A History of the Crusades; Volume I The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem by Runciman, Steven - 1995

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Reprint/later printing. Trade paperback. Good. xiii, [1], 376, [2] pages. Some highlighting noted. Illustrations. Maps. Footnotes. Bibliography. Index. Sir James Cochran Stevenson Runciman CH FBA (7 July 1903 - 1 November 2000), known as Steven Runciman, was an English historian best known for his three-volume A History of the Crusades (1951-54). His three-volume history has had a profound impact on common conceptions of the Crusades, primarily portraying the Crusaders negatively and the Muslims favorably. Runciman was a strong admirer of the Byzantine Empire, and consequently held a bias against the Crusaders for the Fourth Crusade evident in his work. While praised by older crusade historians as a storyteller and prose stylist, he is viewed as biased by some contemporary historians. For much of his life he was an independent scholar, living on private means. He went on to be a press attache at the British Legation in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, in 1940 and at the British Embassy in Cairo in 1941. From 1942 to 1945 he was Professor of Byzantine Art and History at Istanbul University, in Turkey, where he began the research on the Crusades which would lead to his best known work, the History of the Crusades. From 1945 to 1947 he was a representative in Athens of the British Council. Most of Runciman's historical works deal with Byzantium and her medieval neighbors between Sicily and Syria. Runciman held sympathies toward the Byzantine Empire and blamed the Crusaders, whom he considered "intolerant barbarians", for causing the downfall of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade. This volume deals completely with the First Crusade and the foundation of the kingdom of Jerusalem. As Runciman says in his preface: 'Whether we regard the Crusades as the most tremendous and most romantic of Christian adventures, or as the last of the barbarian invasions, they form a central fact in medieval history. Before their inception the center of our civilization was placed in Byzantium and in the lands of the Arab caliphate. Before they faded out the hegemony in civilization had passed to western Europe. Out of this transference modern history was born.' A History of the Crusades by Steven Runciman, published in three volumes during 1951-1954, is an influential work in the historiography of the Crusades. It has seen numerous reprints and translations and in some respects has come to be seen as a standard work on the topic. Its scope encompasses the ascendancy of Islam in the Levant during the early 7th century through to the fall of the Kingdom of Acre in 1291. The work draws on a wide range of primary sources (in Greek, Latin, Armenian, Arabic). At the time of its initial publication it offered a novel interpretation of the crusades, less as a defensive war of Christendom against the threat of Islamic expansion but as a continuation of the destructive "barbarian invasions" that led to the fall of Rome. Furthermore, Runciman includes the history of the Byzantine Empire in his scope, moving his focus further east and at the same time curbing the "Romantic" view of the crusades as a heroic or chivalrous enterprise. It is undisputed that the work contains genuine scholarship and has been very influential on the generation of scholars educated during the 1950s to 1970s. Bernard Hamilton wrote in 2000: "The first two volumes of Sir Steven's History of the Crusades were published while I was an undergraduate. I read them with avidity [...] I still think that his History is one of the great literary works of English historical writing, which has inspired an interest in and enthusiasm for the crusades in a whole generation."