The Eternal Crusade

After quite some thought regarding a previous idea of mine which some of you may well know, I have had an epiphany! As it turns out, there are a number of parallels between the Crusades and the Push for Space. Whatever economic opportunities there are/were at either, the cost of Modern Civilization/Medieval Europe to expand it's presence to such a place is/was so prohibitively expensive that ultimately any motive for doing so would have to be political... as it was for the Crusades, though religious idealism certainly played a role in driving the people who took part. The main problem is and was that whatever the initial motive, if the endeavour isn't profitable then whatever the political motive was dries up like a prune in Atlanta. All the resources and manpower spent crusading were resources and manpower not being spent on building infrastructure, consolidating monarchical power, or fighting war against EUROPEANS. All of this eroded the essential ethos that drove the initial Crusades.

My premise? A united, militant Christendom setting out to take over the world for Christ, with a POD somewhere over the course of one of the first three Crusades. What I realized in pondering this was that unlike space the Holy Land had pre-existing trade going on: The Silk Road, along which the spice trade had been proceeding long before the Crusaders came. If a political body involved in the Crusades such as the Knights Templar had opted to capitalize on this trade they could have more than paid for the Crusades, prolonging the endeavour longer than in OTL.

After those Mideastern lands have been secured more firmly by Christendom, medical knowledge picked up over there proves very useful in lightening the blow suffered by Western Europe thanks to the Black Death. Thus the socio-political order of the time - which includes the Catholic Church - suffers a less severe blow. Protestant Movements may or may not emerge, but it won't catch quite as well as it did in the history you or I might be familiar with regardless. What follows, in time, is a confident expansion into places like Africa and Asia. The message the Church sends is clear: if the native peoples convert, they will be welcomed as fellow brothers in Christ. If they refuse. choose to keep their sinful ways, then they shall face an army with no fear of death and and ultimately a most painful subjugation.

Then the Mongols come, and for the first time in a while the European are humbled most verily. In this timeline as in ours, the Mongols' military capabilities are far beyond those of the Europeans, and although it goes marginally better than our history records due to the less severe blow given by the Black Death and Europe with more capacity for cooperating, it is still a rather hopeless war. Here as in OTL, a lucky archer's arrow manages to kill Genghis Khan. By their own laws the Mongols are obligated to return home to select a new Khan.

In the time which follows, Christendom -whose spiritual center lies in Rome, from whence the Pope grants his blessing to whichever monarch is currently the Defender of Christendom. He (invariably so) will proceed to rally the rest of Christendom to both it's defense and expansion. Trade with heathen peoples is still done - in the Orient, Africa, and in time the Americas, financing the continued expansion of Christendom now just as then. The ultimate goal of all this is that all the world will one day lie under Christ's domain, and though there are obstacles, the powers that be over in Europe - though a great deal more cautious than before - remain confident of their eventual triumph.

Three questions:
1. What will the various Oriental and African peoples think of the civilization I have described, and how to best describe their interactions?
2. Given the history I have described, what happens to the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment, or the Industrial Revolution?
3. How to best work this within the confines off the Swashbuckler genre?
 
My premise? A united, militant Christendom setting out to take over the world for Christ, with a POD somewhere over the course of one of the first three Crusades. What I realized in pondering this was that unlike space the Holy Land had pre-existing trade going on: The Silk Road, along which the spice trade had been proceeding long before the Crusaders came. If a political body involved in the Crusades such as the Knights Templar had opted to capitalize on this trade they could have more than paid for the Crusades, prolonging the endeavour longer than in OTL.

The chance of a united Christendom in this era approach "not even Skippy the ASB can figure out how to do this."

As for the expense factor - OTL it was managable with the resources available OTL, the problem was people not wanting to throw them away for something yielding nothing but death and disappointment. Trying to get more of the Silk Road profits isn't going to change it.

After those Mideastern lands have been secured more firmly by Christendom . . .

Hold on. You haven't even managed to get a united Christendom and already you're talking about what happens after it wins? This is like building the top story before the foundation.

Here as in OTL, a lucky archer's arrow manages to kill Genghis Khan. By their own laws the Mongols are obligated to return home to select a new Khan.

Genghis didn't die from an arrow. Neither did Ogedei.

Three questions:
1. What will the various Oriental and African peoples think of the civilization I have described, and how to best describe their interactions?
2. Given the history I have described, what happens to the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment, or the Industrial Revolution?
3. How to best work this within the confines off the Swashbuckler genre?

1: The civilization you have described rests in the realm of ASB, so depends on what the ASBs do.
2: Similarly, the ASBs that lead to Christendom uniting like this will probably work out something.
3: Write for Seventh Sea.
 
Acknowledged. Plenty of errors here. But then, to get what I'm aiming for I only need to prolong that deadly and disappointing ordeal long enough for (more of) the medical knowledge the Muslim civilization had to make it's way into Western European hands. Once implemented, that would likely lessen the blow of the Black Death, as mentioned earlier. Thus the blow to the sociopolitical order of the time would be lessened, which includes the Church. After that partizan nature of European politics would still remain, so to get what I'm aiming for here I would need some motivation for political coalition what at this point be very... unfamilar to Western European. I figured that given the previously mentioned background, there would be one European power or another manages to lead what's left of Christendom in a long, brutal struggle back from the Brink. Over the course of that war the partizan nature of European politics fades as they try to survive much less win against the Mongols

Assuming this avoids the ASB label more effectively, much of the rest of my original scenario will follow. The only question is: does it?
 
