Did the Crusaders view themselves as "white" and their enemies as "brown"...

Did the Crusaders view themselves as "white" and their enemies as "brown"? I know a lot of you like to say racism was invented in the 1800s but let's be real for a second.

The thing is the muslims were white too.

At what point did they get brown then?

When the Ottomans took over

the leaders of the crusades probably believed in the kingdom of Prestor John which is based on the idea that there was a huge Christian kingdom somewhere in central Asia. the adherents would obviously have to be 100% natives

I don't think you're going to find anyone who says racism was invented after 1800 with any sort of intelligence. Racism is an extension of tribalism, so it has existed since heavily different racial groups came into conflict with each other.

You know there were also other Christians in the Levant beside the Crusaders, and that they were most likely "brown"?

fuck off to /pol/

Armenians are basically identical to Turks genetically and they were very much thought of as the same as any other Christian.

They never did, Muslims come in all colours.

They eventually settled on Ethiopia. Every time the Emperor sent emissaries to Europe, they insisted on calling him Prester John, much to the consternation of the envoys who insisted on several dozen titles, of which Prester was not one of them. In the end they caved. The Portuguese referred to the Negus as "The Preste."

armenians are white though and turks are not.

At the council of Clermont Pope Urban II uses the word race like 20 times.

No but they did view their religions as races in a way ala how Hitler viewed the Jews.

Lebanese are white

Racism was different back then. There wasn't such a thing as "European". The crusades had nothing to do with ethnicity because the people of the time would of tough of it as a group of multiple races fighting against another group composed of different races.

Hate to break it to you but throughout history the majority of human beings were tribal and everything was about blood until about 100 years ago.

Yeah, greek blood, roman blood, german blood, slav blood. Nothing about "european blood" until way later.

No, because a lot of their enemies were quite pale, and because a lot of the crusaders were brown mercenaries themselves.

Not that there aren't better examples to prove your point, /pol/, but this isn't one of them.

Also #3 - this isn't about history, this is about race, don't pretend otherwise.

no

yes

The Crusaders were many things, but worrying about race was not one of them. One has to remember that Catholics tend to be pretty lax when it comes to skin color so long as you follow the world of Jesus, hence why most major Christian countries today are places like Brazil, the Philippines, majority of Latin America, ect. Between talking down heathens and pagans and potentially converting them into followers for more Jesus points, they typically resorted to the latter because more followers means more influence even if they're otherwise a tribe that is only out of the stone age through trade.

And as stated before, telling whether someone was a Muslim was not as easy as glancing at his skin color because there were and are a ton of Christian groups that live in the ME that look practically like their Muslim peers.

Thing is, the majority of crusades were in the Baltics, killing/converting Slavic tribes.
People that don't know that are either uneducated or stupid, you should disregard their answers in this thread.

No, religion was more important than race

>Slavic tribes
>Baltics

neck yourself

I remember a great book recommended here a year ago about racism in history. Yeah, racism did exist prior to the 18th century, but I don't remember the Crusaders being racist towards nonwhites.

White people / White race is a modern American thing to distinguish themselves from their black slaves.
A medieval wouldn't know what you talk about, their cultural center was Christendom, and everybody more than 3 Villages away was a foreigner anyways.
Even today, the majority of Europeans would identify as English or German or Italian when asked for their ethnicity, and not as white or Caucasian.

So please stop thinking in RenFair therms.

Just look at southern Italians, Greeks and Levantines. They all look the same.

white non-white dichotomy is a american invention, not racism.

>middle ages
>whiteness
kek

Hey be nice, he is amerilard with no college ed, how should he know?

Even this is wrong. The Slavs were murdering each other since the oldest times. Same with Germans, really. There were civil wars in German kingdom after virtually every election.

>in German kingdom
What German kingdom would that be? Any examples of your """civil wars"""?

There was German Reich and a German king.

>Otto I
>Arnulf, Duke of Bavaria, died in 937 and was succeeded by his son Eberhard. The new duke quickly came into conflict with Otto, as Eberhard opposed the king's sovereignty over Bavaria under the peace treaty between King Henry and Arnulf. Refusing to recognize Otto's supremacy, Eberhard rebelled against the king.
>nfuriated with Otto's actions, Eberhard joined Otto's half-brother Thankmar, Count Wichmann, and Archbishop Frederick of Mainz and rebelled against the king in 938

>Otto II
>The appointment of Otto as Duke of Swabia was taken by Henry II as an assault on his claim to the Imperial throne and a slight to his honor.[3] He and his advisor, Bishop Abraham of Freising, conspired with the Duke of Poland Mieszko I and the Duke of Bohemia Boleslaus II against Otto II in 974.
German Duke conspiring with Slavs against his king.

>Otto III
>Henry II took the young Otto III and traveled to Saxony. There, Henry II invited all the great nobles of the kingdom to celebrate Palm Sunday at Magdeburg for 985. He then campaigned openly for his claim to the German throne, with limited success. Among those who supported his claims were Duke Mieszko I of Poland and Duke Boleslaus II of Bohemia.[3] Henry II was also supported by Archbishop Egbert of Trier, Archbishop Gisilher of Magdeburg, and Bishop Dietrich I of Metz.[3]
And again.

Racism came about from nationalists trying to explain why the state should about then more than some brown person halfway across the world despite being poorer and contributing less to society

No they would have viewed it as Christ and Christian's vs saracens and the devil
Later christ and Christian vs heretics and the devil in the Abyssinian crusade

This post just tells me how few you know about the HRE, the title of German King, Duke of Swabia, Holy Roman Emperor and history per se.

I've read some of Pope Urban II's speeches and he makes it pretty clear it's a battle between the Frankish race versus the inferior Arab race.

You said nothing. How about some arguments.

If you are quoting wikipedia (lol), then at least post the sources.

Otto III, J. Strzelczyk

They were all white.

Yeah but religion was more important in those days than race.

Polabian Slavs.

Polabian Slavs weren't inhabiting Baltics and you said they spent majority of time targeting Slavs when in reality Wendish crusade which targeted Polabian Slavs took only a year.

I'm not that guy. English is not my first language and I thought you are talking about the entire Baltic region.

Armenians are as white as eastern Turks (assimilated Armenians).
They're brown and have huge hooked noses.

Bullshit. None of the translations of the speech I've read use the word more than twice. The enemy is always referred to specifically as "Persian'. The speech makes it very clear that the intention of the war is, at least on paper, to rescue the eastern Christians.

A source on that would be great, do you need the Knöllen example to understand how language changes overtime

No. The Muslims drew themselves darker than the Europeans drew them. This goes not only for the Franks but for the later Reconquista, as well.

You can also dispel WE-ing by how obvious and stark the occasional black person on the Moorish side is, in comparison to the Moors themselves.

That's what he's talking about.

A lecture even eighty years ago would have spoken of the French race, the German race, the Indian race, so on and so forth.