The Impact of Holy Land Crusades on State Formation : War Mobilization , Trade Integration , and Political Development in Medieval Europe

Holy Land Crusades were among the most significant forms of military mobilization to occur during the medieval period. Crusader mobilization had important implications for European state formation. We find that areas with large numbers of Holy Land crusaders witnessed increased political stability and institutional development as well as greater urbanization associated with rising trade and capital accumulation, even after taking into account underlying levels of religiosity and economic development. Our findings contribute to a scholarly debate regarding when the essential elements of the modern state first began to appear. Although our causal mechanisms— which focus on the importance of war preparation and urban capital accumulation— resemble those emphasized by previous research, we date the point of critical transition to statehood centuries earlier, in line with scholars who emphasize the medieval origins of the modern state. We also point to one avenue by which the rise of Muslim military and political power may have affected European institutional development. The rise and spread of Islam took place so rapidly that in the century following the death of Mohammed, large parts of the Mediterranean basin—much of which previously had been under Roman rule—came under the leadership of Muslim caliphs. Islam’s success as a political-religious movement brought the Muslim religion to the Iberian peninsula in Western Europe and, eventually, to the Byzantine capital of Constantinople in southeastern Europe. In response to a plea from the Byzantine emperor under threat of being overrun by invading Muslim Turks, in 1095 CE Pope Urban II appealed to Christians in the West to assist their eastern brethren, with a further goal of recapturing Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim control. The military mobilization that followed came to be known as the Crusades, which took place for the next two centuries. The Holy Land Crusades were, perhaps, the largest-scale military mobilizations of the medieval period and a defining feature of a critical period for the establishment of Many thanks to Carles Boix, Gary Cox, Mark Dincecco, James Fearon, Murat Iyigun, Kivanc Karaman, Steve Krasner, David Laitin, Ron Rogowski, David Stasavage, and Ken Schultz for helpful comments. Harry Doshay, Fatima Maan, Tristan Poasa, and Patrick Sheldon Wee provided outstanding research assistance. Any errors are our own. International Organization 70, Summer 2016, pp. 551–586 © The IO Foundation, 2016 doi:10.1017/S0020818316000096 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818316000096 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. Lane Medical Library / Stanford University Medical Center, on 28 Apr 2017 at 22:52:43, European states. Blaydes and Chaney argue that feudalism—first introduced in the ninth century—played a decisive role in the emergence of European institutional exceptionalism, particularly as feudal associations encouraged early forms of executive constraint.1 But feudalism also entrenched personal elite relationships that hindered productive economic and political competition.2 Ruggie describes the shift from medieval feudalism—with its multiple and overlapping layers of sovereign authority—to a system of territorial states as “the most important contextual change in international politics in this millennium.”3 Explanations for this transition abound, yet we are aware of none that consider how the rise of Muslim military and political power may have affected European institutional development.4 The Holy Land Crusades—which arose in response to the expansion of Muslim polities in the East—impelled Western Europe to break from feudalism and move toward the creation of increasingly impersonal and consolidated states. Although the state structures that emerged were not always highly capable or centralized, they nonetheless represented a significant discontinuity from those that existed in the recent past. European monarchs began to enjoy greater political power over what had previously been a loose network of decentralized local elites. Indeed, Spruyt argues the early twelfth century was a turning point in the development of state formation in Western Europe during which time “taxation, administration, and the subsequent policing of society increased the ability of the state to intervene in all aspects of social life.”5 By 1500 CE—and the emergence of long-distance, Atlantic trade opportunities—European monarchs were already well on their way to developing the types of growth-enhancing institutions that seemed critical for industrialization and, eventually, democratic consolidation.6 Yet scholars specializing in political economy have paid relatively little attention to institutional developments in the late medieval period when Europe first began to enjoy the institutional advantages that facilitated colonial ventures, trade expansion, and technological innovation. We explore four causal channels by which crusader mobilization strengthened nascent states. First, the departure of relatively large numbers of European elites for the Holy Land reduced the absolute number of elites who might serve as challengers to the king, increasing the stability of ruling monarchies. Second, crusade tithes were also among the first “per-head” taxes to be levied on European populations, creating precedent for later forms of centralized taxation and encouraging the 1. Blaydes and Chaney 2013. 2. North, Wallis, and Weingast 2009. 3. Ruggie 1983, 273. Fischer 1992, 433, describes the debate between structural realists and critical theorists over whether “anarchic power politics constitutes the universal condition.” Ruggie argues that structural realists who see systemic continuity in international politics are hard-pressed to describe, let alone explain, the emergence of the state system. 4. See North and Thomas 1973, for one prominent political economy explanation for the decline of feudalism. 5. Spruyt 2002, 132. 6. See North and Weingast 1989; DeLong and Shleifer 1993; Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2005; Stasavage 2010; and Van Zanden, Buringh, and Bosker 2012. 552 International Organization https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818316000096 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. Lane Medical Library / Stanford University Medical Center, on 28 Apr 2017 at 22:52:43, development of representative institutions. Third, the large-scale sale of land by rural elites seeking to finance crusade expeditions undermined existing feudal institutional forms. Finally, the Crusades were a catalyst for the reintegration of Western Europe into global trade networks with implications for the rise of towns and urban governance structures. Using an original data set of the geographic origins of elite crusaders, we find that areas with large numbers of Holy Land crusaders saw increased political stability, a higher probability of establishing parliamentary institutions, higher downstream levels of tax revenue, and greater urbanization, even after controlling for a number of possible confounders. Our findings contribute to a scholarly debate regarding when the critical institutions associated with the modern state first appeared. The existing literature on state formation has been focused on three key questions: When did nascent, territorial states first emerge? How did territorial states come to predominate over other forms of governance, such as city states? And how did norms of state sovereignty evolve? Prominent existing work has focused on how territorial states came to displace other institutional forms of governance7 and when and how sovereignty emerged and evolved as an international norm.8 The origins of states and the state system, however, remain opaque. Although our causal mechanisms linking the Crusades to state formation, particularly our focus on the importance of war preparation and urban capital accumulation, resemble those emphasized by Tilly,9 we date the point of critical transition to modern statehood centuries earlier than Tilly.10 As a result, our focus on institutional developments in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is more in line with scholars who emphasize the medieval origins of the modern state.11 Our findings also relate to a small, but growing, literature that considers how developments in the Islamic world affected the evolution of European political institutions. For example, existing scholarly work has considered how historical developments in the Ottoman Empire influenced religious reform and interstate 7. Spruyt 1994a. 8. See Krasner 1995 and 1999; Philpott 2001; and Lake 2003. 9. Tilly 1992. 10. Indeed, Tilly 1992 neglects the Crusades both as a form of war mobilization and as a catalyst for the rise of capitalist interests, focusing instead on changes in military technology that took place in the late fifteenth century, including the rise of mercenaries and development in firearm technology. 11. See, for example, Strayer 1970; Levi 1988; Spruyt 1994a; and Burke 1997. Building on Tilly 1994 and Levi 2002, we take a relatively broad view of the state as a multidimensional constellation of related factors. Levi 2002, 34, argues that the state is an abstract, composite concept that cannot be encompassed in a single variable. In particular, she defines the state as “a complex apparatus of centralized and institutionalized power that concentrates violence, establishes property rights, and regulates society within a given territory while being formally recognized as a state by international forums” (Levi 2002, 40). Similarly, Tilly 1994, 14, applies the term state generously to organizations that command substantial means of coercion and successfully claim durability over other uses of coercion in at least one bounded territory. Branch 2011 argues that the development