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The chance of a united Christendom in this era approach "not even Skippy the ASB can figure out how to do this."

Agreed. To achieve this you probably need to have the Roman Empire survive, which butterflies away the crusades. Another option is to have the Carolingian Empire survive.
 
Acknowledged. Plenty of errors here. But then, to get what I'm aiming for I only need to prolong that deadly and disappointing ordeal long enough for (more of) the medical knowledge the Muslim civilization had to make it's way into Western European hands.

Which requires you to address how that happens, because it continued as long as enthusiasm held up.

And the crusades are hardly an effective way to get that knowledge into European hands.

This is still going nowhere.
 
Acknowledged. So far the way it's playing out, the first step is to figure out how the medical knowledge needed to blunt the impact of the Black Death could have found it's way into Western Europe. I'd figured the Crusades would be one possible way because on returning from that deadly disappointing endeavor those who went came back with goods and information which Medieval Europeans had never seen before. I figured if that endeavor had been prolonged just enough, such as by the Second Crusade ending as a victory for the Crusaders even if the Muslims later take back what's theirs, there might be enough time for the medical knowledge of the Muslim World to make it's way to Europe. This might avoid being ASB if some of the more effective leaders on the Muslim sidehad died earlly/not been born. If I'm wrong, what would get the desired result?
 
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Hmmm, medical knowledge from the Muslim world:
a) was in the process of being transmitted in Europe (slightly) before, during and after the Crusades, through a variety of channels that usually did not involve the Crusader States directly.
b) as far as I know, helped exactly nothing about the Black Death. Muslim countries were repeatedly and pretty severely hit by several outbreaks of the same plague.

Now, what the Muslims had, most Christian lands had not, and actually could have some sort of impact about that might be sewage and in general public hygiene. But still, I don't think they could control rats and fleas effectively with the tech of time.
Muslim medical scholarship was fairly ahead of its Christian counterpart and would remains so until after the Renaissance (heck, the main medical textbook in many European Early Modern universities had been written by Avicenna ) but had no groundbreaking knowledge about anything approaching germ theory, nor, in general an emphasis on disease transmission at all (they usually assumed the causes of illness to be internal).
 
Whatever economic opportunities there are/were at either, the cost of Modern Civilization/Medieval Europe to expand it's presence to such a place is/was so prohibitively expensive that ultimately any motive for doing so would have to be political... as it was for the Crusades, though religious idealism certainly played a role in driving the people who took part.
Well, yes, in a religious war, religions tends to have a certain role.
The political motives, having an hold on Middle-East, isn't that obvious : many lords that participed to the First Crusade by exemple, had important estates and traded (when they actually get something) for more unstable, more little lands. It's more of an unplanned, vague objective than a real, great drive (even the Fourth Crusade was kind of "happening" rather than planned : in fact, many crusaders preferred to leave it instead of raiding Constantinople)

Of course, after the First, every Crusade is led by kings without real hope of political gain on Holy Land itself for the followers and without real political gain for sovereigns as well (except the Eighth Crusade, and not that much).

So, yes, religious motives were probably as much (if not more) important than political.

All the resources and manpower spent crusading were resources and manpower not being spent on building infrastructure, consolidating monarchical power, or fighting war against EUROPEANS. All of this eroded the essential ethos that drove the initial Crusades.

The manpower used is quite irrelevant. Feudal wars by exemple used a limited ammount of men avaible : not because of a lack of men but limits of ancient and medieval logistics. An army of 15 000/ 20 000 men was exceptionnal critically for the XI century. Usually, you had between 5 000, 8 000 men involved.
As the men lived on the land (being a pain in the ass for Byzzies), the cost and ressources "wasted" are also very limited for Europe.

My premise? A united, militant Christendom setting out to take over the world for Christ, with a POD somewhere over the course of one of the first three Crusades.

It's seems REALLY hard. Crusades appeared because of many factors, basically the fusion of feudal lord life based on violence, and the Christian ideal. Violence was accepted when it was drove not against Christian but threats against them.
The thing is, this fusion worked both ways : as a lord couldn't ask his men to follow him in war for an unlimited period or blur goal, a Crusade had to be precise and relativly limited in time.
A goal such as "take the world, for an undefinite period" isn't going to work.

After those Mideastern lands have been secured more firmly by Christendom, medical knowledge picked up over there proves very useful in lightening the blow suffered by Western Europe thanks to the Black Death.
Arabo-Muslim world suffered as much of plague than the rest of ancient world, I'm afraid.
Besides, while such exchanges were rare in Middle-East, they were flourishing in Spain and southern Italy. There's no knowledge present in, say Bagdad, that wouldn't have been present in Toledo and eventually taken by Europeans.
 
With these points acknowledged, I'm afraid I'll have to cancel this thread. Not abandoning what I was aiming for as far as alternate history goes, just this particular approach to it. Expect a revised edition called called Christendom: The Expansion

Best Wishes,
goldenerasuburb
 
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