What two effects of the crusades had on Europe?

Answer 1

In assessing the crusades it is important to remember that they included not only only a series of offensives, conquests, and defeats in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt, but also a treacherous attack on the Byzantine Empire (sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204), the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal), assorted Christian conquests of pagan areas in the eastern Baltic (Prussia, Livonia etc. under the Teutonic knights), ten years of destructive warfare in the South of France (the Albigensian Crusade 1218-1229), and even a French invasion of England in 1216.

Among the results of the crusades, then, are:

1. The creation of Spain as a powerful and significantly centralised (non-feudal) state.

2. The creation of the Ordernsraat (domain of the Order of Teutonic Knights), which went on to form the Kingdom of Prussia and gave it the position that eventually made it the Empire of Germany. This also served as an important experiment and example in the centrally-administered non-feudal state in Europe.

3. The revival of classical learning in the West in the 13th Century (e.g. the revival of Greek at Oxford University under Robert Grosseteste) driven by the important of Greek books taken as booty from the sack of the Imperial library at Constantinople.

4. The discovery of Arabic scholarship (particularly in mathematics and astronomy) when Arab scholars in the Andalus became Spanish subjects.

5. Opening up trade with the East, which brought for instance silk, sugar, glassware, spices, and paper to Western Europe.

6. The creation of the Holy Fighting Orders (Knights Templars, Knights Hospitallers, Teutonic Knights, Knights of Alcantara, Knights of Calatreva, Knights of Aviz, etc. etc.) which produced the first disciplined professional armies in Europe since Roman times, and some of which went on to form the foundations of the Portuguese, Spanish, and Prussian armies.

7. The subjection of Occitania to the Spanish and French monarchies, destruction of Occitan culture, and long-lasting economic damage to the south of France.