Could the Crusader Kingdoms/States Survived
- Thread starter Valdis
- Start date
Susano
Banned
As did various states in Greece. But I think the original crusader states are meant here - Edessa, Antioch, Tripoli, Jerusalem, Armenia Minor...
ahh good point yes it did, but i was thinking more the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Antioch and Tripoli.
archaeogeek
Banned
From the stuff I read (I cross-read some of my brother's lectures in medieval history) Sicily was basically stealing the crusader states' manpower pools by giving the colonists who left for the levant more incentives to stay in Sicily. However I suspect they wouldn't have survived outside of a few exclaves even without that; Tripoli and a portion of Jerusalem would have been viable-ish (Tripoli was the last crusader kingdom to fall in the levant) but would probably have gone under during the mongol invasion anyway and chances are they'd have become tributary of the Ottomans like the greek crusaders.
Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
Actually it is said that a lot of "Franks" did end up staying in Jerusalem. They were like at most 20 percent of the population and I bet it was mostly concentrated in the coastal towns like Acre or Jaffa and maybe Jerusalem. In the countryside, Muslims and Eastern Christians dominated the landscape.
archaeogeek
Banned
You won't do much of a country out of the coasts, though, and only Tyre and Acre are really defensible (Jaffa had fortifications but it lacked the out-of-the-way-ness of those two IMO). I could see a frankish "lebanon" made up of Tripoli and the principality of Galilee + Acre forming a rump Jerusalem though, yeah. Besides, prince of Galilee carried a prestige of its own as a title.
I'm still sort of feeling a form of negotiated peace à la 6th crusade where these remain "frankish" and pilgrimage rights are secured for everyone might have led to a mildly stable state, but Hohenstaufen was uninterested in levantine land or restive vassals in the area.
Plus population in urban areas, even in highly urbanized regions like Syria, Egypt or Italy, are still not always representative of the ethnic makeup of their areas in the middle ages.
Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
True. I didn't say that though. The Franks were a minority despite them being concentrated in the major cities. Anyways Crusader-wanks are always nearly French-wanks.
King Thomas
Banned
The later Crusaders were often disliked by the Franks allready there, as they stirred up loads of trouble and then mostly went back to Europe, leaving the native Franks to try and clear up the mess that they caused.
IOTL the states had all sorts of bad luck. Its not too far fetched to have them last a lot longer. Lasting forever?...there you've something harder. Few nations go their entire history without being overrun at least once and that's all it takes for the crusader kingdoms, cut off from the rest of christendom and on the edge of Arabia as they are. The muslims just have to get lucky once, the kingdoms have to hold out for centuries.
Manpower matters very little until very recent times. Its money that is important. You can have a population of 20 but if you've (somehow) enough money then you can still buy yourself an army.
Manpower matters very little until very recent times. Its money that is important. You can have a population of 20 but if you've (somehow) enough money then you can still buy yourself an army.
archaeogeek
Banned
Manpower matters when you need to make money, without enough manpower you can't produce enough in a pre-mechanisation economy
That said agreed on the luck and the permanence, however even IOTL there were sustained contacts with the region and Italy well into the renaissance.
Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
And there's the Levantines, descendants of Europeans (generally Italians) who are not a rare sight to find in the Middle East.
The manpower problem was military in nature, not economic. Yes locals could and would revolt when an enemy army was marching on them but most of them time they continued to produce enough economically and the trade made up for the rest. The problem was if the Crusaders made a big mistake militarily they lost land. Yes they could hire mercenaries but it's a bad idea to depend on mercenaries holding key points of the countryside longterm and it still wasn't enough to keep castles after major losses.
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Kosta
Banned
Uuuuuuuuuh we didn't have crusaders in any sense of the word-all we did was contribute some forces to help the Crusaders from a secular perspective at points (mostly to save our own skins, and yet they still turned on us every single time-and some people bitch and moan about Western-Roman Catholicism being a persecuted minority in the Republic...) and we were able to get as far as Aleppo and I believe even Mosul thanks to Nikeforas Fokas/Nikephors Phokas, but not because of any religious reasons and we sure as Hell didn't go around screaming "Deus Vult!" all the time. In fact I believe the same emperor, Nikeforos Fokas asked the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople to declare all the soldiers who died during the Campaign of Aleppo as martyrs, to which the Patriarch vehemently said no; it set a precedent to this day that the Church has, does, or will never declare any wars "holy-wars" and see any said "holy-wars" as perversions of Scripture.
So then what are you talking about?
archaeogeek
Banned
By the Greek crusaders I don't mean the Byzantine emperor, I mean the dukes of Naxos, Athens & Neopatria, and Candia, the kings of Thessalonica, and Cyprus, the Latin Emperors of Constantinople, the counts of Ceffalonia, and Corfu, and the princes of Achaia & Morea.
By the renaissance, Naxos, Athens & Neopatria, and Achaia were tributary states of the Ottoman empire, and the last duke of Naxos was actually a jewish subject appointed by the sultan. The rest were either gone or under the Venetian orbit instead.
Kosta
Banned
Ah, Lord I apologise I thought you meant Orthodox-Christians who killed people in the name of God, not the Frankish lords who carved up Greece and a decent piece of Anatolia
. My apologies again! archaeogeek
Banned
Ah, Lord I apologise I thought you meant Orthodox-Christians who killed people in the name of God, not the Frankish lords who carved up Greece and a decent piece of Anatolia
(also I forgot a few like the lords of Samos, the marquesses of Cythere, the order of Saint John as lords over Rhodes and the Dodecanese, etc; but it's a bit obsessive of detail
)Kosta
Banned
(also I forgot a few like the lords of Samos, the marquesses of Cythere, the order of Saint John as lords over Rhodes and the Dodecanese, etc; but it's a bit obsessive of detail
I do remember hearing about a Jewish Duke of Naxos/the Archipelago, and something about a gypsy colony being set up there as well centuries before and there being a Roma-Duke as well or something like that. It's a damn shame there aren't a lot of books on Jews in the (East) Roman Empire, that's definitely a book I'd read. Shame there aren't book on a lot of topics in the E. Roman Empire, too
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