Georgios Theotokis, Warfare in the Norman Mediterranean (Warfare in History 47), Woodbridge 2020

After skimming the first pages of the edited volume Warfare in the Norman Mediterranean, the reader encounters three maps (xviii–xx) of respectively the Italian Mezzogiorno, Sicily, and the Levant, indicating the focus of the work: a collection of studies on the Mediterranean theatres of war that saw Norman military activity. The introduction by the editor Georgios Theotokis, a specialist on medieval Mediterranean warfare and a lecturer in History at Ibn Haldun Üniversitesi, points out how these war theatres have attracted less attention than the military exploits of the Normans in Northern Europe (1). This collection seeks to address this by joining the research effort of the last two decades devoting attention to the Normans of the South with a tripartite division of essays clustered around the following themes.

The contributions of Part I “Re-examining the Narratives” (p. 10–75) seek to critically (re-)investigate the narratives depicting the Norman expansion in Southern Italy. The editor’s contribution assesses the value of these narratives for a military-historical reconstruction of the tactics used and the battles fought by the Normans (11–33). Francesca Petrizzo analyses the chroniclers’ attitude to the Hauteville family (35–53). James Titterton investigates the sources’ depiction of the elaborate ruses put to use by the leading members of this dynasty (55–75).

Part II “Cultural Representation and Diffusion” (77–173) focuses on the exchange between the military cultures of the Normans and their adversaries. David Nicolle discusses the impact of Islamic Sicily on the Siculo-Norman armies (79–131). This is directly followed by Matthew Bennett’s examination of the narrative sources depicting the adaptability of Norman battle techniques in their faceoffs against opponents of different cultures (133–149) and ends with an inquiry into the Venetian stance toward the rising power of the Normans by Şerdan Marin (151–173).

Finally, Part III “Policies of Conquest, Consolidation, and Expansion” (175–238) seeks to shed more light on the processes in question in the regions where the Normans operated. Charles Stanton kicks this section off with an analysis of the twelfth-century Siculo-Norman manifestation of naval might in the Mediterranean (177–194). Luigi Russo re-examines the Norman involvement in the First Crusade under Bohemond of Hauteville and questions why other Italian aristocrats followed Robert’s eldest son to the Outremer (195–209). Daniel Franke problematizes the notion of a strategic connection between the Norman takeover of Southern Italy and the First Crusade. Instead, he argues for a redefinition of “strategy” in the Middle Ages as a more short-term problem-solving phenomenon constantly needing revision in the face of new problems (211–224). In the final contribution, Michael Fulton re-evaluates the idea that the Norman Siege of Alexandria in 1174 was an act in support of the Latin states in the east, and suggests that it might have resembled a more traditional raid on the coast of the Nile Delta (225–238).

This short summary cannot do justice to the specific innovations of each of these chapters, but they all problematize, challenge, and reassess established paradigms. They demonstrate the fruitfulness of a continuing investigation in eleventh- and twelfth-century military matters in this region. This is the main contribution of this book as a whole: it offers the reader new insights and inspirations on warfare in the constantly shifting dynamics of the Mediterranean. This book can also be stimulating for medievalists intending to look for continuities between Norman and Pre-Norman Italy, since one of the introduction’s observations, whether the Norman arrival in 1017 was a cut-off point or not, merits further investigation (1). This is but one possible desideratum for further research for which this book offers a credible foundation.