Engaging the Crusades is a series of volumes which offer windows into a newly-emerging field of historical study: the memory and legacy of the crusades. Together these volumes examine the reasons behind the enduring resonance of the crusades and present the memory of crusading in the modern period as a productive, exciting and much needed area of investigation. The Crusades in the Modern World evaluates a broad range of contemporary uses of the crusades and crusading to answer key questions about crusading today and how the crusades are understood. Each chapter demonstrates how perceptions of the crusades are deployed in causes and conflicts which mark the present, exploring the ways in which those perceptions are constructed and received. Throughout the book there is a focus on the use of crusading rhetoric and imagery to frame and justify violence, including crusading discourses employed by both Islamic fundamentalists and far-right terrorists, and the related deployment of ‘Reconquista’ rhetoric by populist movements in Europe. The use of the crusades for building national identity is also a recurring theme, while chapters on academic engagement with the crusades and on the ways in which Wikipedia articles on the crusades are created and contested highlight the ongoing production of knowledge about crusading. The Crusades in the Modern World is ideal for scholars of the crusades as well as for military historians and historians of memory.

The Crusades and their impact on today's world.

A lively reimagining of how the distant medieval world of war functioned, drawing on the objects used and made by crusaders Throughout the Middle Ages crusading was justified by religious ideology, but the resulting military campaigns were fueled by concrete objectives: land, resources, power, reputation. Crusaders amassed possessions of all sorts, from castles to reliquaries. Campaigns required material funds and equipment, while conquests produced bureaucracies, taxation, economic exploitation, and commercial regulation. Wealth sustained the Crusades while material objects, from weaponry and military technology to carpentry and shipping, conditioned them. This lavishly illustrated volume considers the material trappings of crusading wars and the objects that memorialized them, in architecture, sculpture, jewelry, painting, and manuscripts. Christopher Tyerman’s incorporation of the physical and visual remains of crusading enriches our understanding of how the crusaders themselves articulated their mission, how they viewed their place in the world, and how they related to the cultures they derived from and preyed upon.

Engaging the Crusades is a series of volumes which offer windows into a newly-emerging field of historical study: the memory and legacy of the crusades. Together these volumes examine the reasons behind the enduring resonance of the crusades and present the memory of crusading in the modern period as a productive, exciting and much needed area of investigation. The Crusades in the Modern World evaluates a broad range of contemporary uses of the crusades and crusading to answer key questions about crusading today and how the crusades are understood. Each chapter demonstrates how perceptions of the crusades are deployed in causes and conflicts which mark the present, exploring the ways in which those perceptions are constructed and received. Throughout the book there is a focus on the use of crusading rhetoric and imagery to frame and justify violence, including crusading discourses employed by both Islamic fundamentalists and far-right terrorists, and the related deployment of 'Reconquista' rhetoric by populist movements in Europe. The use of the crusades for building national identity is also a recurring theme, while chapters on academic engagement with the crusades and on the ways in which Wikipedia articles on the crusades are created and contested highlight the ongoing production of knowledge about crusading. The Crusades in the Modern World is ideal for scholars of the crusades as well as for military historians and historians of memory.

'Wonderfully written and characteristically brilliant' Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads 'Elegant, readable ... an impressive synthesis ... Not many historians could have done it' - Jonathan Sumption, Spectator 'Tyerman's book is fascinating not just for what it has to tell us about the Crusades, but for the mirror it holds up to today's religious extremism' - Tom Holland, Spectator Thousands left their homelands in the Middle Ages to fight wars abroad. But how did the Crusades actually happen? From recruitment propaganda to raising money, ships to siege engines, medicine to the power of prayer, this vivid, surprising history shows holy war - and medieval society - in a new light.

Why did the medieval Church bless William of Normandy's invasion of Christian England in 1066 and authorise cultural genocide in Provence? How could a Christian army sack Christian Constantinople in 1204? Why did thousands of ordinary men and women, led by knights and ladies, kings and queens, embark on campaigns of fanatical conquest in the world of Islam? The word 'Crusade' came later, but the concept of a 'war for the faith' is an ancient one. Geoffrey Hindley instructively unravels the story of the Christian military expeditions that have perturbed European history, troubled Christian consciences and embittered Muslim attitudes towards the West. He offers a lively record of the Crusades, from the Middle East to the pagan Baltic, and fascinating portraits of the major personalities, from Godfrey of Bouillon, the first Latin ruler of Jerusalem, to Etienne, the visionary French peasant boy who inspired the tragic Children's Crusade. Addressing questions rarely considered, Hindley sheds new light on pressing issues surrounding religious division and shows how the Crusades have helped to shape the modern world and relations between Christian and Muslim countries to this day.

In the sixteenth century, in what is now modern-day Peru and Bolivia, Andean communities were forcibly removed from their traditional villages by Spanish colonizers and resettled in planned, self-governed towns modeled after those in Spain. But rather than merely conforming to Spanish cultural and political norms, indigenous Andeans adopted and gradually refashioned the religious practices dedicated to Christian saints and political institutions imposed on them, laying claim to their own rights and the sovereignty of the collective. The People Are King shows how common Andean people produced a new kind of civil society over three centuries of colonialism, merging their traditional understanding of collective life with the Spanish notion of the común to demand participatory democracy. S. Elizabeth Penry explores how this hybrid concept of self-rule spurred the indigenous rebellions that erupted across Latin America in the eighteenth century, not only against Spanish rulers, but against native hereditary nobility, for acting against the will of the comuneros. Through the letters and documents of the Andean people themselves, The People Are King gives voice to a vision of community-based democracy that played a central role in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions and continues to galvanize indigenous movements in Bolivia today.