The First Crusade (1095-1099) culminated in the establishment of four Latin Christian polities in the Levant – the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Principality of Antioch, and counties of Edessa and Tripoli – and led to the eventual foundation of the nearby Empire of Constantinople and Kingdom of Cyprus. These six polities of the ‘Latin East’ were founded and ruled by small Latin elite groups, but the vast majority of their populations were composed of members of the religiously, denominationally, ethnically, tribally and regionally diverse Eastern Mediterranean communities who predated the Latin conquests – and who continued to live in the region after the last Latin polity in the Levant fell in 1291.

This interdisciplinary project combines History and Legal Studies in order to re-analyse the complexities of cross-cultural relationships between Latin Christians and the heterogeneous pre-existing populations of the Latin East. Specifically, it does so by exploring the treatment and representation of different Eastern Mediterranean populations in the extensive surviving body of Latin laws and legal texts. In doing so, this project seeks to contextualise and contrast mediaeval European and Mediterranean legislative and judicial developments. It furthermore seeks to challenge powerfully simplistic misconceptions of cross-cultural relationships during the crusades, and their modern weaponization by extremist groups against refugees, members of different faiths, and historically disenfranchised groups.