This is a short essay which alleges to teach the reader about the crusader states “like never before” and “in no time at all.” In fact, it is an extended polemic by unnamed authors who are both ignorant and biased. It is full of half-truths and outright inaccuracies to such an extent that after merely browsing through it, I became too disgusted to read further and I threw it out. Why?
First, the bibliography of this book is noteworthy for the conspicuous absence of works by nearly all serious scholars of the crusader states from Le Monte and Riley-Smith to Edbury, Hamilton and Barber. Most of the sources are in fact only short essays rather than thorough studies and include some dubious sources (Guidebooks for a History of Islam? Really?)
Second, the introduction refers to the “Duchy” of Cyprus as a crusader state. Cyprus from 1192 - 1196 had no status but was referred to as a lordship, and from 1196 was raised to a KINGDOM as a component part of the Holy Roman Empire, in the 13th century, the Pope confirmed the complete independence of the Kings.
Third, this error led me to jump ahead and at the “chapter” on Cyprus to see if this was just a slip-up in the introduction. This “chapter” is less than a page long (for three hundred years of history?). In it Cyprus is described as “part of the Venetian trading empire” before the fall of Jerusalem. NO, Cyprus was part of the BYZANTINE Empire. It did not become part of the Venetian empire for another three hundred years! The anonymous authors go on to claim that the kings of Cyprus had no real power, because the Venetian "oligarchs" had it all, and two sentences later the authors claim that the feudal elite were “illiterate and brutish.” In fact, the feudal elite (not the merchant community) held power in Cyprus (see Riley-Smith’s extensive and meticulously documented "The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem 1174 – 1292." Note: the feudal nobility usually held fiefs in both Cyprus and Jerusalem and were therefore largely identical.) Furthermore, exactly this Cypriot feudal elite produced an entire school of legal scholars that are admired as some of the finest thinkers of the 13th century. They were not only highly literate and very sophisticated, they produced a number scholarly works on jurisprudence, as well as histories and poetry – not to mention magnificent cathedrals and palaces. Calling them "illiterate and brutish" suggests that the authors themselves are too illiterate and brutish to even bother looking up the facts before slandering their subjects.
Returning to the first chapter I found the authors apparently obsessed with the alleged “greed” of Venice (something that might be explained by the disproportionate number of books on the Fourth Crusade listed in the sparse bibliography). This is a gross distortion of the facts given that Pisa and Genoa were equally, if not more, active in the crusader states and Venice also played a positive role in the economy. More ridiculous, Chapter 1 included the claim that the knights/barons were impoverished and their lands “mortgaged to the hilt.” In fact, as contemporary observers such as Fulcher de Chartes noted and serious historians such as Riley Smith have documented, the Frankish settlers to Outremer enjoyed exceptional high standards of living and were wealthier than contemporaries – the baron sometimes outrageously so.
At this point, having found so many half-truths and inaccuracies in just two pages, I tossed the book out and resolved to write a review to save others from buying this rubbish.
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