Martin Baxter wrote:
Did a bit of reading last night, turns out the Crusades analogy is not
so bad. The first Crusade was relatively
successful, the objective was reached ('liberating' Jerusalem). The
Second Crusade captured some more land, and shamelessly
sacked Constantinople along the way. The last three Crusades were pretty
much a bust and in the long run most of the territory fell
back to the Saracens.

The one great legacy of the Crusades was the implementation of system of
organized taxation, a lofty goal for the GOP (remember that's how this
arabesque got started).

groan

But seriously, the Crusades are a good analogy for present times...
maybe those who don't know history really are condemned to repeat it.
The Crusade served the European princes & kings fairly well at some
secondary political goals, such as sending troublesome younger sons far
away; also furthered the goals of the old Mediterranean trading powers,
and introduced fractional reserve banking. Double entry accounting was
invented somewhere in there too.

A man named Steve Runciman has written several good books on the Crusades.

IIRC the First Crusade was relatively straighforward. They succeeded in
capturing Jerusalem and a fair amount of territory (thus giving those
younger sons some area to rule) but it was 'just barely' and they never
established self-supporting principalities. Just about the time these
Crusader principalities got on their feet economically, and could
develop reasonable trade relationships with neighboring Arab
territories, a new wave of belligerent Crusaders arrived and knocked
over the applecart.

Crusaders that returned to Europe brought with them new technology and
new tastes, and a much greater knowledge of the world around them. The
Arabs which had overrun the Hellenic empires, inheritors of Alexander
the Great, had a much greater familiarity with classical & ancient
knowledge. This opened the door, several generations down the road, for
the Renaissance.

The crusading era ended with Saint Louis the Pious, (Louis Xth IIRC) who
was blatantly delusional and a one-man military strategic disaster.
Drawing the parallels to modern times is best left as an exercise for
studious!

Regards
Doug King