The Impact of the First to Fourth Crusades

The Impact of the First to Fourth Crusades
Name
Institution
Introduction
When people get into a war, a major motive has prompted them into the action. They want to achieve a certain motive but through force and violence. Thus, war is defined as a situation of conflict between two opposing sides. War is one of the things that have been part of the human social history since time memorial. Causes of war vary from economic gain, revenge, civil, territorial gain, and defensive war, revolutionary to religion. Some of these reasons are not as common as they used to be for example not so many wars are being experienced today because of territory or revenge however other reasons have continued to cause havoc even in the 21st century for example religion. Religious conflicts have been dominant since the ancient times; historically there were the unpopular crusades that occurred in 1095-1291 AD. The Crusades period was characterized by pre-arranged wars instigated by the Latin Church in the medieval era (Abulafia, 1996). Conflict issues were to spread Christianity and expel Islam from Jerusalem. The initial base of the war was to protect holy sites that both the Muslims and Christians considered holy and shared the same interest on those sites. There exist so much literature on the crusaders especially based on religion but few texts exist on other reason for example political, cultural, economic, and other factors on the same. The below text is going to look at the main motive of the crusades and analyze why religion was not the only motive of the campaigns as it is popular known by giving the influence of politics as the other motive which led to the growth and continuation of the crusades.
Overview of the Crusades War
The crusades are observed to be a series of conflicts meant to reclaim the perceived holy region of Jerusalem. However, as again observed there is more to these wars than reclaiming the land that was said to be holy. The basic portrayal was territorial conflict but when all factors considered for example the impacts on the society and individual lives, these conflicts were motivated by other many factors besides the fight for territory. It is vital to look at these unpopular wars as the crusades had so much influence on many different people and the period did influence different groups too.
What were the crusades?
11 century Western Europe was making its move which helped the region become a significant power. The region was power but it still lagged behind the other Mediterranean civilizations, for example, it was behind the Islamic Empire of the North Africa and the Middle East, and Byzantine Empire/ Roman Empire (Malkiel, 2001). Byzantium had lost to Seljuk Turks a considerable amount of territorial land. The combination of civil war and chaos led to general Comnenus Alexius seizing the Byzantine throne also taking control of the rest of the empire. 1095, marked new dawn when the reigning Empire Comnenus asked Pope Urban II to help with mercenaries from their region to go and challenge Turkish who was observed as a threat. This request came at a time when the relationship between Christian in the West and East was improving from an earlier fractious relationship between the two sides. 1095, in Southern...