WI: No crusades

depends at least someone why they wouldn't call it ...

Because the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenous doesn't call for help against Seljuk invasion? (Either because he doesn't trust Western Europe not to take a mile when given an inch, or because ERE can handle it themselves, say due to less damaging Manzikert or whatever ... the Byzantphile Members could give a couple of decent PoD's here)

Because Western Europe only delivers a mercenary force (as requested) instead of a massive host?

Because the Pope are to busy elsewhere to suggest helping ERE? (If so why?)
 

tenthring

Banned
You know I only learned about the Crusades in depth recently despite being a huge history buff. I think the reason is that while they contain some amazing stories, personalities, and themes...they just don't matter. They pop up. They go away. The people in that region today have nothing to do with the Crusaders. They just weren't that important form a narrative flow of history standpoint.
 
You know I only learned about the Crusades in depth recently despite being a huge history buff. I think the reason is that while they contain some amazing stories, personalities, and themes...they just don't matter. They pop up. They go away. The people in that region today have nothing to do with the Crusaders. They just weren't that important form a narrative flow of history standpoint.

They served to do one big thing, which is provide the impetus for the Fatimid Caliphate to be destroyed.
 
And what they found in the East does seem to have influenced Europe - round towers, say.

Not sure that wouldn't develop anyway, but things did come out of it OTL.
 

Avskygod0

Banned
Mohhamed is killed on his way to Medina along all his party by the guards or somethiing else and Islam fails to form as a result.

But that would probably change too much things
 
I think the 1st, 1101, 2nd and 3rd Crusades as well as the establishment of the Outremer states helped Byzantium to an extent by engaging the attention of the Islamic states in the region. Without the Crusades Byzantium would have to do all the reconquering of western Anatolia without assistance. Without Outremer the Islamic states would have been free to fight Byzantium.
 
I think the 1st, 1101, 2nd and 3rd Crusades as well as the establishment of the Outremer states helped Byzantium to an extent by engaging the attention of the Islamic states in the region. Without the Crusades Byzantium would have to do all the reconquering of western Anatolia without assistance. Without Outremer the Islamic states would have been free to fight Byzantium.

But the Levantine states seem to have been focused on that area, rather than Anatolia.

And the 2nd and 3rd crusades don't seem to have provided even a good distraction.
 
I think the 1st, 1101, 2nd and 3rd Crusades as well as the establishment of the Outremer states helped Byzantium to an extent by engaging the attention of the Islamic states in the region. Without the Crusades Byzantium would have to do all the reconquering of western Anatolia without assistance. Without Outremer the Islamic states would have been free to fight Byzantium.

Except the Islamic states wheren't some monolithic bloc. Really the only states who where concerned with Rome during the cursades where the Anatolic Turkish Beylics, a group of nations who only really where impacted by the first Crusade. The Levantine and Egyptian states the Crusaders fought had no interest in or impact on Anatolia. At most there was a trickle of Ghazi's out of Anatolia to fight Outremer, but they really wheren't significant.
 
Christendom wasn't a monolithic bloc either, so one non-bloc cancels out the other non-bloc. What you're left with is the ability to form ad-hoc forces based on the needs of the moment.

I don't think anyone would disagree that the Crusader victory at Doryleaum allowed Big Al the chance to campaign successfully in Anatolia. Was 1101 a good year for consolidation in Outremer while the Turks were running around Anatolia hunting down Crusading armies?
 
Prussia will never form for starters.

Constantinople doesn't get sacked in the fourth crusade.

Who knows what will happen with the 100 years war. Perhaps the Angevins hold on to their homeland from the Capetians.

Here's a video that should help get ideas rolling. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0zudTQelzI

1. It would also might mean that it would be likely that the Catholic Church will be decentralized and the Papal States will be confiscated sooner or later.
 
wasn't one of the reasons behind the call for Crusade to siphon off some of the warring going on between the various Christian warlords? Without that, you'd think that there would be a lot more war and destruction in Europe...
 
wasn't one of the reasons behind the call for Crusade to siphon off some of the warring going on between the various Christian warlords? Without that, you'd think that there would be a lot more war and destruction in Europe...

That was one benefit, but hardly the one that initiated the Crusades. It probably means some increase in communal fighting in Europe, but not necessarily endless war.

Even without the Outremer, there are many other areas that would attract young landless nobles into risky ventures. The Norman conquest of Sicily was already ongoing as was the Reconquista. We'd likely see lots of people show up there if they didn't follow the Pope's call. That might mean a much earlier conquest of Spain and even a push into northwest Africa by Sicily and the Spanish kingdoms.

What you wouldn't have is the major nobility spending so much of their wealth to equip their own personal armies to lead against the Muslims.

There is still likely to be some kind of movement against the Baltic pagans, but that might be exclusively done through the Polish crown instead of an independent fighting order invited in by the Polish crown who usurped their privileges.
 
There ought to be significant changes in the Muslim states in the East, but it's not easy to predict what they would be. At the time of the First Crusade, the Seljuq empire was fragmenting, with separate branches in Persia, Anatolia and Syria and with significant separatist emirates forming in eastern Anatolia. The Fatimids were in decline. Without the outside pressure from the Crusaders, the process would probably continue for decades. Eventually a new dynasty would reunite a large territory, but it would not necessarily be one that arose in OTL.

Meanwhile, without the aid of the crusading armies, Byzantium would not be able to retake much of Western Anatolia, particularly if it had to guard itself against further attacks by the Normans. Holding nothing but Greece and the Balkans, Byzantium needs to try to amalgamate its Slav subjects into the Empire so that they could provide some desperately needed manpower. That was true anyway and it didn't happen. Maybe it couldn't be done.

The Normans of South Italy might be in a civil war, since the Middle East would not provide an alternate arena for Bohemond and other adventurers.

Further West, relations between the empire and papacy get more poisonous earlier. Not too much difference in England and France until the time of the Third Crusade in OTL. With no Third Crusade, they go to war.

There might be a higher crime rate -- the Peasants' crusade drew off a significant number of individuals that Western society was better off without.
 

katchen

Banned
Less antisemitism and more Jews in Europe. The Crusaders engaged in terrible massacres of Jews in Germany while they were forming up their armies.
And maybe less of a precedent for Papal indulgences. The Church later sold indulgences for sins committed for money, particularly when St. Peters Basilica needed to be rebuilt, but it was the Crusades which provided much of the precedent for indulgences.
So maybe less of an impetus for the Reformation.
 
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