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Crusader Castles and Modern Histories. By Ronnie Ellenblum. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-521-86083-3. Maps. Tables. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Indexes. Pp. xi, 362. $99.00.
This is a highly important study of both the historiography of castle building in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem and of the evolution of the castles themselves. The work begins with a fascinating survey of how nationalist and colonialist discourses appropriated the legacy of crusading, architecture and archaeology and used it to reflect their contemporary agendas; the French invasion of Algeria in 1830 as a "new" crusade being the most obvious example. These agendas have, in turn, shaped historians' analyses of, amongst other things, the development of crusader castles. Ellenblum then moves to more recent writing, most notably the work of Prawer and Smail, studies that date from the late 1950s onwards. These pillars of historical respectability had argued that the Franks, fearful of local Muslims and outside invaders, shut themselves off in cities and fortresses. Ellenblum's previous book Prankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge,...