I've never seen an American history book say that the crusades were heroic conquests. It wasn't a genocide, either. The crusades were Catholic holy wars to take back the Holy Land, that's all. The Muslims have the same thing, it's called a Jihad.
I'm not religious, but it's just how history played out. I think the name is historically correct, because the hat has the cross that crusaders would wear on their armor during the crusades. Although, the colors are off and the shape of the helmet isn't really like what they'd wear, but they'd have to make a body to make it seem like a crusader anyway, and I'm not asking for that, haha. Anyway, saying that a cross on a helmet is bad is like saying that a witch hat is bad because they were burned at a stake even though all evidence points to the fact that they did nothing wrong whatsoever. Many people at Salem, for example, suffered from extreme hallucinations, causing them to think that it was the cause of witchcraft.
Continuing on about the crusades. The First Crusade was ordered as a response to the Muslim Conquests of the Levant (632–661), in which the Islamic caliphate of Fatimid took control of the Holy Lands. In July 1099, the crusaders finally took control over the city of Jerusalem after four years of war, ending conflicts in the Middle East, causing the Kingdom of Jerusalem to be formed and other, smaller, Catholic petty kingdoms to be formed in the Holy Lands. In addition, the First Crusade was the first major step to opening up international trade with the west since the Western Roman Empire.
So to conclude, the name is alright how it is. It's a part of history and it's not really offensive anymore since the last crusade was almost 700 years ago. The crusades helped a lot of the world progress, and while it's still hard to tell if the First Crusade was a defensive or offensive war, it still kind of set off a chain reaction of events that advanced our world as a whole. I know you'd like to imagine our history as one without conflict, but the truth is that basically everything documented about our history is focused on war. There were good things, as there are good things now, but when you watch the news, do they always talk about great things happening in the world? Maybe once in a while, but it's 80% bad things. So please, go back to Tumblr.
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