Crusader states

The Crusader states, c. 1100

Asia Minor and the Crusader states, c. 1140

The Crusader states were the feudal territories created by Catholic Western Europeans during Holy Wars, called crusades because they carried cross-markings as symbols of their goal, to establish the Christian faith in territories under the sway of Islam or paganism.

The name is mainly given to the states founded by crusaders in the Orthodox and Muslim Eastern Mediterranean during the Crusades in the 12th and 13th centuries. However it can also apply to the other territorial gains (often small and short-lived) elsewhere against Muslim and pagan adversaries.

Facing Islam

While the Reconquista, the centuries long fight to reconquer the Iberian peninsula from the Arabo-Barbaresque Moors (who called it al-Andalus), fills all the criteria for crusades, it is not customary to call the resulting Catholic principalities there Crusader states.

The term is usually reserved for the more aggressive crusades:

In the Levant

The first four Crusader states were created in the Levant immediately after the First Crusade:

• The first Crusader state, the County of Edessa, was founded in 1098.
• The Principality of Antioch, historically in Syria, but Turkish since 1939, seat of an old patriarchate
• The County of Tripoli (the Lebanese city, not the Libyan capital)
• The Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted until 1291, when the city of Acre fell. There were also many vassals of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the four major lordships (seigneuries) being:
  • The Principality of Galilee
  • The County of Jaffa and Ascalon
  • The Lordship of Oultrejordain
  • The Lordship of Sidon

The Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia existed prior to the Crusades, but became semi-westernized by the (French) Lusignan dynasty.

Cyprus

During the Third Crusade, Crusaders founded the Kingdom of Cyprus. Richard I of England conquered Cyprus on the way to Holy Land, and the island came to be ruled by descendants of the displaced kings of Jerusalem until 1489.

In Greece

During the Fourth Crusade, the Byzantine Empire was conquered and divided into four states:

• The Latin Empire, in Constantinople (never plundered so badly), forcing the 'Greek' Byzantine emperor to reside in Nicaea
• The Kingdom of Thessalonica
• The Duchy of Athens (Catalans)
• The Principality of Achaea

• The Venetians also created the Duchy of the Archipelago (also known as the Duchy of Naxos) in the Aegean Sea in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade. Thessalonica and the Latin Empire were reconquered by the Byzantines by 1261. Descendants of the Crusaders continued to rule in Athens and the Peloponnesus or Morea until the 15th century when the area was conquered by the Ottoman Empire.

• The military order of the Knights Hospitaller of Saint John established itself on Rhodes (and several other Aegean islands; see below) in 1310, with regular influx of new blood, until the Ottomans finally drove them out (to Malta) in 1522.
  • the island of Kastellorizo (like Rhodos part of the Aegean Dodecannesos) was in 1309 taken by the Knights of St. John Hospitaller of Jerusalem, but fell under Egyptian (Ottoman) occupation 1440 until 1450, was then ruled by the Kingdom of Naples, and since 1635 under Venetian rule (as Castellorosso; still only Catholic states, not counting the Muslims), since 1686 again part of the Ottoman Empire, finally since 1821 - 1833 under Greek (i.e. orthodox) control during the Greek war of independence.
  • other neighbouring territories temporarily under the order were: the cities of Smyrna (now Izmir; 1344-1402), Attaleia (now Antalya; 1361-1373 and Bodrum (1412-14..), all three in Anatolia, the Turkish homeland; the Greek Isthmus city of Corinth (1397-1404)), the city of Salona (ancient Amphissa; 1407-1410) and the islands of Ikaria (1424-1521) and Kos (1215-1522), all now in Greece

Minor Mediterranean fiefs

Even though these are so small that they usually get forgotten there have been various other feudal entities (statehood is a rather blurred concept in European Feudalism) resulting from minor crusading against Islam in the Mediterranean, such as:

• Djerba and Tabarca, islands off the coast of present Tunisia

Exterminating Paganism in Europe

Prussia

During the Northern Crusades, a Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights was founded in Prussia to combat pagan tribes.

There were various other military order polities.

Diverted crusaders

Though it is not custormary to call them crusader states, and indeed they were no longer crusading, there have been other states run by formal crusading orders, notably in the following colonies (where the Catholic faith was, to apply the original crusading logic, to be established amongst pagan natives and African slaves, and defended against Protestant heretics in the rival struggle between European colonizing naval powers; the vissituted quoted don't actually testify to much religious zeal), notably by the Knights of St. John Hospitaller of Jerusalem, who held state power in:

• the Antillian island of St.Kitts, then known as Saint-Christophe (the same saint, in French), was a possession of the Knights of Malta 1651 - 1665 (afterwards again French, ultimately British).
• in the present U.S. Virgin Islands, 1651 till 1653 the same Order of Malta ruled on St. Croix.
• still in the Antilles, the island of Saint Barthélémy, a French colony since 1648, was ruled by the Knights of Malta 1651 - 1656, but then abandonded, 1659 again French colony, March 1785 a Swedish colony, since 16 March 1878 for good a French possession, as part of Guadeloupe.

Sources and references

• Westermann, Großer Atlas zur Weltgeschichte (in German)
• WorldStatesmen- see each present country