The forgotten wars that redefined Europe
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In the long story of the Crusades, it's often the battles between Richard I and Saladin that absorb much of the attention. But in this episode of the History Extra podcast, Alex Plaskovsky traces the story of the Baltic Crusades, a series of conflicts that often go overlooked, despite their transformative impact on the religious and political context of Central and Eastern Europe. Today I'm joined by Alex Plaskovsky and we're here to talk about the Baltic Crusades, which are perhaps the lesser known sibling of the crusades that take place down in the southern Levant. This is the topic of your book, The Black Cross, and I do want to begin with some context here. Obviously the clue is
partly in the name, but can you give us the top-line summary of the Baltic Crusades to orient us before we get into the details? So the Baltic Crusades were a series of wars where Catholic armies conquered pagan societies around the Baltic Sea region, so particularly in what is today northern Germany, northern Poland. This little bit of Russia in between Poland and Lithuania, the Kaliningrad oblast, tiny little bit of Belarus, and then up through Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and the borders of Western Russia. And the aim of these campaigns was to convert the pagan peoples of these regions to Catholic Christianity and to bring their lands under Catholic control. Some crusades were also
directed against what were called the Rus city-states to the east of these lands, particularly Novgorod, the main power in that region. And these are Eastern Orthodox Christians. So although the main targets were pagans, we also have Christians occasionally being included. So these were wars about religion, but also about land, power, and commerce. And can you then give us an overview of the timeline that we're working with here?
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