Cooper Wooten, Imperial Religion

History is a tale full of conquering empires. A common factor between the growth of some of these empires was their justification. Many empires claim their reason is religion; that their god has told them to conquer and expand. This can be shown through the crusades of the Holy Roman Empire, Manifest Destiny of the Americans, and through generally any imperialist nation who sent explorers to “spread their religion.” Throughout history, we can see similarities in how religion has been claimed as a justification, whether or not religion would be the true reason for their expansion. Because they use religion, they are more able to paint the opposing forces as heretical and as apostates rather than just political enemies which may also cause the conquerors to strengthen their own justification for expanding.

The word “crusade” has roots in the Romance languages of French and Spanish. It would translate roughly into “to take up the cross” (“History of the Crusades”). The Crusades consisted of a collection of holy wars that were fought by Christians against the Muslims. Both sides believed that they should have

control of Jerusalem because they both felt a claim based on their religion. The Crusades can truly be seen as one large war, but it is also split up by historians into seven distinct Crusades. The main focus of these wars was for the Christians to wrest control of the Holy City from the Muslims (“History of the Crusades”).

Prior to the First Crusade, a sermon was held by Pope Urban II to the Christians and French knights in Clermont, France. In this sermon, he painted the Muslims, not as enemies to fight in a war, but as heretics that are a threat to their religion. In doing so, he bolstered their resolve and hatred for the Muslims. He claimed that the “infidels” were desecrating lands that were holy and should belong to the Christians. The response was so strong from the soon to be Crusaders that they had started to chant “God wills it!” in relation to the wars they would soon embark on (“History of the Crusades”).

The First Crusade began in 1096 AD when troops, many French along with some from the German and Italian states, left Europe and headed to Jerusalem. The Crusaders also entered a somewhat unsteady alliance with the Byzantines, the peoples from the Eastern part of the Roman Empire. They fought a few battles along their route which included the siege of Nicaea. Nicaea surrendered to the Crusaders and they continued their long march (“History of the Crusades”). Their next main target was the city of Antioch. The crusaders laid siege once again, but with higher losses this time. Many died from starvation and many deserted during the seemingly hopeless siege. Crusaders were finally able to make their way in after seven long months, but now an army of Turks was on its way, so the Crusaders were now stuck in the city. They were saved upon “discovering” the Spear of Longinus, or the Holy Lance, which was used against Christ as he was crucified. The Crusaders felt emboldened by this, so they marched out against the Turks and, miraculously, the Turks fled (“History of the Crusades”).

Despite the losses, the Crusaders believed that they had to continue their sacred mission, and so they continued with “a need to fulfill their Crusader vows; and a lust for Muslim blood, the spoils of war, and territory” (“History of the Crusades”). The Crusaders once again laid siege, but this time to the Egyptian controlled Jerusalem. Jerusalem had only recently been taken from the Turks by the Egyptians, and the Egyptians did not want to lose it so soon. The sultan ordered trees to be cut down and wells to be poisoned in order to weaken the invaders, but another miracle was bestowed upon the Crusaders when they found timbers left abandoned in a cave. They were able to build towers and breach the walls of Jerusalem with this wood. Upon entering, a massacre ensued. The Crusaders took to killing everyone they saw, not excluding women and children (“History of the Crusades”).

In the Second Crusade, Zengi, a Turkish Muslim, led troops to take back a city

from the Christians. He decided on Edessa as it was already weak from infighting. After a roughly four week siege, he captured the city and slaughtered many people, also including women and children. Word of Zengi’s triumph soon reached the ears of the Christians and they saw this as a golden opportunity to shed more blood. The Crusaders also decided to take control of a city in return for the loss of Edessa. They decided on Damascus which was the only Muslim city that was at least partly friendly toward the French people. In attacking, they pushed away a potential ally (“History of the Crusades”).

During the Third Crusade, led by Saladin, the son of Zengi, the Muslim troops attacked the Christians and took back control of Jerusalem (“History of the Crusades”). During the Fourth, Constantinople fell to the Crusaders (“Crusades”). The Crusaders would not accept the new emperor because they saw him as one without a claim to the throne (“History of the Crusades”). A few more Crusades were fought but the final Crusades did not target Muslims so much as any people who were “enemies” of the church (“Crusades”).

Throughout the Crusades, both the Christians and the Muslims used their own religion to justify their actions. Their claims to the shared Holy Land led them to fight bloody wars against each other. The wars may have started as a war for their respective religions, but they devolved into fighting without mercy for different cities and lands. Despite the Crusades becoming bloody grabs for land and power, they still claimed it was for God that they fought.

