Crusading as a subject has expanded in recent years to include new fields of enquiry. This book examines how crusading historiography includes new areas and new definitions, focusing on two fundamental issues in current writing: why people went on crusades and what forms the western settlement in the Near East took.Crusading and the Crusader States explains how the idea of holy wars came into being and why they took the form that they did - a clash between western and Islamic societies that dominated the Middle Ages.