What do you think?
Rate this book
The Baltic Crusade
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 14, 2025
William Urban is sort of the doyen of the Baltic crusades amongst scholars writing in English, and this is, I think, his first publication.
It is very impressive, and provides many fascinating ideas and much information on this subject, but this book is, to start, primarily about the crusade in Livonia rather than in Prussia.
To start, this book involves a lot of dynastic and ecclesiastical disputes. There are a dizzying number of names of clerics and princes. The book delves into the politics of the abortive Danish empire of Waldemar, on the situation in Northern Germany, the relations between the Pope and the Emperor, and other such themes common to Mediaeval Central Europe in the broader perspective.
To a lesser extent light is shed on the politics of Novgorod and the formation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
I greatly appreciated Urban's comments on the importance of the sea, and it was a surprise to learn the means by which Livonia was subdued.
While reading I was struck by the similarities with later European imperialist ventures. Of course, it was dependent on maritime communications for one thing. But it resembled them in many other respects as well.
Alfred Crosby wrote in his groundbreaking work on ecological imperialism that the Levantine crusades were a sort of harbinger to European overseas expansion, and here we see that the Baltic crusades could be seen in a similar light.
They were undertaken at the initiative of a few zealots, and very few people in Germany participated. The actual numbers of knights were very small, either Swordbrothers or Teutonic.
While sometimes princes supported the crusades, and Urban is at pains to stress that many of the recruits and traders came from the middle-class, the actual number of crusaders was puny.
So how did they conquer Livonia? They did it by supporting the weaker tribes against the stronger, the classic means we see repeated again in colonial history.
This reminds one of nothing so much as the Spaniards in the Americas, which, incidentally, Urban says were a crusade in all but name. A few heavily-armoured mounted warriors in both Mexico and Livonia could provide a decisive advantage in tribal wars.
In addition, the crusade was sustained over a long period of time. Nine decades Urban says.
Much of the local resistance was in the nature of guerrilla or insurgent war, as we'd call it, and while the knights did suffer some big defeats (e.g. Durbe or Saule, or on Lake Peipus against Novgorod), most of the action was on this small scale.
This makes the reading somewhat repetitive, since it describes classic guerrilla or frontier warfare involving ambushes and raids and small skirmishes. But it recalls to one's mind the prolonged pacification campaigns waged by, for example, the French in Algeria or the Russians in the Caucasus.
The Livonians were, of course, pagans prior to the arrival of the Germans, though it's interesting to note that Pskov and Novgorod asserted a sort of shadowy claim of suzerainty. One wonders if Ivan and Peter revived these claims in their wars to seize the region.
Some attention was devoted to the rise of Lubeck and the Hansa, and here we can see an analogy with Venice and the Italian Republics in the Mediterranean, which likewise saw the crusades in the Levant as economic opportunities.
Perhaps the most interesting fact is one found in the epilogue, that the end of the crusade can be dated to 1290 and the treaty between the Teutonic Order and Lithuania settling the border between them.
By and large that border has remained stable ever since, reinforced, perhaps, by the conversion of the Latvians and Estonians to Lutheranism. There remains a sharp divide between Lithuania and Latvia to this day.
Even more importantly, the cultural domination of the Germans lasted until the expulsion of the Baltic Germans in WWII, which again recalls to us colonial examples (e.g. the British in India), as they remained a privileged elite under Swedish and Russian rule.
Urban makes the comment that subsequent attempts at Russification failed, and for this reason the crusades are of continued historical importance. Whatever claims Novgorod and Pskov had over the region, they lost out to the Germans and these people are firmly oriented towards Western European culture as opposed to Slavic and Russian.
This is of considerable geopolitical significance regarding Russia's access to the Baltic and her strategic position in Eastern Europe. This book does a wonderful job of describing how all of this came about, and Urban's final cautionary remarks about viewing the crusade in a nationalist way, of viewing it a 'national' German project, or the crusaders as all ruthless imperialists, could be easily applied to European colonialism in general.
