The First Crusade was marketed--yes, marketed--on two major premises: first, the idea of religious pilgrimage to the Holy Land and to Jerusalem in particular, with its attendant benefits to the souls of the pilgrims; second, the idea of liberating the Holy Land from oppressive (non-Christian) rule.

At this particular moment in time, the terms libertas and liberatio used in the sources had very concrete legal and material meanings. This isn't just some vague "the land must be philosophically Christian"; it's a very specific idea of bringing Jerusalem and environs under Christian political rule. Latin Christian. Providing aid to Byzantium plays a role in web of motivations for the Crusades (the western pope and the eastern emperor were actually in discussions about 2 churches=>1 church even before the call to crusade), but the Christians already living in the Holy Land are basically a non-factor to the Franks.

And this idea of Latin political rule is what we see set up following the mostly-successful First Crusade. The conquerors set up several so-called crusader states or crusader kingdom--the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Principality of Antioch, County of Edessa, etc. Each crusader state indeed retains a Latin ruler, aristocracy, military garrison. The point is not to establish colonies in the sense of an extension of the country back in Europe. It's to get and keep the Holy Land under Latin control.

And so quite a few crusaders returned to Europe after the conquest of Jerusalem, bringing wagonloads of looted relics or purported relics, maybe some other riches as well (but mostly religious relics).

But.

There's always a but. In this case, several.

First, immediately on the heels of the First Crusade and some crusaders' initially triumphant return to Europe, they get sent back. Part of the reason is spiritual: medieval travel sucked and medieval warfare sucked more, so a TON of people--including rather prominent lords and knights--had taken a crusading vow in the initial fervor...then deserted their duty either during the long buildup to departure or at any point along the way. The Church wanted them back in the Holy Land, and threatened people with excommunication to get them there.

(Or, the legend goes, Adela of Blois, daughter of William the Conqueror, browbeat her husband Stephen into returning to finish out the vow he had actually fulfilled rather nicely. He heads back down, stupidly leads a raid and gets killed rather quickly, and she rules their territory as regent for him and then his son to the effusive praise of 12th century chroniclers.)

One of the big practical reasons for sending this second wave of the First Crusade was to shore up the military of the crusader states, of course. So here we can see some idea of semi-permanent residence. This is probably not quite "settlement" in the sense you're thinking of, since it's basically providing the governing/military shell on top of an existing society that works the land, engages in petty trade for sustenance and maybe some improvement, etc.

But the crusader army of knights and troops wasn't the whole Crusade, probably not even most of it.

Armies into the beginnings of the modern era cultivated streams of "camp followers": civilians marching in their wake, surviving mostly by plunder, frequently providing services like laundry, sewing new clothes, maybe helping get food (though usually concerned with feeding themselves first), of course prostitution. The First Crusade, at least, seems to have attracted even more camp followers than actual soldiers.

Have no illusions: this sucked. Almost no camp followers would have returned to Europe--because nearly all of them died. Disease ravaged their numbers, striking down women at a higher percentage than men, apparently. Crossing the Mediterranean, entire shiploads of peregrini (pilgrims) sank. Camp followers were targets for enemy attacks, unsurprisingly. We know that in the case of the First Crusade, many of the peregrini saw themselves as true crusaders and insisted on participating in the fighting even when forbidden, and these events tended to result in disaster. Medieval travel sucked; medieval warfare sucked more.

The interesting thing with the First Crusade is, we actually have quite a few chronicle accounts that talk about these camp followers. On some level, it's what you'd expect. In order to help evoke the righteousness of the mission and the piety of its participants, the chroniclers paint a picture of the entire reach of society participating, from peasants to, yes, knights and petty nobles (as followers, that is, not as formal crusaders!).

But on the other hand, some supplied details don't really jive with the idea of Crusade being a pilgrimage and a mission of liberation. Ekkehard of Aura tells us that the equites and pedites (mounted and foot soldiers) were accompanied by enormous numbers of ruricolae, who brought along their wives and children and household goods. Guibert of Nogent says, "You would have seen remarkable things, most apt to be a joke. Pauperes whose oxen had been fitted to a two-wheel cart and iron-clad as though they were horses, so as to carry in the cart a few possessions together with small children."

This is a description of people who have no intention of returning. This is a description of people who want to transplant their lives.

