Byzantium and the Crusades

(Paperback, 2nd edition)

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This new edition of Byzantium and the Crusades provides a fully-revised and updated version of Jonathan Harris's landmark text in the field of Byzantine and crusader history. The book offers a chronological exploration of Byzantium and the outlook of its rulers during the time of the Crusades. It argues that one of the main keys to Byzantine interaction with Western Europe, the Crusades and the crusader states can be found in the nature of the Byzantine Empire and the ideology which underpinned it, rather than in any generalised hostility between the peoples. Taking recent scholarship into account, this new edition includes an updated notes section and bibliography, as well as significant additions to the text: - New material on the role of religious differences after 1100 - A detailed discussion of economic, social and religious changes that took place in 12th-century Byzantine relations with the west - In-depth coverage of Byzantium and the Crusades during the 13th century - New maps, illustrations, genealogical tables and a timeline of key dates Byzantium and the Crusades is an important contribution to the historiography by a major scholar in the field that should be read by anyone interested in Byzantine and crusader history.

Reviews

Illuminating and innovative. A must-read for those who wish to understand the relationship between the east and west during the Crusades. * Lars Brownworth, author of Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (2009) *
Jonathan Harris leads us into the minds of the ruling elites of Byzantine society and demonstrates how they were unable to adapt to the challenge of the crusade he explains how contact between east and west rapidly became confrontation and ultimately produced disaster for the Empire. This book is an original, perceptive, and convincing analysis of the cultural attitudes which shaped the Byzantine reaction to the crusades and ultimately led to the disaster of the crusader sack of Constantinople in 1204. * John France, Professor of History, Swansea University, UK *
A measured, detailed, clear, nuanced and subtle analysis of Greek responses to the appearance of the unprecedented ideas and armies of crusaders from western Europe and how these reactions were ultimately self-defeating. This is political and diplomatic history in modern form, as much a close study of cultural forces as a narrative of events. Grounded on detailed critical scrutiny of primary sources, Harriss perspective remains chiefly that of the Byzantine court, its political, administrative and literary elite providing the convincing context for this compelling study of the pervasive intellectual attitudes and dominant ideologies of power that determined the fate of the eastern Mediterranean world. * Christopher Tyerman, Fellow and Tutor in History, Hertford College, University of Oxford, UK *
[Jonathan Harris's] theory is clever and original. -- Jonathan Riley-Smith, of the first edition * The Tablet *

Author Bio

Jonathan Harris is Professor of the History of Byzantium at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. He is the author of Constantinople: Capital of Byzantium (Bloomsbury Academic, 2nd Ed., 2017), Introduction to Byzantium, 6021453 (2020) and The End of Byzantium (2010).