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Living Medieval Magazine , 2023
The article titled 'A Sea of Trade and Crusades' highlights the importance of international trade between the Christian and Muslim worlds between the 12th and 14th centuries, noting the lifeline link between trade and the Crusader States of the Near East in the High Middle Ages. The article highlights the importance of chronicles in these types of study, such as the 'Nuova Cronica' written by Giovanni Villani in 14th-century Florence.
Proceedings of the International Symposium of Boat and Shiparchaeology in Mainz, 2009
The time of the crusades (1095-1291) and of the occupation of the Holy Land can be considered to be one of the biggest „take offs“ in the medieval times with widespread influences and a cultural exchange all over Europe. Exchange has always been related to and connected with transport: in those time the travelling by land and journeys by sea. The transfer and exchange of shipbuilding technology and technology experience between the Mediterranean and Northern Europe in the Middle Ages is one of the main open scientific questions of our time. On the basis of general considerations regarding shipbuilding technology we think of more or less separate shipbuilding technology developments on both sea areas. New investigations in the Mediterranean with the discovery of sensational engravings in Majorca, Cyprus and Greece connected with new discovered written sources of frisian origin shed a light of the technological similarities of the used watercrafts and implementation of the influence of hundreds of north european ships travelling the around 4000 sm to Acre (Akkon). Portugal played on a very early stage an important role for the crusaders travelling over sea from Ribe (Danmark) and other north european harbours to Akkon. The information Odo of Deuil mentioning concerning the Siege of Lissabon could be given as an example for the intensity of seatransport already in the Second Crusade. In 1147 164 north european ships with 2000 people aboard reached Lissabon. Until now very little research was done how this ships look like and how the could be transformed into vessels which could transported such a great amount of people on a month journey. In connection with investigations of maritime landscape infrastructure of the stopovers and the information we gain from the written sources concerning repair and the building of ships in Akkon, Tyros and Antiochia we will raise a colourful picture which still lay momentary in the shadow of resarch which was focused mainly on the maritime activities in the Mediterranean.
A Brief Analysis of Crusader Maritime Technology: Changes over Time
A brief, heavily historiographical survey of maritime technology in use during the Crusades, with attention paid to the effects of methods of production and predominant weather patterns in the Mediterranean. Paper written for an undergraduate class at the University of New Hampshire in 2005.
Crusades on the Water: A New (Integrated) View
2011
My paper today seeks to integrate sources from across time, cultures, and disciplines to achieve a better understanding of the Crusades, and to change our focus from land to sea. To answer Tyerman’s famous question: Yes, there were Crusades in the 12 century – a plurality of them, in the ‘military intention’ view of Riley-Smith and Phillips. All around the European Atlantic, said Levecq: ... the river peoples... became globally integrated... and the frontier regions, won in an outburst of faith, became more and more... [important] to develop and to control maritime commerce for political and economic benefit.
According to John Pryor, medievalists today must cultivate a better understanding of maritime history, especially Crusader history, seeing this period from “… the gaze of a seaman… from the masthead of a ship.” Both Crusaders and their opponents had significant ocean coastlines: Control of this coast, especially at rivers, was key to controlling the interior lands, not merely for administration or defense, but also for supply and trade functions that were both necessary and very valuable. One neglected area of maritime history and of the Crusades was the twelfth-century struggle for control in the Atlantic. Wrote John France: “The problem was political, for at the time... [Andalusia was] in Muslim hands, making the journey very hazardous in a period when all shipping clung to the land.” To this end, the Crusaders clearly employed a strategy of wresting control of key river-mouth ports by attacking along the coasts of four maritime frontiers (Atlantic Iberia, Mediterranean Iberia, Sicily/North Africa, and Cyprus/Jerusalem). Among these four contemporary maritime frontiers, this article focuses on the Crusaders fighting to take Atlantic Iberia (Andalusia) from the Almohad (Muwahid) Empire of Morocco in order to secure passage via Straits of Gibraltar and the survival of the Crusaders’ “Outremer” in Jerusalem.
