This volume contains a slightly revised edition of the
Bampton Lectures in America that Jonathan Riley-Smith presented at Columbia
University in 2007. The material draws together and builds on research and
discussion which Professor Riley-Smith has published separately elsewhere. It
provides a useful summary of his views on the nature of medieval crusading, but
also continues the history of the movement into modern times. Riley-Smith shows
how the concept of crusading and particularly of the military-religious orders
was used as an instrument of imperialism during the nineteenth century and into
the early twentieth, a phenomenon which he calls paracrusading (including some
elements of the medieval crusade) or pseudocrusading (using crusade imagery and
rhetoric, but with no other connection to the original crusades). The final
chapter discusses how the modern view of crusading held by radical Islam
developed from the nineteenth-century European fascination with crusading.
In this volume, Professor Riley-Smith has distilled
cutting-edge historical research into an accessible short guide to the concept
and reality of crusading over several centuries, fully supported by references
to his sources and a full bibliography. Readers will not find a discussion of
the debates between scholars of the crusades, but they will find a wide-ranging
picture of crusading as a vibrant, growing area of research. The introduction
surveys modern attitudes to crusading, especially those of the Greek Church,
the Jews, and the Protestant and Catholic Churches. Chapter one considers the
Christian ideology which underlay crusading, and argues that modern society
cannot understand Augustinian just war theory because Augustine of Hippo saw
violence as morally neutral, whereas modern just war theory regards violence as
intrinsically evil. Riley-Smith admits that the seeds of the change in emphasis
originated in the Middle Ages, but considers that what is now the dominant
viewpoint did not become generally accepted until the nineteenth century. He
goes on to discuss the crusades as holy wars and the motivations of crusaders,
including the origins of the military religious orders as hospitaller
organisations which became militarized in the course of their care for poor
pilgrims. Chapter two considers crusades as Christian penitential wars,
including a survey of crusade preaching.
So far, much of this material is familiar ground.
Chapter three moves into less familiar territory, considering the revival of
the concept of crusading and of the military religious orders in the nineteenth
century. Riley-Smith considers several nineteenth-century schemes to
re-establish or found new military-religious orders to defend and promote
Christians or, more specifically, Catholic missionary work, in addition to
calls for military expeditions which would emulate the medieval crusades. This
discussion raises the question of when crusading came to an end – did it last
until 1892, when plans for a new military-religious order collapsed?
Considering this question, Riley-Smith concludes that these initiatives were in
fact stimulated by modern imperialism rather than the old crusading motivations.
The final chapter considers the origins and
development of modern radical Islam’s view of crusading. Starting from Kaiser
Wilhelm II of Germany’s expedition to Jerusalem in 1898, organized by Thomas
Cook, Riley-Smith points out that nineteenth-century western glorification of
crusading, especially of the Muslim military leader Saladin, led to Muslim
commentators taking up the subject, which had previously been largely
overlooked in Muslim historiography. He argues that western commentators are
unable to supply an effective answer to Islamic radicalism because they no
longer understand crusade ideals. In Riley-Smith’s opinion, these ideals were
largely abandoned in the West after the First World War, although they did
appear during the Spanish Civil War and were occasionally referred to during
the Second World War. Of course references to holy war continue into the modern
day, in relation to ‘the Troubles’ in Northern Ireland or even in political
debates in the US Congress; but they are largely unfamiliar in modern,
secularized Britain.
Riley-Smith argues that the modern popular view of the
crusades, both in the West and in Islam, ‘has more to do with
nineteenth-century European imperialism than with actuality.’ It is impossible,
he argues, to understand modern ‘religio-political hostility’ between
westernized and Islamic societies, ‘erupting in acts of extreme violence’,
unless we are prepared to face up to this fact (p. 79). While agreeing that
modern popular views of the crusades are largely based on nineteenth-century
nationalist myth, this reviewer would suggest that there are broader, underlying
causes which lead modern Islamic radicals to turn to this stereotype. Crusade scholars
may demonstrate that the stereotype does not reflect historical reality, but
this will not remove the fundamental causes of radicalism, only the rhetoric
used to promote it. That aside, in setting out to ‘place the Crusades in
Christian history and to understand the long-term effects in the West and among
Muslims of the use, and misuse of crusade ideas and images’ (p. 6), Riley-Smith
has produced a valuable short guide to the crusade movement in both the past
and modern times.
Riley-Smith concludes by reminding his readers that
even modern secular societies can produce ideological violence. Modern wars
might be fought in the name of anti-colonialism, humanitarianism or liberal
democracy, but these are still wars fought for a ‘cultural or even
pseudoscientific ideal that is considered by its adherents to be of universal
importance’. So may modern wars be crusades under a
different guise? This book will not only provide a stimulating read for those
exploring the concept and history of crusading, but will help to prompt debate
in the classroom on the motivation and purpose of war.
Helen Nicholson
Cardiff University
