AHC: Keep crusades a thing until the present day

As it says in the title, how could one keep crusading alive until the present day? The definition of crusading can be stretched a bit of you want: something like the various 16th- and 17th-century Holy Leagues would count, as well as the more "classic" type of crusading.
 
The big problem is that Crusades were profoundly tied up with a "feudal" conception of the world. With the appearance of bureaucratic states in Western Europe, crusades ceased to be a real possibility.

Granted, the crusade ideal was maintained as you can see in the Burgundy courts in the XVth century, or in Valois' afterwards. It's essentially coming from an idealized knightood model rather than a real drive to be honest, and after the XVIth, the Crusades are essentially a thing only among some religious circles.
You'd argue that it was as well coming from the failure of Crusade model in late feudal structures. Fair enough.
But even with, say a victory at Nicopolis and a Reconquista continuation in North Africa, it would eventually devolve more and more as "national" expeditions with a religious factor (rather than ground). Basically, Western European expeditions being more akin to what existed in Eastern Europe against Turks.

If you count the expeditions blessed as Crusades, as Spanish expeditions against Turks, you could have more of these with a more important Catholic hegemon in Europe (as having expeditions against North African entities being systematically understood as "Crusades")
But it would be hardly crusades in the common sense : even by stretching the definition as much as humanly possible, the blessing were made a-posteriori, and the expeditions would probably have been made nevertheless even without pontifical agreement.
 
LSCatalina hit it on the head. It was an outgrowth of feudalism and took the form it did based off the logistical and state capabilities of the time. Though it would be interesting to see a legacy of establishing crusader-states/independent kingdoms as Europe expanded in the colonial era. However, IMO, you'd need a POD that not only had the Crusader States themselves survive, but coupled with a universal Christian monarch over Europe and/or the Catholic Church retaining its transnational power; all of which is to keep the individual kingdoms of Europe from just building colonial empires of their own like OTL. And all of these are some pretty tall orders, so it would be a TL that's more rule of cool vs. plausibility.
 
Well in that case, what if we broadened it from "crusades" to "Christian holy wars in general"? What would need to change to keep those an occurrence?
 
It already did so by the late XIVth century, mostly build on a misunderstanding; or Hussite Wars that were considered as Crusades.

But these already lost most of their religious ground, being replaced on a more political one (It's murkier than that, admittedly, especially giving that religion was part of policies, but it stopped to really determine it to be determined by).

At best, with a more important Catholic hegemon in Europe (No Reformation?), European expeditions against Turks, heterodoxial regions, etc. could be considered and named as Crusaded by the pope (or religious heads of these realms).
 
If we specifically are looking for wars between European descended Christians and the native arab Muslim population, I think the best way would be to have some Crusader state or another hang on. If some place like Jerusalem or Antiock had the same monarch as England or France or some other European state, you might see unhappy religious minorities moving to these areas instead of or in addition to the new world. Even if the Crusader states have become mellower and more secular, they still are likely to speak something the newcomers can understand. A few generations down the road and the pilgrims could have re-radicalized their new homes. Though it seems wildly unlikely, the idea of puritans or alumbrados with machine guns deciding to storm Mecca is just the sort of picturesque nonsense that is the least subtle appeal of alternate history.
 
If something, Latin States were the most prone to tone down the whole "crusade" thing, would it be only because it would have been a political suicide.
Don't get me wrong, they generally apprecieted much being in charge there and the military reinforcement that Crusades represented for them in case of essential threats.

But they more and more adopted a view similar to Byzantine, meaning using more local codes, integrating themselves in local diplomacy than shouting "Deus Vult" and attacking on sight. Eventually, the most bonkers Crusaders became regular poulains inside Latin States societies.
Giving that for surviving Latin States, you'd need some major strength for them, I don't think allowing radical nutsjob to takeover the lead wouldn't be a contradiction.
 
Crusades today are done to help Saudi Arabia, not for any Christian kingdom :p

Sorry, I mean for freedom and human rights in the middle east, nothing at all about protecting allied regimes there! Honest!
 

Sir Chaos

Banned
Two of the old chivalric orders, the Teutonic Knights and the Knights Hospitaller, still exist today, although not in any military capacity.

Perhaps some development that led to them retaining the military branches of their orders could have contributed to a continuation of the Crusades?
 
The big problem would have the order structure grew incompatible with the rise of the modern state and its centralisation and monopolisation of power (including warfare).
You could have, admittedly, landed orders forming states of their own (as in Malta or Rhodes), but I'm not sure they would have the structures for launching something more than expeditions more or less considered as crusades, but not such essentially.

It doesn't help that the very "international" structure of these orders makes them really prone to be under foreign sphere of influence (as Hospitaleers before 1789), and more tied to normalized and modern diplomacy than idealized warfare.
 
Would the obvious solution not then be to ensure that Europe never really sees as growth out of a feudal/medieval period? If you want to see Crusades up until the year 2014, you'd pretty much need to irreparably halt societal progress and the growth of nation-states. But I don't necessarily think that's impossible.

With the right sorts of outside stimuli and sufficient devastation due to outside tribal migrations, more successful Islamic piracy, an earlier collapse of the Byzantine Empire, etc. state sanctioned religious warfare and holy orders of knights could last much longer. And even when the state broke down, a sufficiently impoverished Europe looking with jealousy at a wealthy, cosmopolitan middle east might carry out endemic religious warfare against the infidels.

Essentially what I'm saying is cripple Europe and you'd probably see as at least as many "crusades" as we see "jihads" IOTL.
 

jahenders

Banned
I see the points about crusades being tied to feudalism in various ways, but I don't see it as so impossible for them to continue.

The biggest changes that would be needed would be:
1) Political/moral support for "the Church" remaining stronger than IOTL.

2) Less "progressivism" driving countries (esp Western ones) to conceal their true motives.

3) Less fragmentation of "Church" authority in the reformation and afterwards

We already had multiple examples (some relatively recent) of European land grab attempts in the Muslim World. If you had the above conditions, you could have France, England, US, Italy, agreeing to try to seize land in Middle East as colonies, but it's sanctioned by the Church(es) so they call it a crusade and append some crusading objectives (liberating Israel, etc) into the bargain. This could have happened in the 1800s (a variation on Crimea), after WW1 (different flavor to redrawing borders), after WWII (a crusade to establish Israel despite any opposition), etc.
 
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