Of course, we know that the ever-shrinking number who reached each new stage of the Crusade's advance were still more focused on the religious-military goals than the economic ones. After the conquest of Antioch, the Crusade's leadership tried really, really hard to get the camp followers to remain in the city instead of pushing for Jerusalem. The Gesta Francorum (Deeds of the Franks) tells us, "The princes had it announced throughout the whole city that if by chance there should be present someone lacking in gold and silver, if he wished to remain, having made a compact with them, he would be retained with pleasure."

In other words: the crusaders were willing to support the followers who stayed and settled in Antioch.

Of course, this doesn't indicate a desire for "colonization" or settlement on the leaders' parts. They were painfully aware of the military incompetence coupled with unbridled zeal of the pauperes, and also that the followers increased the risk of epidemic among the actual army. But the idea was still out there, still floated.

We also know that basically no one took them up on the offer. Jerusalem was still the goal.

And after the massacre of the city inhabitants (including its native Christian population) that was the 'conquest' of the city, the camp followers were pressed into service helping clear the bodies of the dead from the city.

After that, we have some indication that the camp followers who managed to survive did set up a sort of shadow Latin Christian peasantry in the crusader states. It doesn't get a lot of play in the broad historical narrative, possibly reflecting that it was only a small population. William of Tyre, whose chronicle is especially good for covering the time between the First and Second Crusades, writes of the Kingdom of Jerusalem:

Certain cultivators of the field from the neighboring places had gathered together and certain of them had built there a church and a suburb near the fortress of Daron, where the men of less substance could prosper more easily than in the city.

William tells us first of all that some of the pauperes did indeed "resettle" the decimated and desecrated Jerusalem, but many also settled onto land in the new crusader states. Charters from the Kingdom of Jerusalem (documents concerning ownership of land), for example, establish terms for the pauperes that reflect freeholding land instead of serfdom. Farmers owed a significant rent to the lord, but received a plot of land to farm and a garden or even part of a vineyard to cultivate.

In the wake of the First Crusade, of course, the Muslim city-states in the area would band together under a few very capable leaders and undo basically all the victories of the First Crusade. Subsequent efforts were not nearly so successful.

The First Crusade was not preached (marketed) as a mission to remake Europe in the Holy Land; we definitely don't see a broad mindset like the colonialism of the early modern era or the 19th century. The leaders, at least, sought to establish Christian legal and political libertas for the Holy Land. But we have pretty solid evidence that the camp followers--and being realistic, the papacy and princes had to know this would happen--brought their own ideas.

Major sources: Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading; Conor Kostick, The Social Structure of the First Crusade

Everything I'm going to say is something I know by heart. I can look up some reading material if you want to know more about it. My main source is my medieval history professor and my premodern Islamic history professor at the Antwerp University. :)

You know about zionism, about the jews going back to the place where they came from (today's Israel)? The christians didn't want that. Probably because there wasn't a christian diaspora like the jewish diaspora. But that doesn't answer the question.

There was peaceful contact between Europe (Italian merchants) and the Islamic world before the crusades. There were funduq, which are basically hotels in the Islamic world where these merchants stayed. Before the crusades, Europeans didn't settle in the region. The main point here is that there was many contact and that settling in the Holy Land wouldn't be a problem since they weren't hostile to one another, but they did not settle.

In 1095 the pope ordered to reconquer Jerusalem, which was under Fatimid rule. The second reason for the Crusades was to help Byzantium against the Seljuks. But most people that participated in the crusades, did it for reconquering Jerusalem. Jerusalem was reconquered in 1099 and for most Europeans, that was enough. They still had a family at home, they did what they had to do and now were free to go home. They didn't feel the need to live in the Holy Land. Probably because they already had a home and because they're religious duty only consisted of reconquering Jerusalem, but not necessarily colonizing the Holy Land.

Who stayed? The templars, among who the famous Godfried of Bouillon. They had a religious duty and thus they stayed. Godfried for instance, was crowned protector of the Holy Sepulchre (a church located in Jerusalem), and how can you protect a church if you are thousands of miles away?

In the Holy Land, there were some islands of christianity from Europeans who did settle there, but they stayed a minority, mostly existing of templars.

Is that an answer to your question? :)