Hello guys! I was studying a bit of history recently on the early modern era (1300-1600 ish), and especially how important religion played a role in the development of western civilization and colonization of America.
It seems that in history books we tend to separate the era Crusades from the era of Colonization, but in reality it seems these time periods slightly overlap. Officially, the Crusades for the Levant ended after the fall of Acre in 1291, but the Catholic Church still called Crusades for many years after that point, such as the Hussite Crusades, the Crusade of Varna, etc. And even after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Pope still tried to call Crusades even into the 16th century up until the Thirty Years War, even though almost all of them were called off. Also, it seems that Crusades were justified by Europe whenever there was a conflict of religion, not just against Muslims, and that's why there were Crusades called against the Pagan Baltics, the Protestant Hussites, the Gnostic Albigesians, etc.
The Age of Exploration technically begins with the conquest of the Canary Islands in 1376, as Europe began expanding into the Atlantic with colonies in both Subsaharan Africa and the Americas. The native peoples in Africa and America were undenyably pagans, and many Conquistadors like Cortez or even Columbus considered their expeditions to be a Holy mission to bring Christianity to the New World. The Pope would even grant authority to Spain and Portugal to conquer pagan nations for that very purpose. It was only after the Thirty Years War, as far as I can tell, that Europe adopted much more secularism.
From the perspective of the Crusaders, the age of Crusades had always been the "original" colonization from the late Middle Ages, and the Crusader states in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Baltic were basically German, French and Italian colonies run by monastic orders. From the perspective of the colonizers, the Spanish Empire was the greatest and most loyal benefactor for the Pope and the Catholic Church against the hegemony of France, and later on the Protestant faction of England and the Netherlands.
With all that being the case, why did the Catholic Church never officially declare a Crusade against any pagan nation in the Americas, Sub Saharan Africa, or Oceania? Moe specifically, why was there never any Crusader state (lands of a monastic military order) established in any of these same continents?
Yes, I know that the Soveign Knights of Malta bought some of the Virgin Islands in the 17th century, but that clearly wasn't a Crusade, nor was it religiously motivated.
So, this can be complicated because the way that the question frames a crusade is when the papacy officially calls for one. In that regard, if one looks at the differences between crusades and conquests, it's all about the targeted group and whether the papacy and the church could claim jurisdiction over them. Regarding Albigensians, Cathars, Hussites, etc., all those groups were Christian sects deemed to be heretical by the papacy. These groups were the targets first by the papal inquisition and then by subsequent crusades since these groups were considered Catholics who were led irreversibly astray by heresy. Furthermore, crusades were called against Muslims and European pagans because of their perceived acknowledgment and rejection of Christianity.
When it comes to indigenous peoples in Subsaharan Africa and the Americas, there was a great amount of debate as to what their status was relative to the Church, or even if these people had souls. Such haziness regarding official church policy was why, for decades in Mexico, hierarchs like Bishop Juan de Zumárraga took it upon themselves to run amok and forcibly convert indigenous peoples in what is called the Primitive Inquisition. It was only in roughly 1570 that the Spanish Church established a Holy Office of the Inquisition with jurisdiction over Mexico. Furthermore, it was determined that indigenous populations were not to be touched because of their lack of acknowledgement or prior awareness of Christianity. Moreover, the Inquisition was instructed to become a more internal policing tool rather than one of evangelism. Such policy was extended to all of the Spanish lands in the Americas by 1572. This was also keeping with the Two-Sphere system of Spanish governance over the Americas, where the ruling monarch was sovereign of two separate "republics", one for Spaniards and one for indigenous people, each having their own separate sets of laws and administrative systems.
In Africa, the focus of Europeans was primarily commercial. European merchants, mainly Portuguese, had established trading posts with the permission of local peoples so that they could purchase ivory, precious metals, agricultural products, and, most importantly, slaves. It wasn't until the nineteenth century, after the Conference of Berlin, that Europeans even considered Subsaharan Africa as a target of imperial ambitions. And even then, the goal to be achieved was primarily commercial in its nature.
So, the fact that there was a great amount of confusion regarding the status of indigenous Americans and Subsaharan Africans led to papal hesitance in calling a bona fide crusade. But the question gets even more confusing when Spanish and Portuguese language and attitudes pertaining to the colonization are brought up. Even though there was never a proper crusade launched against indigenous Americans and Africans, a crusader's mindset seemed to dominate the conquistadores. The Iberian Reconquista against the Muslims, completed in 1492 by the Catholic Monarchs Fernando and Isabel, was motivated at least partially by the same rationale that papal authority would use to call a crusade. For many, the conquest of the Americas was but a mere extension of the Reconquista, with much of the same language and practices being used and observed by Catholic Spaniards. And to answer one of your other questions, there were no crusader states in Americas as we know them. However, there was a system put in place by the Spanish monarchy called the encomienda, where those taking part in the Reconquista were rewarded by the Crown with lordship over a certain amount of people and having a monopoly over their labor. As the American conquests began, the encomienda system was applied in the exact same way regarding indigenous populations. In exchange for their labor, the Spanish encomendero would grant his vassals protection from other tribes.