The Crusades Essay -- European History Muslim War Essays

The CrusadesThe Crusades series of wars by Western European Christians to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims. (Encarta Crusades) The Crusades first began in 1096 and ended in the late 13th century. The term Crusade originally meant that the Europeans would use all their efforts to regain the power from the Muslims. They wanted to retake the city of Jerusalem, which was holy to Christians because thats where the crucifixion of Jesus Christ occurred. Europeans later used it to allocate any military efforts against non-Christians. The Crusaders also created feudal states in the expert East. The Crusades played an important role of European expansion and colonialism. They mark the first sentence Western Christendom undertook a military initiative far from home, the first time significant numbers left to carry their culture and religion abroad. (Encarta Crusades) In addition to the efforts in the East, the Crusading movement includes other wars against Muslims, pagans, and disside nt Christians and the general expansion of Christian Europe. Originally the object of the crusade was to help the Christian Churches in the East.(Mayer, 9) Also on the agenda was the peace of God, i.e. the prohibition of feuding on certain days and the granting immunity of certain people, places, and things.(Mayer, 8). Basically the Crusades were an expression of militant Christianity and European expansion. They combined religious interests with worldly and military views. Christians learned to live in different cultures they also laboured something of their own thoughts and beliefs on these cultures. The Crusades strongly affected the beliefs of people at the time, and to this day they are among the most famous chapters of medieval history.The crusades began to stir up after the cobblers last of Charlemagne, king of the Franks, in 814. After his death Christian Europe was under attack and weak. Magyars, nomadic people from Asia, pillaged eastern and central Europe until the te nth century. (Encarta Crusades). Starting in the year 800, Viking raids interrupted life in northern Europe and even Mediterranean cities. But the greatest threat came from the forces of Islam. This was in end to Muhammad their notorious leader dying, in 632. By the 8th century, Islamic forces had conquered North Africa, the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and most of Spain. (Mayer, 3... ...Christian banner so far from home, given the contemporary conditions of impart and communication, was impressive.(Encarta, Crusades). The most important effect of the Crusades was economic. The Italian cities prospered from the transport of Crusaders and replaced Byzantines and Muslims as merchant-traders in the Mediterranean. Trade passed by Italian hands to Western Europe with a dread(a) profit. This power became the basis of economics in the Italian Renaissance. It also made powers such as the Atlantic like Spain and Portugal to seek trade through India and China. Their efforts, thro ugh such explorers as Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus, helped to open most of the world to European trade dominance and colonization and to shift the center of commercial activity from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.(Encarta, Crusades).Works CitedBarker, Ernest. The Crusades Books for Libraries Press. New York. 1923.Krey, August C. The First Crusade The accounts of Eye-Witnesses and Participants. Princeton University Press. 1921Mayer, Hans Eberhard. The Crusades Second Edition. Oxford University Press. 1965Microsoft Encarta encyclopedia 2004.