Violence in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 by Julius R. Ruff (review)

REVIEWS 259 crucial phase that begins with the disintegration of the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba and ends with the triumphal entrance of Fernando III into Seville. O’Callaghan parallels his narration of battles and territorial expansion with details of increasing papal engagement in the struggle against Islam in Spain, as well as the eventual institutionalization of such a struggle with the formation of military orders specific to Spain and the rulings of church councils that one could wear the cross either to go to oriental lands or Iberia. He also underscores the presence of French knights at battles such as Las Navas de Tolosa and English crusaders in important actions such as the capture of Valencia, thus highlighting the international and crusading nature of Christian combatants in the reconquest. Chapters 6–8 deal with the themes of “Warfare in the Crusading Era,” “Financing Reconquest and Crusade,” and “The Liturgy of Reconquest and Crusade,” respectively. These chapters provide a welcome insight into the concrete material and spiritual components (so intertwined in the medieval world) that made up the enterprises of reconquest and crusade. The epilogue brings forth the paradoxical relationship between the Spanish reconquest and the crusades as a whole. While O’Callaghan notes that the reconquest never captured the European popular imagination as the crusades to Palestine did, the former—in contrast to the latter—was ultimately triumphant, though not in sweeping terms. Indeed, after the death of King Alfonso XI in 1350, the reconquest went into almost a period of dormancy. Between 1350 and 1492 efforts to conquer the kingdom of Granada were intermittent at best, and O’Callaghan’s narrative puts Ferdinand and Isabella’s capture of that city in an anticlimactic light that, combined with the only partial success of attempts to capture and hold territories in the north of Africa in the sixteenth century, shows how “other considerations” had already begun to be of greater importance in the Spanish national consciousness, and that the idea of crusade by then lost its hold on the European imagination. This extremely well documented work relies on a large variety of archival materials drawn from both Christian and Muslim sources, as well as a vast quantity of secondary literature. Nevertheless, its length is highly manageable, both due the economy of its prose and the author’s capacity to offer succinct, yet nuanced narrations of the complex political, military, and religious interactions that characterized the period dealt with by the book. In setting out his reasons for writing this volume, O’Callaghan offers the following passionate meditation: Although events described in this book occurred eight or nine hundred years ago, the tragedy of 11 September 2001 forcibly reminded the world that the rhetoric of crusade, holy war, and jihād, with all the intensity of feeling those words conjure, is a powerful weapon and is still with us (xiv). When dealing with the themes of reconquest and crusade, clichés are easily invoked from many different ideological perspectives. This book is a welcome and sober contribution to the discussion. DAMIAN BACICH, Spanish and Portuguese, UCLA Julius R. Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: REVIEWS 260 Cambridge University Press 2001) xii + 253 pp. Julius R. Ruff’s Violence in Early Modern Europe is exactly what one would expect from the title—a broad survey outlining various forms of violent behavior during the early-modern period. Part of the “New Approaches to European History” series of textbooks edited by William Beik and T. C. W. Blanning, Ruff’s work presents little in the way of original research or methodological innovation. Instead, it condenses and summarizes the work of others, weaving a theoretical and historical tapestry that while designed to be accessible to readers at the undergraduate level, effectively sums up key issues that need to be considered by all students of history. Ruff’s effort is as much sociological and anthropological as it is historical, attempting to trace “the slow, but real, evolution in the violence of Europeans, individually and collectively, over three centuries” (3). The geographical and chronological breadth of Ruff’s study is staggering, especially for a book of such brief length. He draws on research of...