The First Crusade as a Defensive War? Four Historians Respond

[davidb]

https://apholt.com/2018/04/15/the-first-crusade-as-a-defensive-war-four-historians-respond/

This was posted on the Crusading Warfare group in Facebook.  I thought people might find this interesting.

David

[Erpingham]

Certainly interesting, even though I usually avoid the crusades as a topic.  The different approaches, the attempts to stay inside a very narrow military historical framework and how far you need to expand that for context to answer the question, the need to examine how those involved saw it rather than just apply modern judegements - all very familiar stuff to us in our more amateur debates.

[aligern]

Yes,nvery interesting and thought provoking. I was left with the feeling that any religious war involving an aggressive monitheism can easily be portrayed as defensive because promulgating the existence of another God is easily interpreted as an aggression and an offence.
There is also the question of how long an occupation is necessary before a people state or faith 'owns' a territory. For the Ottomans in the Balkans and the Moors in Spain 500 years did not suffice to establish such rights in the eyes of their supplanters who maintained the primacy of their prior claim. Of course much of the world imnediately ratified those conquests. If that was held as legitimate then the claim of the Caliphs to the Holy Land was quite weak as less than 400 years before it had been part of the Roman Empire and that Empire still existed and sponsored the Crusade.
Interesting that a Muslim source linked the fall of Toledoi, the conquest of Sicily and the First Crusade, whereas we would see them as separate incidents caused  by the collapse of the Andalusian state,the rise of South Italian Normans and a new Northern European religious unification and expansionism.
Roy

[Jim Webster]

There is also the question of how long an occupation is necessary before a people state or faith 'owns' a territory. For the Ottomans in the Balkans and the Moors in Spain 500 years did not suffice to establish such rights in the eyes of their supplanters who maintained the primacy of their prior claim.
Roy

Yes it is an interesting question. It has always amused me that the British and the Moors have both 'owned' Gibraltar for longer than the Spanish   

So if we 'returned it' to whom should we give it?

[Flaminpig0]

There is also the question of how long an occupation is necessary before a people state or faith 'owns' a territory.

Bearing in mind ongoing events in what used to known as the Holy Land I suspect there is no readily agreed definitive answer to this.

[Patrick Waterson]

Interesting that a Muslim source linked the fall of Toledoi, the conquest of Sicily and the First Crusade, whereas we would see them as separate incidents caused  by the collapse of the Andalusian state,the rise of South Italian Normans and a new Northern European religious unification and expansionism.

I suspect the assumed link may have been:
1) The first actual 'crusade' was in Spain from AD 1063-1096, in that it involved a steady flow of Frankish knights going to fight for Christianity - and under papal blessing from AD 1087.  Runciman thinks this may have been the model Alexius had in mind when he called for help from the West.
2) Enter the Hautevilles in Sicily.  Once they have finished in Sicily, they take off for the Holy Land under Papal auspices.
3) And finally we have the First Crusade, under papal blessing like the campaign against Toledo, which launches vast numbers of Franks against the Orient.

Put the lot together and it is quite enough for some to see 'links'.

The real reasons I would see as those Roy stated, without any coherent linkage.  But it is an insight into how some can view history.

[Erpingham]

I think they do fit into a zeitgeist of "us and them" and "we" have to take action, even if they are not actually connected.  The Normans in Sicily from a modern perspective is hard to distinguish the Normans in Southern Italy.  I don't think it mattered to them whether they were fighting Lombards, Moors, Byzantines or the Pope.  This attitude would distinguish them in the First Crusade from the more northern crusaders too I think.

 

[Anton]

Thank you.  I enjoyed the read.  It seems to me that  the Crusades were part of the general pattern of Frankish Catholic expansion and any conquests to be made were envisaged as ultimately operating under that dispensation.  The various antics at Antioch illustrate quite nicely the limitations of Frankish thinking as far as defensive aid to Orthodox Byzantium went.  Out Groups couldn't expect much Christian, Muslim or otherwise.

[Anton]

I came across this article which considers the development of the Frankish world view.  I think it explains a lot about the treatment of 'out groups' in the years that followed.

https://hortulus-journal.com/journal/journal-volume-14-1-2017/imperium-et-credo-frankish-byzantine-rivalry-over-leadership-of-the-roman-christian-credo-state-in-the-ninth-century-by-elijah-wallace/