Crusading explorers

Following Bernard Lewis, Weigel suggests that European expansion in the early modern period was part of “a great flanking movement in response to Islamic advances into the continent of Europe.” Lewis writes, “When Vasco da Gama arrived in Calicut he explained that he had come ‘in search of Christians and spices.’ It was a fair summary of the motives that sent the Portuguese to Asia, as perhaps also, with appropriate adjustments, of the jihad to which the Portuguese voyages were a long-delayed reply. The sentiment of Christian struggle was strong among the Portuguese who sailed to the East. The great voyages of discovery were seen as a religious war, a continuation of the Crusades and of the Re-conquest, and against the same enemy. It was the Muslin rulers – in Egypt, Turkey, Iran, and India – who were the chief opponents of the Portuguese, and whose domination they ended. After the Portuguese came the other maritime peoples of the West, who together establishes a west European ascendency in Africa and southern Asia that lasted until the twentieth century.”

Decolonization was a belated end to the Crusades, though in retrospect perhaps a premature one.