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Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War Between the Muslim World and the Global North (The Henry L. Stimson Lectures Series) Hardcover – Illustrated, January 9, 2018

by William R. Polk (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 65 ratings
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What really happened in the centuries of conflict between Europe, Russia, China, America, and the peoples of the Muslim world
 
Crusade and Jihad is the first book to encompass, in one volume, the entire history of the catastrophic encounter between the Global North—China, Russia, Europe, Britain, and America—and Muslim societies from Central Asia to West Africa. William R. Polk draws on more than half a century of experience as a historian, policy planner, diplomat, peace negotiator, and businessman to explain the deep hostilities between the Muslim world and the Global North and show how they grew over the centuries.
 
Polk shows how Islam arose and spread across North Africa into Europe, climaxed in the vibrant and sophisticated caliphate of al-Andalus in medieval Spain, and was the bright light in a European Dark Age. Simultaneously, Islam spread from the Middle East into Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. But following the Mongol invasions, Islamic civilization entered a decline while Europe began its overseas expansion. Portuguese buccaneers dominated the Indian Ocean; the Dutch and the English established powerful corporations that turned India and Indonesia into colonies; Russian armies pushed down the Volga into Central Asia, destroying its city-states; and the Chinese Qing dynasty slaughtered an entire Central Asian people. Britain crushed local industry and drained off wealth throughout its vast colonies. Defeated at every turn, Muslims tried adopting Western dress, organizing Westernstyle armies, and embracing Western ideas.
 
None of these efforts stopped the conquests. For Europe and Russia, the nineteenth century was an age of colonial expansion, but for the Muslim world it was an age of brutal and humiliating defeat. Millions were driven from their homes, starved, or killed, and their culture and religion came under a century-long assault.
 
In the twentieth century, brutalized and and disorganized native societies, even after winning independence, fell victim to “post-imperial malaise,” typified by native tyrannies, corruption, and massive poverty. The result was a furious blowback.
 
A sobering, scrupulous, and frank account of imperialism, colonialism, insurgency, and terrorism, Crusade and Jihad is history for anyone who wishes to understand the civilizational conflicts of today’s world.
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Previous page
  1. Part of series
    The Henry L. Stimson Lectures Series
  2. Print length
    656 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Yale University Press
  5. Publication date
    January 9, 2018
  6. Dimensions
    9.3 x 6.4 x 1.8 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    9780300222906
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0300222906
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Crusade and Jihad is a challenging and interesting book, well written and provocative.”—Hugh Kennedy, Literary Review

"Polk harnesses decades worth of research, teaching, government service, and travel to explain what Islam is, how it has interacted with the non-Muslim world, and what the Muslim reaction to imperialism has been, covering the seventh century to the present day. . . . Recommended."—Choice



"In this magisterial treatment, William Polk cuts to the core of contemporary conflicts with the Muslim world, providing an accessible, often troubling account."—Joel Gordon,University of Arkansas, author of Nasser: Hero of the Arab Nation

“A tour de force covering centuries of history from the perspective of the people who lived in the Muslim world, Crusade and Jihad offers a fresh and urgently needed angle on the present crisis in the Middle East that you will find nowhere else.”—Ilan Pappe, author of The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel

“William Polk combines analytical powers and profound insight with a lively, accessible style. Crusade and Jihad is a pleasure for the mind.”—Uri Avnery, author and peace activist

"With rigor and sympathy, William Polk has produced a masterpiece to enlighten us all. No one who reads Crusade and Jihad will put it down without an increased knowledge and understanding of the crucial relationship between the Islamic and Western worlds."— Charles Glass, author of Tribes with Flags and Syria Burning: A Short History of a Catastrophe
 

“A brilliant study, analytical and authoritative. There are few overviews that can rival the depth and the range of this work.”— K.N. Chaudhuri, FBA Emeritus Professor of The History of European Expansion, European University, Florence, Italy

About the Author

William R. Polk taught Arabic literature and history at Harvard University and the University of Chicago, served on the Policy Planning Council under President Kennedy, negotiated the Egyptian-Israeli Suez ceasefire, and founded the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. He has written nineteen books.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0300222904
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Yale University Press; 1st edition (January 9, 2018)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 656 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780300222906
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0300222906
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.22 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 65 ratings

