The Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, the only substantial conquest made by the West in the various Crusades, was an odd business. It did not last beyond the 13th century, yet it represented a kind of bridgehead driven right into the heart of Islam, and its survival was surprising considering its relative isolation and the hostility of the nations around it. Though the nominal aim of the Crusades was to recover the Holy Places from Muslim desecration and free fellow-Christians, much of their real impetus came from the ambition of various European noblemen to win themselves, if not kingdoms, at least sizeable estates (the Norman Conquest of England and Ireland was very similar). Prof Prawer appears to be as adept in the domestic politics of the Middle Ages as he is in its complicated theological systems.
He sees the Crusader kingdom as being, in effect, a forerunner of the Western colonialism which in the 19th century was to make Europe master of most of the surface of the globe.