The voyages of Columbus and Vasco de Gamma are often regarded as the beginning of an era, an era in which the inevitable domination of Europeans occurred. These historic journeys, however, would not have been as significant if not for the broader cultural and contingent factors at play. The actions of European explorers and colonizers were greatly influenced by the previous decades of wars and crusades. The policies and organizational structures of empires in the New World and the Indian Ocean allowed Europeans to take advantage of that particular historical moment in which they were able to exert their influence abroad with varying degrees of success. When Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade in 1095 AD, he brought the Christian population of Europe together, uniting them against the common enemy of Islam (Tyerman, 12). Soon all non-Christian religions, mainly Islam and Judaism, were deemed dangerous and different, and their followers were mercilessly eradicated (Tyerman, 22). Of course, the actual events of the Crusades and the actions of the crusaders themselves were rarely as simple as this ideology would have made them seem. Additional motives often informed the interactions of the crusaders and the native inhabitants of the lands they sought to conquer in the name of Christianity (Tyerman, 18). The general spirit of the times, however, a spirit of glory and conquest, remained part of European culture even decades later. The Crusades had a major impact on the way Europeans conceived of their exploration of the Indian Ocean. The real motive behind Vasco de Gama's famous expedition around the Cape of Good Hope was to create a direct route to Asia, cutting off Muslim traders in the Middle East and creating a military advantage by which Christian crusaders could invade the Middle East on both sides (Marks, 61). Their concern about the idea of ​​a