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William Roe Polk

William Roe Polk

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
65 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Oliver P. Cornell
5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on the contempory world of Islam
Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2018
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This is an extraordinary book. Couldn't put it down. William Polk is the kind of intellectual, with all the credentials one would need to write a book about the Muslim world, that can muster an enormous amount of facts and information about a subject that is critical to understanding our world today. It will open your eyes to what really is happening in the Muslim world today. Quite frankly, it is in some ways shocking. If you want to see what's happening in the Jihadi movements across the world, in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, this is book for you!
12 people found this helpful
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Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars Must read to understand how modern Middle East got this way
Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2018
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William Polk is probably one of the most qualified people to write on the subject dealing with the relationship between the East and the West. He traces history of both Eastern and Western peoples and works his way up to modern day trying to understand why the relationship between the two is the way it is.
8 people found this helpful
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william w franks
5.0 out of 5 stars William Polk's book clearly demonstrates what a consummate historian he ...
Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2018
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William Polk's book clearly demonstrates what a consummate historian he is. There is no contemporary historian who
writes with such authority, penetration and rare insight into such a complex issue as Jihad and what it means in the Islamic world.
This book delivers!
4 people found this helpful
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Daniel B. Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars A compelling history of the conflict between the largely Christian north and the Muslim south.
Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2018
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A compelling history of the conflict between the largely Christian north and the Muslim south. It explains a lot of what is happening today.
7 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Good
Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2018
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Good book
3 people found this helpful
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Helmut von Seydlitz
4.0 out of 5 stars Superb, albeit a bit of opinion
Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2018
In this book Mr. Polk has crafted an overview of the interactions between to great civilization: the "North," including Europe, the US, and, to a degree China and Japan. The other civilization, the "South," in the context of this work is the broader Islamic world, stretching from Morocco and Nigeria to Xinjiang and the Philippines. His aim is to show the interactions between these to "peoples" on a global scale. While this approach could easily have turned into a series of generalizations, Polk is clear that these areas encompass a wide range of cultures. What Polk focuses on are interactions between various countries both within and without these regions.

While Polk covers more or less the whole history of interaction between the North and South (Muhammad, the Ummayids, Abbasids, Fatimids, the Crusades, the Ottomans, etc) the real meat of the work is the colonial and post-colonial periods. He covers how the Europeans colonized, how their colonial subjects responded to imperialism, and the impact that said imperialism had on the post-colonial states and peoples. This is a very wide ranging book, covering such diverse topics as the Uiyghurs in China, the Dutch in Java, and Napolean in Egypt. For the most part Mr. Polk seems quite knowledgeable on these subjects. However, there are a few errors like referring to Sikhs as Hindus (he did rectify this error a couple hundred pages later) or referring to Peter the Her it's "People's Crusade" as the "Children's Crusade." Since I received an advance copy of this book through Netgalley these errors may have been corrected in the finished edition. While they did give me pause, they did little to distract from the overall narrative.

Due to the nature of the work, covering a vast range of geography and time periods, there is a fair amount of jumping from one location or year to another locale in another century. These jumps generally fit the theme of that section of the book, and Mr. Polk is generally good at reminding the reader of who is doing what. There is a fair amount of repetition but this generally works in the book's favor, refreshing the reader's memory, or driving home a point.

There is a fair amount of personal experience injected in this work. Mr. Polk has spent half a century either studying or engaging with the two regions and it shows in his work. He will periodically bring up a conversation he had with Nasser or an Algerian resistance leader, and these generally complement what he is discussing in that chapter. While this first hand experience could easily compromise the integrity of the work, he is quite clear when he is offering his personal views on a topic, frankly admitting that they are his own views. Whether one sees this as a detriment or benefit, I preferred the frank approach.

All in all, this was a very enjoyable and informative work. In spite of some errors and the author seeping his own history in (at least in a more open fashion than many authors) the book does an excellent job at covering the multitude of interactions between the North and South, and how important understanding their history is to comprehending the modern world.
12 people found this helpful
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Littoral Librarian
5.0 out of 5 stars EVERYTHING (quite possibly more than you want or need to know) about Islam-Christianity history, etc.
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2018
The subtitle of William Polk’s Crusade and Jihad really grabbed me: “The thousand-year war between the Muslim world and the Global North.” Maybe, I thought, THIS will help me understand the mess in the Middle East, the hatred of Muslims that is not only overt but seemingly encouraged under the current US Administration, and just the weirdness that surrounds religious conflict.

