I have complained about it before but I heard on of the guests from guerrilla history on the deprogram make this argument and it made me want to gouge my eyes out. This kind of trans historical argumentation is both stupid and unmarxist, just stop! Sorry I felt the need to vent.
These states were not imperialist and they weren't settler colonies. This framing doesn't make any fucking sense when transfered to a medieval context. Like the best you could say is that the Italian city states represented an early firm of merchant capital, but even then that is an incredibly complex phenomenon that has only a tenuous connection to modern capitalism. Calling these city states early capitalism is just a fancy way of saying "lol u hate capitalism yet you exchange good or service! Curious!"
Seriously just stop. I don't know why this set me off but it was like a week ago and I am still mad about it.
If you are trying to argue continuity of specific phenomenon between timeperiods, then yeah it needs to be specific if you want to draw concrete informational value from the analysis. If you want to say all intergroup violence for some kind of gain throughout history is the same then yeah sure the crusades and modern imperialism are the same.
With peculiar, idiosyncratic definitions of words, we end up with empires without imperialism, and fascism without fascists. Maybe someone will soon propose communism that's independent of communists, or maybe they already have.
If one nation conquers another nation with the intention of fully integrating it into the former's economic, cultural, and political systems, rather than just being an ally or a tributary, is that too broad or too narrow of a definition of the process of an empire?
I wouldn't call the crusader kingdoms part of an empire but it's a lot more than simply "intergroup violence".
Not really sure what you are arguing? The crusader kingdoms in the Levant were trying to secure holy sites for pilgrimage as their primary goal and function at the outset.
That's what the aggressors claimed, and what the Eurocentric historiography still claims. Simple pilgrimages faced more of a threat from the sea and disease than from the Arabs- I mean, come on. Everybody knows they were out for conquest, which is exactly what they did. It was an outlet for non-inheriting nobles to expand into new lands, and a means of exercising dominance.
Does the definition of settler colonies not include the Teutonic Knights' conquests in the Baltic, or the gentry in the Danelaw?
The gist of my first response is that you're being pedantic by saying "actually it's not imperialism in the very specific way my preferred author defines that word". If it flies like a duck, eats like a duck, and fucks like a duck, we can categorize it in with ducks.
we can actually look this up and see the vast majority of participants did not stay or intend to stay, and those that did were not predominately 'non-inheriting'. this is one of those things that some guy just mused at one point and it sounds correct enough on the surface. but it's actually a wild proposition to assume a guy who will only inherit if his older brother dies would travel thousands of km instead of taking territory closer to home, or killing his brother
"Simple pilgrimages faced more of a threat from the sea and disease than from the Arabs"
Yes but those were accepted background things, the will of god. The disruption caused by the conquests in the east by the seljuk turks, not Arabs, was a very new, and controllable by human will, phenomenon.
"Everybody knows they were out for conques"
I am really sorry but the actual history of the crusades to the lavant doesn't support your supposition. It's also interesting that you cite my, and the current, scholarship as eurocentric when you are just parroting the old eurocentric view of the crusades as being this metaphysical clash of civilizations. The crusades to the Baltic and central Europe were definitely interesting, and part of a longer trend of germanic migration eastward that had been going on for centuries, and different from thise to the levant. The Reconqista could definitely be argued as an origin point for European colonial expansion, but thay was at best at the tail end of the crusading phenomenon, and many scholars would argue was a distinct social formation from the others. Sometimes a bird is a duck and sometimes it is a heron, just screaming loudly that it's the same because all birds are ducks doesn't make it true.