God's Batallions: The Case for the Crusades by Rodney Stark

A starkly different and yet eerily familiar picture of the Crusades emerges in Rodney Stark’s new offering God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades. The “case” that Stark makes in the book is that after centuries of continual aggression against the West, the Crusades were launched against the Muslims when fresh new provocations were made against Christian pilgrims and holy sites in Jerusalem. Stark also finds in his research that far from being a brutal and opportunistic war and land grab, the European crusaders had little to no gain financially and many actually bankrupted themselves in order to go. This was for them a war of ideals, religious ones in particular, and though it was brutal, it was fought according to the prevailing codes of decency and fair play that ruled in their day. Stark also reveals in the book that much has been made of the decency and enlightened attitudes of the Muslims that simply doesn’t bear out under scrutiny. Merciless slaughter and slavery were tactics they used any time they could against the crusader settlements. What is eerily familiar about the Crusades is that they were popular when they were successful and only the wealthy of Europe had to support them. When there was stalemate or failure and the financial drain was too much, they lost their public support. The case was made it was impossible to sustain the mission and there were just too many enemies to keep at bay with too few troops, er knights on the ground. I think a strong case is made that the Crusades were morally right as a political/social phenomenon. After all, European crusaders were merely conquering from Muslims lands connected to their religious faith that the Muslims had conquered from Jews and Christians just centuries before. At least in the Medieval world, taking and possessing conquered land was considered honest and normal by all the involved parties. As I read the book I couldn’t help but think of our current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Defensive, just, distant, and increasingly unpopular at home. It would be nice if they just ended due to lack of interest, but I fear the Islamic penchant for Jihad may require our attention until “kingdom come.”