For starters, I am neither a Muslim nor a Christian, so I had not preconceived bias – but early on, I found myself thinking that a few very religious people I know would be reaching for the smelling salts by about the third page. The author’s extensive background (including roles as historian, policy planner, diplomat, peace negotiator, and businessman) and meticulous research are impressive, and the book is his attempt to “lay out in this book, as accurately as I could, what I think is actually so—not what we would like to be so…”

The book is extensively sourced and (be still, my librarian heart!) has an amazing index, so if there is a particular incident, individual, location, or other point of interest in the vast topic of Christian-Muslim history and relations, the reader can get right to it.

And, to be honest, by the time I was about 20% through the book, I had a flashback to 1968, when I was a history major in college, and became seriously depressed by my realization that history was just tales of who killed whom over and over, and that we were probably completely doomed – so I did what any disillusioned 19-year-old would do: I dropped out, got married, and read fiction for a few years. This book has MORE than enough detail for anyone with an interest in history, and I was woefully ignorant about MOST of what I learned while reading Crusade and Jihad. It’s not an easy read, but it is THOROUGH.

Although I had been a history major in college for a few years back in the 60’s, my retention was faulty enough that I only was vaguely aware of the history of Islam: I knew that after its beginning, Islam spread across North Africa into Europe, had a caliphate in medieval Spain, and was actually the “bright light in a European Dark Age.” But there was so much I didn’t know, and I had such huge gaps in awareness of the thousand years of battle. Polk labels the opposing sides as the “Global North and South,” and his book includes everything: Russian’s wars in the Caucasian Mountains, the Moro Rebellion, French rule in Algeria, the creation and rise of Hezbollah, and more, right up to Boko Haram, the Islamic State, the Taliban, and the ongoing disaster in Afghanistan.

Despite having spread throughout the Middle East, Africa, and into Southeast Asia, Islamic civilization (the Global South) began a decline at he same time that Europe (the Global North) began its overseas expansion. The Portuguese, Dutch, English, and Russians all participated in the defeat of Muslims, leading the conquered people to go so far as to try embracing Western concepts of dress, ideas, and armies. Then the 19th Century was basically a century-long assault of Muslims – from what seems like all sides. And finally we get to more recent history, where things have just totally convulsed in too many ways (for me) to comprehend.

TBH, it was too much for me, and while I really wanted to know more, perhaps not THIS much more. At the end of the book, what really had an impact was Polk’s frank discussion of the blindness many of us experience as we struggle to understand the hatred on both sides. One line really resonated with me: “An American newspaper editor once said that a dogfight on Main Street is more important than a war in a distant country.” America First, indeed. Very sad.

I suggested to a friend that they read the first 15-20% than move to the summary chapters, and skim the index to find any specific areas of interest. I don’t know many people who could really deal with the density and detail in this book.

But it is awesome, and I appreciate the opportunity to read this incredible book -- thanks to Yale University Press and NetGalley – in exchange for my honest review. Five huge stars.
14 people found this helpful
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Rameez Rahman
5.0 out of 5 stars A historical perspective on a current crisis
Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2019
William R Polk is an important figure, both as a historian and in his role during crucial phases in the US government. This books offers a much needed corrective on the "Islam vs the West" narrative. A must read for anyone interested in the issue.
2 people found this helpful
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graemebg
5.0 out of 5 stars Islam from Mohamed to the present
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 27, 2018
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This begins from just before Mohamed’s time and how he created a breakaway religious following which keeps reinventing itself and divides and the power struggles are endless all over the Muslim world right to today. The Crusades, carried out with great loss of life could not bring peace and all the Western Nations have failed miserably to achieve peace with the Muslims. A book well researched and hard to put down.
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Rob
1.0 out of 5 stars It is not an accurate book
Reviewed in France on March 21, 2018
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It is not an accurate book! William P. Polk is an "expert" in history ... Following Mr. Polk, Ceuta is still a Portuguese city. But Ceuta sided with Spain when Portugal regained its independence (Treaty of Lisbon in 1668). Etc.
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Daft Monk
5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional & much needed overview
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 19, 2019
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All my life I have seen and read news, read books, and watched doccumentaries on Islam's relationship with the West.
But having never made any formal study, my knowledge was piecemeal at best. The comprehensive overview provided in this book helped me draw all the threads together and see the big picture.
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