I have finished Phillips. UPDATE 9/22: the terlit review.
The Fourth Crusade is not a revisionist work. Revisionist texts supporting the other Crusades do exist; for post-Phillips literature I'll pick on Rodney Stark's God's Battalions. Stark here just summarises Phillips (with footnotes). Since the Bagestan is a blog interested in revisionisms (right or wrong): as far as the Fourth Crusade is concerned, this blog is done ... with Phillips. (Although I do recommend reading Phillips for yourself.)
I've been interested in the Spanish experience in Mexico lately. Both cases played out similar: the Catholics showed up to the imperator's capital, the Catholics made chaos, the imperator invited the Catholics thinking he could control the Catholics. And then the Catholics overstayed their welcome. But ultimately the imperator should have anticipated that this might happen.
Restall, on the Aztecs, revised a ton o' stuff which Phillips didn't revise for the Greeks. So this blog has an interest in why Restall had to do it. Why, if we're all agreed on the Fourth Crusade, did the narrative on the Spanish conquest of Mexico go so wrong?
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