The Crusades were not the only time that religion was used by empires throughout history as a means to justify their actions. Another example would be Manifest Destiny. The belief of Manifest Destiny was that Americans were destined to spread westward across the now United States of America by God (“Manifest Destiny”). They believed this strongly and used this to justify westward expansion and their displacement of the indigenous peoples along the way. “Manifest Destiny,” as a phrase, was first used by a journalist in 1845 who supported the annexation of Texas. Following this, it was used to justify and to further bolster expansionist goals of the Americans since they started to believe even more that they were superior and had to spread their influence, including religion (“Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion”).

While claiming manifest destiny, Texas was annexed into America and the Mexican American war began in 1846 (“Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion”). From this war, many people died and plenty of land was gained. Roughly 12,500 Americans lost their lives during this land grab and the result was California and New Mexico being gained from Mexico (“Mexican War”). After the Mexican-American War, America kept expanding westward. They gained the states Kansas and Nebraska but the decision on whether the states should be slave states

or free states was highly dividing. It was so dividing in fact, a conflict was born between the two sides that became known as “Bloody Kansas” (“Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion”). President Lincoln also passed a law to further encourage the people to expand and fulfill their manifest destiny. This law was the Homestead Act. It allowed adults to claim a large plot of land in the West. The only price being that they had to live on and work the land that they received for five years. It not only worked as encouragement, but as a catalyst, speeding up the westward movement (“Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion”).

Throughout American history, but specifically in westward expansion, Americans have been using religion as an excuse for justification. Even when British colonists first sailed to North America, many people had left England in search of religious freedom. While feeling justified by their religion, they did not care about the displacement of the indigenous peoples that were already occupying America. When they decided to expand westward, they claimed God as a reason yet again. They truly believed that they were sent by God to expand and to spread their beliefs to the people that they found (Lansford).

Lansford talks about how nations in the past expanded for reasons such as spreading language or their cultural beliefs, but later on, countries began to start grasping for a claim that would justify their conquest and expansion. They had started by claiming that they were just in their claim of lands because they were the first people to discover the area, but there were many areas that already had people living there. Instead, many early imperialist nations justified their actions by saying that they had to “spread the gospel… and improve their barbaric way of life” (“Imperialism, Cultural”). The people that they declared “barbaric” were only so because they did not fit the European values that the conquerors imposed. Even so, the imperialists continued on (Lansford).

As countries colonized more land, they had to change the culture of the people that they colonized in order to establish dominance and replace the current culture with their own. They implemented their own cultures by spreading their cultural ideals, but also by proselytizing. They believed that by spreading their culture and religion, they could make the colonies more productive and also more stable. Following the Treaty of Tordesillas, which split the colonial new world between the imperialist nations of Spain and Portugal, the two nations claimed that they were obligated to evangelize in these colonies, but instead were trying to make money in the new lands (Lansford).

In the history of religion, we have seen multiple reformations. The protestant reformation, for example, began because Martin Luther had seen corruption in the Catholic faith and he wanted to see reforms made. Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses sparked the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Among other corruptions

in the church, he argued against the church’s use of indulgences. Indulgences were bought from the church in exchange for time off of someone’s sentence in purgatory. Because he spoke out against the Catholic church and therefore the Pope, he was excommunicated after being accused of heresy. The beliefs that were laid out in his theses became the foundation for the Lutheran denomination (Nauert).

Inspired by Luther, others soon followed and began to spread their beliefs. Some such beliefs are Calvinism and Anabaptism. Many, however, disagreed with at least some of his beliefs. Huldrych Zwingli is one such example; Zwingli and Luther disagreed on the sacrament of communion, also known as the Eucharist. This reformation, the disagreement between Zwingli and Luther, and subsequent divisions, resulted in the permanent splintering of Christianity, specifically in Europe, into different sects. Many of these were different enough to warrant struggles for supremacy of denomination (Nauert). The different beliefs and the different nations holding these beliefs competed against each other to spread their denomination to new people. Lansford gives the example of how missionaries traveled to Dutch colonies in order to see the people converted (“Imperialism, Cultural”).

As seen in various historical events such as the many Crusades, America’s claim of “manifest destiny,” imperialist nations with their colonization, and the Protestant Reformation lending to more competition for the spread of religion all show how religion has been repeatedly used, truly or otherwise, as a justification for the expansion of empires or the conquest of nations and peoples. In the Crusades, the Muslims were painted as heretical rather than just enemies on the field as to strengthen the zeal and conviction of the crusaders. America claimed manifest destiny when expanding because it made them feel more justified and were able to see the wiping out of the native cultures in exchange for Christianity as a good thing because they felt like they were improving the people they spread their religion to. Similarly, with the imperialist nations, religion was used to justify expansion because they saw themselves as “saviors” for spreading the “better” European ideals and religion. Seeing objectives in a holy light makes them easier to achieve because one believes it is for God that you act rather than for more personal gain.

*Works Cited page available upon request.