The Crusades were the bridge between medieval and modern history, between feudalism and colonialism. In many ways, the little explored later Crusades were the most significant of them all, for they made the crisis truly global. The Last Crusaders is about the period's last great conflict between East and West, and the titanic contest between Habsburg-led Christendom and the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. From the great naval campaigns and the ferocious struggle to dominate the North African shore, the conflict spread out along trade routes into the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and across the Sahara. It consumed nations and cultures, destroyed dynasties, and depopulated provinces, spawning the first colonial empires in South America and the Indian Ocean.

Acclaimed scholar of Islamic history and author Barnaby Rogerson illuminates the Last Crusades in an accessible and skillful manner, showing how to this day, the disputed borders of the Crusades era stand as defining frontiers and dividing lines between languages, nations, and religions. From Constantinople to Fez, from Rhodes to Granada, this book is narrative history at its richest and most compelling.