Essay by Keith Rankin, 16 April 2026.
On 14 April, TV3 News ran an item (15 minutes in, not in the sports section) about how the Crusaders rugby team will, with the new Christchurch stadium, no longer be able to parade its horses and knights circuiting the sportsfield. Many of the fans, despite now having a more spectator-friendly stadium, were quite upset about this; they loved the pageantry of medieval knights heading off to invade the Levantine lands occupied by the infidel (meaning Arabic people whose ancestors had converted to Islam).
At the end of the story, the reporter said: “The horses’ symbolism has created controversy. The sword-wielding knights represent the Crusades, a series of religious wars between Christians and Muslims dating back to the 11th and 13th centuries. In 2019 the Crusaders dropped the horses following the Christchurch Mosque attacks, but reinstated them later that year minus the knights.”
So, from 2011 to 2026 they have been cowboy knight-lookalikes brandishing flags rather than swords. It was never enough to cleanse Canterbury rugby of its imagery of religious imperialism. At the very least, the Crusaders needed to change their name – and image – immediately after the 2011 terror attack. The new stadium has given them another opportunity to remove the crassness from the Crusader brand, by no longer using the ‘Crusader’ moniker.
In the twentyfirst century, the crusader-problem continues to be more real than ever to the Muslim populations of the ‘Middle East’; of Southwest Asia. And those present populations continue to understand the occupiers and interferers of their lands as Crusaders. The Crusader issue is far from being an issue confined to the Middle Ages.
We can think of there being three series of Crusades: in the Middle Ages, the Modern Age, and the Current Age.
Crusader History: Medieval Era
The first series of Crusades were the Catholic Crusades of the late Middle Ages.
The first of these – which was largely a French crusade – ran from 1096 to 1099, and resulted in the conquest and brutal genocide of Jerusalem; and the establishment of a Crusader-state – Outremer – which lasted in its full form for 88 years.
The next crusade – ‘Second’ Crusade (1147 to 1149) – was a major failure, led by the French King and the Holy Roman Emperor, in response to the Crusader State’s loss of some of its northern territory. It was a major failure.
The ‘Third’ Crusade was waged in the time of Robin Hood (1189 to 1192), by the French king of England Richard Coeur de Lion. It was an attempt to resuscitate the Crusader State, and was partially successful, though failed to recapture Jerusalem.
The ‘Fourth’ Crusade of 1202 to 1204, waged largely by the Doge of Venice, was the most historically consequential of all the Medieval Crusades. It was effectively diverted to the one city which had been the beacon for western civilisation for over 1,000 years; Constantinople, formerly Byzantium – only half the way from Venice to Jerusalem – now Istanbul.
Constantinople was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, and the religious centre of Orthodox Christianity, the dominant branch of the Christian Church before 1204. Constantinople was comprehensively sacked by the Crusaders in that year. So, from 1204, the Roman Catholic branch of Christianity became dominant within Christendom. And the now latinised Christian ‘Middle East’ became so weakened that it was only a matter of time before the Ottoman or some other Muslim warlord conquered the lands of the Eastern Roman Empire; creating – in 1453 – the Ottoman Empire. The 1204 inter-Christian ‘event’ became Christianity’s eastern suicide debacle.
From 1453 to 1915, the Muslim Ottomans reigned in that part of the world; a Turkic Muslim caliphate.
Crusader History: the modern British Era
The next epoch of Western Crusading was the Anglo-French era of 1915 to 1948. It started with the Dardanelles Campaign (Gallipoli); meaning that the ANZAC soldiers had effectively become mercenary Crusaders, enlisted by Winston Churchill. Gallipoli was a failed Anglo-French operation, whose aim was the reconquest of Constantinople/Istanbul. New Zealand soldiers fighting for Britain’s crusade fought alongside, among others, Senegalese solders (fighting under the banner of France) in the bloody Second Battle of Krithia (6 May to 8 May, 1915).
There was much British Empire action in the whole of the ‘Middle East’ during World War One. This included Kiwi troops (who were heavily involved in at least one massacre of Muslims; at Surafend in 1918), Australian ‘Light Horsemen’, and Britain’s successful invasion of Iraq in 1917.
After WW1, Britain – the United Kingdom – formally occupied the lands that are now Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq. Iraq was occupied by Britain, in various guises, from 1917 to 1947, with a brief intermission from 1 April to 2 May 1941. And Iran from 1941 (with the Soviet Union) and, among other things, creating the conditions for a famine in 1943 which killed perhaps 300,000 Iranians.
France’s interests were particularly in the lands that are now Lebanon and Syria; the Northern Levant; including the early bronze and iron age Phoenician ports of antiquity, Tyre and Sidon, which are now being battered to a pulp by Israel.
This series of Crusades was a less overt religious conflict than the earlier and the more recent series. The major ‘religions’ were Empire and Oil; with the whole of Southwest Asia being of strategic significance to the United Kingdom in the context of India being the Jewel in the Crown of the British Empire.
Crusader History: the current Israeli-American Era
In 1948, the British/French crusader imperium gave way to the creation – with massive impetus from the United States – the new Crusader State of Israel. In many ways, 1948 was a repeat of 1099.
Like its Christian forebear (1099-1187) the present Crusader State has never considered itself to be secure; and once again the main reason for its insecurity is its overt belligerence towards both its indigenous population and its neighbours; a belligerence which precedes the formation of the stroppy United States’ client state. As in the 1099 to 1187 case, the present Crusader State has tenuous trumped-up historical claims to exclusive ownership of the site it occupies, and has deep financial and technical support from the furthest reaches of the (then and now) West.
In the case of the present Judeo-Christian Crusader Empire, the Americans have deep presence beyond the periphery of the formal Crusader State; as the British did from 1915 to 1948 re Mandatory Palestine. In particular the countries of the Arabian Peninsula have been deeply penetrated by the United States and/or Israel; most particularly the Gulf States, and noting that the United Arab Emirates presently acts very much as an under-the-radar proxy of Israel. These states – ‘beyond the periphery’ of Lebanon and Jordan – now constitute the present American Crusader Empire. They are the most significant Eastern Hemisphere components of the United States’ contemporary geopolitical empire, a Southwest Asian empire that it’s currently trying to expand.
The events of this decade constitute the most momentous events since 1948 in the history of the current Crusader State and Crusader Empire.
Property Rights
The Crusader meme is far from a nostalgic looking back to the times of Robin Hood. It’s today’s very consequential conflict of religion, theft, unipolar ideology, and naked technological power. For the city whose mosques featured New Zealand’s worst ever terrorist attack, direct association with crusader Judeo-Christendom is not a good look. That association is illiberal, insensitive, disrespectful, and Euro-supremacist.
Western crusaders – including religious and secular imperialists – have been a major source of trouble for West Asia and West Asians, through the ages. The DNA of present-day Palestinians is remarkably close to the ancient DNA of people who died in the Levant thousands of years ago.
Indigenous Southwest Asians deserve better today, including freedom of choice of religion; and the established political right to resist, and defend themselves. Today, almost all New Zealanders respect the Ottoman (Turkish and Syrian) forces (and their leaders, such as Ataturk) which, in 1915, resisted ANZAC attempts to conquer them.
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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
