The Last Crusaders: The Hundred-Year Battle for the Center of the World

by Barnaby Rogerson

Overview

The acclaimed Medieval historian examines how the crusades of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries reshaped the Mediterranean and influenced the globe.

In the late Middle Ages, the forces of Christianity engaged in a series of epic battles with the Ottoman Empire. Though these later crusades are often overshadowed by earlier conflicts, they hold profound historical significance. They were the bridge between the medieval and modern periods, between feudalism and colonialism.

The Last Crusaders is about this period’s last great conflict between East and West. From the great naval campaigns and the ferocious struggle to dominate the North African shore, the hostility spread along trade routes, consuming nations and cultures, destroying dynasties, and spawning the first colonial empires in South America and the Indian Ocean.

“Rogerson's narrative colors the conflicts of the sixteenth century with the derring-do of kings, corsair, and crusaders; this book will keep readers up long past bedtime.” —Foreword Magazine

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781468302882
Publisher:	ABRAMS, Inc.
Publication date:	09/01/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	509
Sales rank:	59,335
File size:	7 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Barnaby Rogerson is the author of more than a dozen books, including The Heirs of Muhammad: Islam's First Century and the Origins of the Sunni-Shia Schism, The Prophet Muhammad: A Biography, and A History of North Africa. He has lived and worked in many parts of the Arab world, and currently resides in London.

Editorial Reviews

Rogerson (The Heirs of Muhammad) focuses not on the more famous Crusades from 1095 and 1291 but on a later series of clashes between various Christian and Muslim forces in and around the Mediterranean, beginning with Portugal's capture of the city of Ceuta in 1415 and ending with the battles at Lepanto in 1571 and Alcácer Quibir in 1578. The author imbues his text with an excellent sense of person and place, presenting not only the exploits of both Christians and Muslims on the battlefield but also their shifting alliances and internal struggles. He also explores how military technologies and the expansion of trade and exploration helped shape the conflicts. This thoroughly readable book provides a vibrant and well-organized account of this tumultuous, lesser-known period of history. Highly recommended for both students and general readers.—KM

Library Journal

A big-ideas survey of the consolidation of power by four rising militant powers in the 15th and 16th centuries: Portugal, Spain, the Ottoman Empire and the corsair admirals of North Africa. Historian Rogerson (The Heirs of Muhammad: Islam's First Century and the Origins of the Sunni-Shia Split, 2007, etc.) frames his enthusiastic narrative between two milestones: the sack of the North African Muslim coastal city of Ceuta by the Portuguese in 1415, which essentially launched the new superpower on its crusading orders; and the Battle of the Three Kings in 1578, during which the Portuguese boy king Sebastian was soundly defeated in his reckless invasion of Morocco. Between these two events, both the Christian West, led by the Hapsburg Empire, and the Muslim East, led by the Ottomans, battled each other for supremacy. The capture of Ceuta put Portugal on the world stage, after the humiliating defeats of Christendom's earlier crusades, and Prince Henry the Navigator embarked on a series of wildly successful trading missions to the south over the next half century. He brought back vast wealth in West African gold and slaves, opened trade routes that would stimulate explorers like Vasco da Gama and encouraged settlement of Brazil. The balance of powers shifted again when Mehmet II the Conqueror took Constantinople in 1453; while the union of Aragon and Castile in the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella created a powerful motivation to drive out the Moors from the Iberian peninsula by 1492. As a scholar of North African history, Rogerson does an especially thorough job of vivifying the personalities of the Muslims defending the Ottoman Empire, including the Barbary admiral Barbarossa, Suleyman theMagnificent and other sultans who expanded the empire, and the Moroccan ruler Sharif Al-Qaim. A dense but lively account that never loses sight of its vigorous thesis. Agent: Michael Alcock/Johnson & Alcock

Kirkus Reviews