In The Crusader States & Their Neighbours: A Military History, 1099–1187, Nicholas Morton takes a fresh look at the history of the military encounters between the Frankish states of the Latin East and their various Christian and Muslim neighbors in the twelfth century. Morton's work differs from that of others in his careful situation of the Latin polities within their Levantine context for understanding of how and why Frankish armies and their commanders operated the way they did. Moreover, his analysis is grounded in data gathered from the major Frankish, Eastern Christian, and Muslim sources in translation that resulted in “a detailed spreadsheet agglomerating information on every reported military encounter to occur between 1099–1187” containing nearly 1300 entries (5–6). Although this spreadsheet is not included in the volume, the book is replete with tables derived from it, which Morton uses to support his arguments. Over the six chronological chapters and final thematic one, Morton successfully argues that the fall of the Latin East was anything but preordained, that the Frankish forces continued to be effective well into the 1180s, and that Saladin's victory at the Battle of Hattin was due not so much to individual blunders or Frankish decay as to minor changes in tactics that resulted in the massive Frankish defeat.

The first two chapters, “Frankish Expansion” and “Friends and Foes (1099–1129),” cover the early decades of the Latin East's existence, the former with a focus on the military activities of the four original crusader states (Jerusalem, Tripoli, Antioch, Edessa), and the latter on the activities of the other regional powers (Fatimids, Turks, and Armenians). Morton leans heavily on the data he has collected, with tables charting the numbers of offensive and defensive incursions launched by each of the polities broken down by decade from 1099 until 1187. Although the priorities of survival and securing resources in the first decades of the fledgling states’ existence are well known and discussed, Morton points to the quantitative data to break down what seems to have been the more specific goals and strategy of each polity. In the third chapter, “Aleppo and Damascus (1117–29),” Morton convincingly argues that Antioch and Jerusalem's failures to take Aleppo and Damascus respectively stemmed from not having gained the goodwill of the populace.

The next two chapters consider the period that in the past has been referred to as the Counter-Crusade and echo, from the medieval military history perspective, what medieval Middle East scholars have long known: Turkic leaders focused more on internal politics than on eradicating the Franks. Chapter 4, “The Evolving Balance of Power (1130s–1148),” traces the political and military maneuvers of the various regional powers during Imad al-Din Zangi's reign, culminating with the conquest of Edessa in 1144. After demonstrating that Zangi's activities were oriented toward securing power against other Turkic groups, and that none of the Frankish states, including Edessa, were in a particular military decline, Morton then considers the question of why the Franks ceased to expand territorially in this period. The chapter ends with a reassessment of the siege of Damascus during the Second Crusade in which he persuasively suggests that the advance went against the military logic of the region (117). Chapter 5, “The Rise of Nur al-Din 1149–74,” actually covers the entire period of Nur al-Din's reign, and, again, Morton argues against the idea of his belonging to a wave in anti-Christian or anti-Frankish sentiment inspired by the fervor of jihad. Perhaps the most important contribution of the chapter is Morton's discussion of the concept that the Latin East suffered from a chronic shortage of soldiers. He provides a rich and valuable discussion of the market for paid soldiery in the eastern Mediterranean, showing that Jerusalem was a major center for their recruitment. This part of the chapter beautifully represents how military history can inform other histories by exploring the implications of these army sizes for the economic wealth and demography of the states.

The following chapter, “Saladin and the Battle of Hattin,” surveys Saladin's career before launching into an analysis of military principles followed by the region's polities in the twelfth century. Morton agrees with other scholars that the kingdom had lost its upper hand but disagrees that internal conflicts of the reign of Baldwin IV weakened it (175). In his reevaluation of the Battle of Hattin, Morton argues that neither Guy de Lusignan nor Saladin did anything extraordinary apart from Saladin's ability to somehow disrupt the fighting march. Turning to military tactics, he considers the use of pitched battles and confirms John France's contention that the Franks did not avoid them. In his analysis of the behaviors of Seljuk Turks (whom he unfortunately takes to calling just “Turks”), Morton suggests that given the tendency for empires to dissolve upon a leader's death, there was a lot of pressure on heirs to demonstrate their ability in pitched battle, thus driving Turkic military leaders into taking risks more so than did the Franks (201).

In the last sections of the book Morton seeks to answer specific questions, but unsatisfyingly (although perhaps necessarily), he lands on conjectural answers. In the final chapter, “Innovation and Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Evolution of Near Eastern Warfare,” he finds that the Franks and the undifferentiated Turks continued to engage in practices that they had prior to the crusades. The consideration of the extent of exchange with the Byzantines lands on an unhelpfully indeterminate note: given methodological problems and the sources currently available “it is not possible to reach a precise verdict” on the issue (241).

In the conclusion, Morton asks what caused the crusader states’ collapse in 1187 and considers three potential culprits: (1) the Franks had become too soft (as claimed by contemporaries, (2) they could never successfully drive into the Syrian interior, and (3) they could never deal with the speed of their enemies. While Morton rightly dismisses the idea that the Franks grew weaker over time, he posits only that their enemies became better at exploiting Frankish weaknesses while managing their own by way of a positive argument (244–45). Even so, Morton's work makes a useful contribution to the scholarship on the military history of the twelfth-century crusader states.