From our twentieth-century perspective, we tend to think of the Europe of the past as a colonizer, a series of empires that conquered lands beyond their borders and forced European cultural values on other peoples. This provocative book shows that Europe in the Middle Ages was as much a product of a process of conquest and colonization as it was later a colonizer.

Robert Bartlett is Professor of Medieval History at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He is the author of Gerald of Wales, 1146-1223 and Trial by Fire and Water.