ABSTRACT
The ‘Voyages of Discovery’ and the European expansion of the sixteenth century are often regarded as continuations of the expansionism of Catholic Christendom which began about 1000, just as that in turn is seen to be based on the growth of Carolingian Europe. But while there were elements of continuity, especially in the case of Portugal and Spain, the scale and range of expansion was infinitely greater and this reflected its very different origins and causes. In the eleventh century an ideological current, the crusade, was married to the buccaneering spirit of the raw aristocracy of the ‘Catholic Core’. Their aggressiveness was mostly expressed in internecine warfare which the poorly articulated monarchies of the age could not prevent, and short-distance predatory assaults on less developed neighbours. But this spirit also gave rise to an adventurism which carried Catholic culture into far places. This kind of individualistic and dynastic imperialism was possible because the ‘Catholic Core’ was then surrounded by much weaker and economically undeveloped political entities. Even where this was most marked, in Northern and Eastern Europe, the process of expansion, with some exceptions, was very slow and, as Lithuania shows, far from inevitable. Beyond these undeveloped areas were two great centres of influence, Byzantium and the Caliphate, both of which were in a state of fragmentation. The crusades were an attempt by the papacy to rally the ‘Catholic Core’ together with the areas it had come to dominate, into a single Catholic Christendom wedded to a policy of religious expansionism at the expense of these two religious power-blocks. This move to create solidarity out of the diverse elements of Catholic Christendom did not really succeed, because the basic impulse to expansion was too divided and rooted in aristocratic patterns of life. As time passed the world around Christendom changed remarkably, making individualistic and dynastic adventurism ever more difficult. Moreover, the acquisitiveness of the aristocracy found new outlets in the exploitation of the state, though buccaneering adventurism was never entirely dead. By the fifteenth century Catholic Christendom was clearly penned in to the east by formidable enemies. Certain royal dynasties, while they did not dismiss war against their Christian neighbours as a means of enrichment, perceived new possibilities of growth in distant and hitherto unknown areas. This expansionism involved huge investment which was beyond
the means of adventurers and only the newly articulated states of the period could sustain it. Though the impulse to explore and seize territory and bases owed something to crusading ideas and the traditions of the past in execution it was fundamentally different.
