This book focuses on the development of towns in France, taking into account military technology, physical geography, shifting regional networks tying urban communities together, and the emergence of new forms of public authority and civic life.

A History of the Counts of Brienne traces the origins of the Brienne dynasty from the tenth century, as counts of a small, minor county in the Champagne region of France, to prominent crusaders in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries, one of whom would go on to become king of Jerusalem and emperor of Constantinople. In the late 1090s, impelled by the words of Pope Urban II, thousands of Europeans took up arms and set out from Western Europe to reclaim Jerusalem from the Saracens. Jerusalem was recaptured, and the ruling classes of the Latin East were formed by nobles, predominantly French, who established themselves as kings, princes and magnates. After the success of the First Crusade, word of the defeat of the Saracens and the opportunity for upward mobility in the Holy Land began to spread rapidly across the West and additional waves of crusaders and settlers made their way to the Levant. French dynasties, usually titled, landed families of some sway, such as the Lusignan, the Montlhery, the Montfort, and the Brienne, amongst others, were attracted to the Holy Land for various reasons: some due to religiosity, others for the opportunity to further increase their landholdings and wealth. In A History of the Counts of Brienne, Dana Celeste Robinson brings into focus the importance of family, tradition of crusading and pilgrimage, and political advancement through marriage in the Latin East to the Brienne and other families at a time when the seeds of geo-political unrest were planted: its fruit an unfortunate legacy as the struggle for peace in the Holy Land continues today. In a panoramic assessment using archival research, this comprehensive history of the counts of Brienne and their origins serves as an original work of scholarship on the preeminence of localized power in Medieval France and the ascendancy of dynastic influence in the Holy Land during the age of the crusades.