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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 3 page book review of an informative and well written history text by Jonathan Riley-Smith. No additional sources cited.
Page Count:
3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: KL9_khcrujks.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
serves to illuminate the question of why people would leave their homes and their families to risk their lives invading a land that was thousands of miles away. In so
doing, Riley-Smith makes this long-ago era come alive for the modern reader. The author begins with the birth of the crusading movement and proceeds chronologically through ten chapters to
the "Old Age and Death of the Crusading Movement," which occurred between 1523 and 1798 (Riley-Smith, 2005, p. 282). Riley-Smith shows how the violence of the Crusades was rationalized according
to the ethos of that era, which compared judged this military action in terms of the intentions involved, that is, in a manner analogous to that of a surgeon who
causes pain to a patient in order to save a life. But, also, he shows how the crusaders understood the topic of governance and politics. This involved viewing the
Holy Land as an "earthly extension to Christs universal empire," which meant that, to them, the Holy Land was Christs "royal domain or patrimony" (Riley-Smith, 2005, p. xxx). While
many modern scholars end to interpret the Crusades through post-colonial prism, focusing on factors that pertain to colonization, economics, politics, imperialism, etc., Riley-Smith explains the perspective of the vast majority
of crusaders, demonstrating that it was religious zeal and absolute devotion to the Roman Catholic Church, which was associated and intertwined with their ethnocentric myopia that provided the motivation
that caused the Crusades. Therefore, he shows how the contradictory nature of the Crusades came about-i.e., invading and killing a lands inhabitants in the name of Jesus Christ, the Prince
of Peace. As this suggests, this detailed text helps the modern student of history understand more thoroughly the complexity of this period of history. The first chapter offers necessary
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