Maritime Logistics in the Age of the Northern Crusades
2017
This is the cumulative doctoral thesis of Dr. Daniel Zwick based on five peer-reviewed articles and a main part, which is monographic in character (although this thesis is not officially a monographic thesis). The doctoral project was based at the University of Kiel and took place in cooperation with the University of Southern Denmark (Syddansk Universitet) and the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde (Vikingeskibsmuseet). It examines the maritime organisation of predominantly Danes and Germans in the period of the Northern Crusades, which includes navigation and orientation, fleet organisation, but also shipbuilding and the establishment of a maritime trade network and other maritime-related infrastructure. While the chronological framework of this study is defined by a historical period - of the Northern Crusades - spanning four centuries, a great variety of historical and archaeological sources are addressed in the course of the investigation. This study starts with an examination of the natural physical landscape of the Baltic Sea in chapter 1 and how its populations adapted to geographical and climatic factors in the maritime sphere. Chapter 2 examines the logistical links from the North Sea to the Baltic Sea, bypassing the Jutland peninsula, which opened up to a large-scale colonization and urbanisation movement and long-distance trade networks from western European, particularly from Danish and German places of origin in the wake of the Wendish, Baltic and Prussian crusades, starting in 1147. The foundation of Schleswig and Lübeck and the growing importance of the Ummelandfahrt are identified as paradigm shifts, which can be both corroborated by privileges on the one hand and ship-finds on the other hand. Early Bremen-type vessels seem to have played a particularly important role, and presently the overwhelming evidence points for a southern Jutlandic origin of this type. The great variances observed in the constructional characteristics strongly suggest a maritime organisation that was not bound to a singular local tradition, but can be most likely linked to long-distance trade networks of this time, which bounded merchants of different denominations together, such as the Gotlandic-Lübeckian gilda communis or the fraternities danicum in Cologne. While the previous chapter was most focussed on the legal and environmental precondition as well as the driving forces – i.e. actors – behind the opening up of the Baltic Sea, chapter 3 also investigates maritime organisation, but its practical aspects, i.e. navigation, orientation and fleet organisation. A major focus of this chapter lies on the re-evaluation of a 13th-century itinerary – colloquially known as King Valdemar's Iitnerary – describing the sea route between the then Danish territories of Blekinge and Estonia, along the Swedish and Finnish coastline. By drawing analogies to similar sources which served the orientation and army and fleet logistics, a new interpretation can be suggested according to which the itinerary was meant as basis for calculating travel time and organising leding fleets. This chapter is first and foremost focussed on Danish maritime logistics to its Estonian enclaves. This is compared and contrasted to an evaluation of actual 13th-century ship-finds in chapter 4 in the wider region associated with the Baltic Crusades, i.e. Riga (historical province of Livonia, today Latvia), the Matsalu Bay (Estonia), Kuggmaren (Sweden) and Egelskär (Finland), all of which – except the Riga 3 ship – are Bremen-type vessels too. In the concluding section, the question is raised whether Bremen-type vessels corrospond to the historical cog type, which was frequently mentioned in contemporary chronicles and source in connection with the crusades in general (as was deduced in paper E) and this region in particular. In contrast to the preceding parts, chapter 5, is first and foremost focused on trade – i.e. Baltic timber trade – and examines the probable impact of the availability of high quality Baltic oak on western European shipbuilding. The Beluga Ship (paper C) is introduced as exemplary case study, from which contextual study (paper D) further research questions are derived, assessing the use of timber imports in the light of possible cost-benefit decisions. Chapter 6 examines the local transport geography of a castle where lime was cut and distributed via ship. A nearby wreck's role within this context is analysed. In its conclusion, Chapter 6 takes a longue durée approach to make a hypothesis for Saaremaa's strategical importance, reaching back in time to the very beginning of the chronological framework of this study, i.e. the early attempts of the Danes to gain a foothold on Saaremaa in the Valdemarian period in the 12th and 13th centuries.
[Forthcoming in Subsidia] Medieval Denmark represents an important opportunity for interdisciplinary study and for testing a new theory of what creates a crusade. The year 1216 marks a key point in the transformation of Denmark from its origins as a Scandinavian domain into a nation, a waxing global military power possessing and projecting the foremost medieval maritime technology into the Baltic Sea. This paper investigates the flow of ideas about technology and culture, combined with religious, economic and political events from the Atlantic coasts, around the Kattegat Straits and the Cimbrian Peninsula, and into the Baltic Sea as the Danes battled the pagan Slavs (Wends) to secure their land and transform their sea. This paper provides an overview of the dynamic early centuries in Baltic crusading as the Danes developed their society while building and projecting their sea-power, militarily moving from a defensive posture to an offensive crusading-colonizing stance as medieval shipbuilding technology (cog / kogge) combined with Denmark's unique geographical position to create culture, economic developments, and theopolitical powers which manifested as crusades and colonization in Estonia. PLEASE NOTE the foundational study: "http://www.academia.edu/671249/" (the Cog ship's capabilities and logistics in its early Crusades-era form)