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    God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades
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    God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades
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    God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades
    Ebook324 pages5 hours

    God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades

    By Rodney Stark

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    About this ebook

    In God’s Battalions, distinguished scholar Rodney Stark puts forth a controversial argument that the Crusades were a justified war waged against Muslim terror and aggression. Stark, the author of The Rise of Christianity, reviews the history of the seven major crusades from 1095-1291 in this fascinating work of religious revisionist history.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 29, 2009
    ISBN9780061942983
    Author

    Rodney Stark

    Rodney Stark is one of the leading authorities on the sociology of religion. Stark has authored more than 150 scholarly articles and 32 books in 17 different languages, including several widely used sociology textbooks and best-selling titles. William Sims Bainbridge earned his doctorate in sociology from Harvard University in 1975. Altogether he has published about 300 articles and written or edited 40 books in a variety of scientific fields.

    Read more from Rodney Stark

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    Reviews for God's Battalions

    4/5

    76 ratings12 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I really liked this is part because it reminded me of other books and people from this time in history I've read about in the past. So many interesting people so largely forgotten.

      A brief history of the crusades. The book appears to be very well cited and even if you disagree with the author's conclusions you have to admit his did his research.

      One of the main points of the book is not that the crusades were wonderful but that they are unfairly understood in a modern context as a great evil mentioned in the same breath as the holocaust or the Spanish inquisition. Mr. Stark makes a very strong case that this demonstrates a misunderstanding for the motivations behind the crusades, the surrounding morals and rules of warfare in that time, competing atrocities on both sides, and how brief the negative view of the crusades has been. He makes a strong case that there is no tradition of hate in the middle east based on the depredations of crusaders.

      Interesting book.

      So many opportunities for great movies with the great characters in History. People like Richard the Lionheart and Iron Arm the conqueror of Italy are two that appear briefly here.
    • 3/5
      God’s Battalions may one of those titles which is likely to create controversy, but controversy that may be necessary. Why? Perhaps because it is high time that the politically correct version of the ‘history’ of the crusades presented so often in the media was challenged. All too often it seems, the crusades are presented as an unprovoked attack by bigoted Western religious fanatics against a peaceful civilisation and its ‘enlightened’ populace.

      Stark reveals that the reality was not so simple. I for one have heard or read before of Islamic aggression against Europe before the Crusades, and the conquest of much formerly Christian territory in North Africa and the Middle East, so this was nothing new to me, but it is useful in refuting the notion idea of the ‘unprovoked’ crusades. The author however, goes further to challenge the notion that the Islamic culture was technologically and intellectually superior to that of Europe, demonstrating that many of the intellectual advances in fact seem to have been made largely by Jews, Christians other minority groups, or pre-Islamic cultures.

      He also rejects the notion of the ‘dark ages’, a term which is no longer favoured by historians, and argues that Western technology was actually superior to that of the East, which only triumphed in terms of ‘book learning’. Again, some of the above may be familiar territory considering my training in medieval history, though this first part of the book was altogether the more interesting.

      As a historian the author’s occasional criticism or apparent distrust of the writings of those of this profession isn't something I would perhaps be entirely comfortable with.
      I don't think they are all wrong and that he 'knows better' all the time, That said his his assertion about the lack of attention given to some events (like the massacre at Antioch) by some historians may be valid, and does not seem a good thing.
      My only other concern was one claim made by the author which I know to have been historically incorrect – that knights who wore plate armour ‘had to be lifted onto their horses with looms’. This was never the case in battle, only with the more elaborate suits of armour worn at jousts, and its inclusion may cause some questions over the historical validity of some details and claims. For the most part however, I think the work is generally reliable.

      The second half did not seem nearly as interesting and engaging, and seems to get caught up in what were essentially just brief accounts of the major events and persons of the crusading period.
      There didn’t seem to be any real analysis, at least not in depth as one might expect from a more specialised history book, though this is not one of those. Rather it is an examination of the time period, and the major themes, trends and views thereof.
      By arguing that there was indeed something in the stories of attacks on pilgrims, persecution of Christians and highlighting some of the massacres perpetrated by Islamic armies this work may do something to redress the imbalance of popular opinion against the crusades, and the ‘clashing civilisations’ which took part in them.
      Also interesting was the mention of how some clergymen attempted to protect Jewish communities in the cities which crusaders targeted, demonstrating perhaps that anti-Semitic sentiments were not universally shared in the West.

      Some have spoken of the author’s belief that the Crusades were a good thing, and whilst this work may indeed be somewhat polemical in its intention and the authors thinks regards the crusades as ‘Christendom fighting back’, I’m not sure if the author expressly praises them as something positive.
      Maybe I just failed to notice such a sentiment which may have been present, but I personally get the impression that this book was more apologetic then designed to promote the ideals and actions of the crusaders, or apply them to modern American foreign policy.

