The New Crusaders

My interest in the historiography surrounding the Crusades has been discussed on here several times over the years. While doing further reading of an article by the great and recently deceased doyen of Crusades scholars, Jonathan Riley-Smith, he mentioned a book I had not come across before, a book which amplifies some of his own work on the pivotal nature of the 19th century as a period in which imperial and colonial politics profoundly shaped modern mythologies about, and bogus "memories" of, the Crusades.

That book is Elizabeth Siberry, The New Crusaders: Images of the Crusades in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries. Originally published in hardcover in 2000 by Routledge, it was, just this past November, republished in a paperback version.

About this fascinating, lucidly written, and compelling study, which I very much commend to your reading, the publisher tells us the following:

This is the first comprehensive study of the use, abuse and development of the crusade image in popular and high culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing upon a diverse range of sources, mainly from the British Isles, but with parallels from Western Europe and North America, the author shows the different approaches to the history of the crusading movement and crusade images taken by the historian, composer, artist and author.