Crusading in the Levant remains one of the notorious chapters in medieval history. Though rich in source material and featuring an expansive historiography, the violence of the subject has seldom received attention as a discrete topic. This study limits the analysis to the First Crusade and specifically to events at Jerusalem in July 1099. Consulting Western, Armenian, Arabic and Hebrew sources reveals the nature and perception of this eleventh-century event. Crucial considerations include: pre-existing contextual tumult in the Levant, questions around crusader extermination policy, source material reliability, and if crusade violence was exceptional. Within a century, the fall of Jerusalem became a tool in the service of political agendas. This created mythistory that served to illuminate as well as obfuscate and influenced subsequent scholarship. The central question persists: Did genocide occur at Jerusalem? The sources agree that violence, bloodshed and mass killing characterize the crusader victory. The research concludes that it is not necessary to think or argue that the crusades were in fact genocide, but underscores what we might learn from looking at the violence of the crusades through the paradigm of genocide studies.

Scholars up until the middle of the twentieth century saw Roman warfare as restrained and disciplined. At that point the consensus changed to one that viewed it as fierce and bellicose. This view, in turn, has been challenged in the early twenty-first century, with the argument that Roman conflict was typical for ancient states. Rome’s rise from city-state to empire certainly involved considerable violence, but the available evidence cannot conclusive demonstrate either that it was particularly brutal and aggressive or that its military actions were ordinary for the period. Sources report that Roman battle was especially bloody, but this can be interpreted as a result of culture or of weaponry. We read of large numbers of civilians killed and enslaved, but such accounts need to be viewed critically and compared to the ancient norm. Additionally, the reality and nature of the imperial Pax Romana continues to be debated. The apparent decline in uprisings against Roman rule is worthy of note, but there may have been revolts and wars we do not know about. At this point in time historians are not in a position to definitively state what the nature of Roman military violence was.

This chapter explores the transformations of Chinese and Balinese sacred objects into heritage, against the background of centralisation efforts and the state-supported reconstruction of the Siva temple at Prambanan (Central Java) across regime changes. It explains the relation between stronger centralisation and the strengthening of local heritage dynamics. Next, it discusses the impact of the Pacific War and decolonisation on local and centralised heritage practices, as well as on long-term foreign engagements with sites located in Indonesia. Gauging the colonial nature of post-colonial heritage politics, it shows how in colonial times professional and state-supported archaeology led to the consolidation of certain structures and methods of heritage formation in such a way that subsequent regimes could easily take over. An important related topic is the way in which research, collecting, conservation, and reconstruction activities were intimately connected to the development of social hierarchies and processes of (racial) marginalisation.