "The
Crusades were not unprovoked. They were not the first round
of European colonialism. They were not conducted for land,
loot, or converts. The crusaders were not barbarians who
victimized the cultivated Muslims. They sincerely believed
that they served in God's batallions."
"Through his many books, Rodney Stark has made us
rethink so much of what we had assumed about the history of
Christianity and its relations with other faiths, and now
God's Batallions launches a frontal assault on the
comfortable myths that scholars have popularized about the
crusades. The results are startling. His greatest
achievement is to make us see the crusaders on their own
terms." -- Philip Jenkins, author of The Lost History of
Christianity
"At last, a convincing, balanced book on the Crusades, far
from the recent unsophisticated and ideological diatribes
against them as 'A Bad Thing.' Rodney Stark demonstrates
that the Crusades were neither unprovoked nor colonialist.
Here is yet another rich and readable book from this
thoughtful and distinguished author." -- Jeffrey Burton
Russell, author of A History of Heaven and Paradise Mislaid
"A compelling argument that these bloody encounters
had less to do with spreading Christianity than with
responding to an ever more dangerous enemy—the emerging
Islamic empire. There is much to be learned here. Filled
with fascinating historical glimpses of monks and Templars,
priests and pilgrims, kings and contemplatives, Stark pulls
it all together and challenges us to reconsider our view of
the Crusades." -- Publisher's Weekly
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