It is very impressive, and provides many fascinating ideas and much information on this subject, but this book is, to start, primarily about the crusade in Livonia rather than in Prussia.
To start, this book involves a lot of dynastic and ecclesiastical disputes. There are a dizzying number of names of clerics and princes. The book delves into the politics of the abortive Danish empire of Waldemar, on the situation in Northern Germany, the relations between the Pope and the Emperor, and other such themes common to Mediaeval Central Europe in the broader perspective.
To a lesser extent light is shed on the politics of Novgorod and the formation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
I greatly appreciated Urban's comments on the importance of the sea, and it was a surprise to learn the means by which Livonia was subdued.
While reading I was struck by the similarities with later European imperialist ventures. Of course, it was dependent on maritime communications for one thing. But it resembled them in many other respects as well.
Alfred Crosby wrote in his groundbreaking work on ecological imperialism that the Levantine crusades were a sort of harbinger to European overseas expansion, and here we see that the Baltic crusades could be seen in a similar light.
They were undertaken at the initiative of a few zealots, and very few people in Germany participated. The actual numbers of knights were very small, either Swordbrothers or Teutonic.
While sometimes princes supported the crusades, and Urban is at pains to stress that many of the recruits and traders came from the middle-class, the actual number of crusaders was puny.
So how did they conquer Livonia? They did it by supporting the weaker tribes against the stronger, the classic means we see repeated again in colonial history.
This reminds one of nothing so much as the Spaniards in the Americas, which, incidentally, Urban says were a crusade in all but name. A few heavily-armoured mounted warriors in both Mexico and Livonia could provide a decisive advantage in tribal wars.
In addition, the crusade was sustained over a long period of time. Nine decades Urban says.
Much of the local resistance was in the nature of guerrilla or insurgent war, as we'd call it, and while the knights did suffer some big defeats (e.g. Durbe or Saule, or on Lake Peipus against Novgorod), most of the action was on this small scale.
This makes the reading somewhat repetitive, since it describes classic guerrilla or frontier warfare involving ambushes and raids and small skirmishes. But it recalls to one's mind the prolonged pacification campaigns waged by, for example, the French in Algeria or the Russians in the Caucasus.
The Livonians were, of course, pagans prior to the arrival of the Germans, though it's interesting to note that Pskov and Novgorod asserted a sort of shadowy claim of suzerainty. One wonders if Ivan and Peter revived these claims in their wars to seize the region.
Some attention was devoted to the rise of Lubeck and the Hansa, and here we can see an analogy with Venice and the Italian Republics in the Mediterranean, which likewise saw the crusades in the Levant as economic opportunities.
Perhaps the most interesting fact is one found in the epilogue, that the end of the crusade can be dated to 1290 and the treaty between the Teutonic Order and Lithuania settling the border between them.
By and large that border has remained stable ever since, reinforced, perhaps, by the conversion of the Latvians and Estonians to Lutheranism. There remains a sharp divide between Lithuania and Latvia to this day.
Even more importantly, the cultural domination of the Germans lasted until the expulsion of the Baltic Germans in WWII, which again recalls to us colonial examples (e.g. the British in India), as they remained a privileged elite under Swedish and Russian rule.
Urban makes the comment that subsequent attempts at Russification failed, and for this reason the crusades are of continued historical importance. Whatever claims Novgorod and Pskov had over the region, they lost out to the Germans and these people are firmly oriented towards Western European culture as opposed to Slavic and Russian.
This is of considerable geopolitical significance regarding Russia's access to the Baltic and her strategic position in Eastern Europe. This book does a wonderful job of describing how all of this came about, and Urban's final cautionary remarks about viewing the crusade in a nationalist way, of viewing it a 'national' German project, or the crusaders as all ruthless imperialists, could be easily applied to European colonialism in general.
Displaying 1 of 1 review