At the start of each month + Real Crusades History + brings you a review of a book relevant to the crusades or the crusader states. Today Dr. Schrader looks at a work that focuses on the important - but often overlooked - aspect of crusading:
logistics and public relations.
logistics and public relations.
This book came
highly recommended and provides a wealth of valuable information for anyone
interested in understanding the society that produced the crusades. Organized
by topic rather than chronologically, it examines topics all too often ignored
in more conventional histories from finance to health, safety and supply. Most
important, it documents the immense amount of planning, coordination,
organization and expense that went into mounting a massive military campaign
across vast distances in the age of horse and sailing ships. After reading this
book, no one can be in any doubt about how sophisticated, literate and
well-organized medieval society was during the centuries in which crusading was
undertaken. The book systematically and meticulously debunks notions of
“spontaneous” movements by wild-eyed religious fanatics. It also highlights
that in many ways crusader organization puts modern planning, blessed with all
the advantages of digital technology, to shame.
The weakness of
the book is that it never fully transcends the academic milieu from which it
originated. Tyerman meticulously documents his opinions, citing “chapter and
verse” of what feels like each and every single example that supports his
argument. The result is that what he
is saying often gets lost in the supporting documentation. In short, the book
bogs down in details and rapidly became a slog through facts rather than
providing stimulating new insight. The
book would have benefited from more rigorous editing that placed much of the
supporting evidence in the foot- or end-notes and focused on the gist of the
arguments.
Dr. Helena P. Schrader holds a PhD in History.
She is the Chief Editor of the Real Crusades History Blog.
She
is an award-winning novelist and author of numerous books both fiction
and non-fiction. Her three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin won a total
of 14 literary accolades. Her most recent release is a novel about the
founding of the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus. You can find out more at:
http://crusaderkingdoms.com
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