{"title":"Books by Roger Crowley","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780571245956","title":"City of Fortune","description":"\u003cp\u003eA magisterial work of gripping history, \u003ci\u003eCity of Fortune\u003c\/i\u003e tells  the story of the Venetian ascent from lagoon dwellers to the greatest  power in the Mediterranean - an epic five hundred year voyage that  encompassed crusade and trade, plague, sea battles and colonial  adventure. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn Venice, the path to empire unfolded in a series of  extraordinary contests - the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, the  fight to the finish with Genoa and a desperate defence against the  Turks. Under the lion banner of St Mark, she created an empire of ports  and naval bases which funnelled the goods of the world through its  wharfs. In the process the city became the richest place on earth - a  brilliant mosaic fashioned from what it bought, traded, borrowed and  stole. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBased on first hand accounts of trade and warfare, seafaring and piracy and the places where Venetians sailed and died,  \u003ci\u003eCity of Fortune\u003c\/i\u003e  is narrative history at its finest. Beginning on Ascension Day in the  year 1000 and ending with an explosion off the coast of Greece - and the  calamitous news that the Portuguese had pioneered a sea route to India -  it will fascinate anyone who loves Venice and the Mediterranean world.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201750073522,"sku":"9780571245956","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571245956.jpg?v=1786013978"},{"product_id":"9780571298198","title":"Empires of the Sea","description":"\u003ci\u003eEmpires of the Sea\u003c\/i\u003e shows the Mediterranean as a majestic and bloody theatre of war. Opening with the Ottoman victory in 1453 it is a breathtaking story of military crusading, Barbary pirates, white slavery and the Ottoman Empire - and the larger picture of the struggle between Islam and Christianity. Coupled with dramatic set piece battles, a wealth of riveting first-hand accounts, epic momentum and a terrific denouement at Lepanto, this is a work of history at its broadest and most compelling.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201806106802,"sku":"9780571298198","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571298198.jpg?v=1786014596"},{"product_id":"9780571298204","title":"Constantinople","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn the spring of 1453, the Ottoman Turks advanced on Constantinople in pursuit of an ancient Islamic dream: capturing the thousand-year-old capital of Christian Byzantium.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDuring the siege that followed, a small band of badly organised defenders, outnumbered ten to one, confronted the might of the Ottoman army in a bitter contest fought on land, sea and underground, and directed by two remarkable men - Sultan Mehmet II and the Emperor Constantine XI. In the fevered religious atmosphere, heightened by the first massed use of artillery bombardment, both sides feared that the end of the world was nigh.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe outcome of the siege, decided in a few short hours on 29 May 1453, is one of the great set-piece moments of world history.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43206062112946,"sku":"9780571298204","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571298204_2c274112-7c91-4083-861c-bf13ae64e043.jpg?v=1786014597"},{"product_id":"9780571290901","title":"Conquerors","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'A rare gift . . . The story he has to tell may be a thrilling one but not every historian could tell it so thrillingly.' \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e'Magnificently rip-roaring history . . . Bursting with colour and excitement.' Dominic Sandbrook\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eAs remarkable as Columbus and the conquistador expeditions, the history of Portuguese exploration is now almost forgotten. But Portugal's navigators cracked the code of the Atlantic winds, launched the expedition of Vasco da Gama to India and beat the Spanish to the spice kingdoms of the East – then set about creating the first long-range maritime empire. In an astonishing blitz of thirty years, a handful of visionary and utterly ruthless empire builders, with few resources but breathtaking ambition, attempted to seize the Indian Ocean, destroy Islam and take control of world trade.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eConquerors\u003c\/i\u003e is narrative history at its most vivid - an epic tale of navigation, trade and technology, money and religious zealotry, political diplomacy and espionage, sea battles and shipwrecks, endurance, courage and terrifying brutality. Drawing on extensive first-hand accounts, Crowley brings to life the exploits of an extraordinary band of conquerors - men such as Afonso de Albuquerque, the first European since Alexander the Great to found an Asian empire – who set in motion five hundred years of European colonisation and unleashed the forces of globalisation.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56292676272501,"sku":"9780571290901","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571290901_8018a3a0-968c-4b9a-8afe-81d59b955380.jpg?v=1786014558"},{"product_id":"9780300281125","title":"Spice – The 16th–Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World","description":"The story of the sixteenth-century’s epic contest for the spice trade, which propelled European maritime exploration and conquest across Asia and the Pacific   Spices drove the early modern world economy, and for Europeans they represented riches on an unprecedented scale. Cloves and nutmeg could reach Europe only via a complex web of trade routes, and for decades Spanish and Portuguese explorers competed to find their elusive source. But when the Portuguese finally reached the spice islands of the Moluccas in 1511, they set in motion a fierce competition for control.      Roger Crowley shows how this struggle shaped the modern world. From 1511 to 1571, European powers linked up the oceans, established vast maritime empires, and gave birth to global trade, all in the attempt to control the supply of spices.      Taking us on voyages from the dockyards of Seville to the vastness of the Pacific, the volcanic Spice Islands of Indonesia, the Arctic Circle, and the coasts of China, this is a narrative history rich in vivid eyewitness accounts of the adventures, shipwrecks, and sieges that formed the first colonial encounters—and remade the world economy for centuries to follow.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311684333941,"sku":"9780300281125","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780300281125.jpg?v=1791212797"},{"product_id":"1291","title":"1291","description":"A thrilling history of the bloody climax to two centuries of crusading in the Holy LandBy the end of the thirteenth century, the great saga of the crusades had come down to a single city. Acre—a once-great Mediterranean metropolis on the shores of the Holy Land, home to the Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights—was all that remained of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. And as the balance of power in the Levant swung south, the Mamluk Sultanate set this last Christian stronghold in its sights.   Roger Crowley chronicles the tumultuous and violent siege that followed. Mightily fortified, richly provisioned and newly garrisoned by soldiers from across Europe, from Spain to the Venetian Republic, the Crusaders faced the heaviest bombardment of the age before gunpowder. In one of the most savage sieges of the Middle Ages, the city was reduced to a crumbling ruin.   This is the dramatic story of how two centuries of crusading ended with the fall of a single city—a catastrophe that remade the medieval world.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57499402174837,"sku":"9780300306316","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-roger-crowley.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}