      Altogether God’s Battalions is a worthwhile work, though perhaps it would have been better as a more dedicated study of misconceptions about the crusades.
      I understand that the author needed to give some overview of the main facts, but the way these took up much of the second half of the book, making it appear rather dull or dry, and seeming lack of analysis meant that I did not enjoy this as much as I could have. Also, whilst there are many good and worthwhile sources, I wouldn’t take everything the author says as ‘gospel’.
    • 4/5
      I'm not sure he made a case for the crusades, but I'm also not familiar with the argument he's trying to counteract. In the introduction he claims that it has become commonplace for Western historians to be critical of the Crusades as an unprovoked, military action against a peaceful and more cultured people. I believe this is the claim he is arguing against, I believe he does a fine job. There are numerous citations to previous research to aid his argument. In fact, he claims early on that he did little direct research in this area, but instead relied on previous historians.
    • 4/5
      I did like Stark's willingness to probe a bit further into history and explain the Crusades and events leading to them, than to accept what is, in some quarters, a tendency to just pass off the Crusades as another Christian murder spree. He cites different bodies of work, (and some are dated, but which historical writer does not cite some dated material - duh - writing history sometimes does involve old materials?!). He exposes some of the biases or unwillingness of other authors to look at the contextual and cultural factors of the Crusades on both sides. I certainly was not aware of how many Crusades there were, how they were financed, how their mission was portrayed to their participants, and who fought in them. That being said, I felt there was some choppiness in the book. I also wish that there would have been some more maps, or maybe some better ones, included by the author so the reader could get a better perspective on the participant movements and locations of some of the cities/territories mentioned.
    • 5/5
      Great counter argument to the prevailing thoughts on the crusades today.
    • 5/5
      Unapologetically objective, putting events in context and synthesizing matrixes of information in coherent way.
    • 5/5
      This book is well written, well supported and almost everything the author makes logical sense to me. It is written simply and elegantly, while at the same time making one feel a much better understanding of the complexity of the Crusades. This book gives you an angle that you most readers never get, but really should. I feel like I have a much clearer understanding of history after this book, the 4 hours were very well invested. An excellent book to read along with this is "Lost to the West" by Lars Brownworth, which has a few chapters going into the Crusades from the Byzantium point of view.
    • 1/5
      The book is a twist of history accounts many historians from the west blame the church for instigating the war against the Muslim world by spreading lies and untrue stories plus he called Muslim terrorist based on the propaganda of the west towards the Muslim world can the writer tells us who started the war in Middle East I mean the destruction of Middle East isn’t for the oil and for that of course you have to vilified the people in Muslim world with lies and baseless accounts to legitimate the invasion do for Rodney because the Muslim are terrorist today in false accusation projected the same lies to what happened in crusaders era
      Shame on him
      Read britanica encyclopedia about the crusade
      Will Durant ,Edward Gibbon
    • 4/5
      If you're looking for some good history on the crusades, without all the hate towards Europe, the West, or Christianity, this is a great place to start. Stark lays out the case that the crusades were in many ways a war not unlike so many others, but with a different motivation than many. He argues that Europe was responding to invasion by the Turks & Muslims; that the battle conduct of the crusaders was similar to the norm for the era (not unusually brutal); the Muslims were not somehow more enlightened or civilized than the Europeans (& thus deserving of our sympathy); and that those who went on the crusades did so at great personal or familial cost, not out of some desire for plunder. While he does this, he does not degrade the Muslims nor place the crusaders on a pedestal. He is fair, but realistic about both sides strengths and weaknesses. The result is a much more favorable treatment of the crusaders than many may be used to, but he is, in a sense, merely righting the balance. Eleven pages of bibliography allow you to follow-up on and check Stark's claims and while the book is written at a level that reads very easily, his conclusions are documented and he kindly includes end-notes.
    • 5/5
      I thought that the book was well done for what it was. This never was to be an extremely indepth historical text but rather a "case for the crusades". Over the years I have heard many who claim (in conversation) that we are to blame for the muslims hating us because of the crusades but I have always considered them off base. The muslims had been expanding and taking over christian lands for centuries and it was this aggression which finally created the need to strike back. This is what Mr. Stark shows well enough in his book and I applaud his stance. I am also happy to see him reiterate the need to view the extreme violence and massacres of the time not through the lenses of today's opinions but in their historical views of their own time. I find that I, in conversations, have to repeatedly remind people who criticize past events that they have to do this exact thing. Overall I would say its a good quick read and worthwhile to get a common sense view on the events.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Stark argues that the crusades were not unprovoked, and were not a colonial episode. I found hisarguments in support of these claims. He asserts that the cultural level of the crusaderswas on a par with that of the muslims, but here his argument is weak - he claims thatarab culture was really the culture of its subject peoples, but many of these were muslim.He also tries to justify the sack of Constantinople, on the grounds that this sort of eventwas not unknown at the time.
    • 2/5
      Stark is right in saying that the crusades were not unprovoked. This, however, seems to be the most salient point he makes. On the whole, this work is quite tendentious. Stark relies too heavily on secondary sources. Furthermore, he uses his (limited) primary sources inconsistently and irresponsibly. This is a decidedly polemical pseudo-history that pushes well beyond what the evidence allows. With this attempt to offer a corrective reading of the crusades, Stark falls well short of his goal and probably does more harm than good.