So I just watched HBOs “exterminate all the brutes” by Raoul Peck. It was an emotionally riveting documentary about genocide, colonialism and slavery particularly the ones perpetrated by American and European nations, although Rwanda is talked about.
While the four part series jumps around from narrative to narrative about different events, the main thesis I would say, as he repeats in the last episode, is that the crusades sparked an ideology of white supremacy and the need to destroy / subjugate the “barbaric” races. And that this also sparked the idea of race / the European obsession with race.
From my understanding this sort of ideology was very present in the Roman Empire, they viewed the Gauls and Germans as races and gave them qualities. Very similar to the sort of civilized vs barbarian ideas that Peck talks about.
My question is, how historically accurate is this statement about the crusades? It seems this ideology in Europe was already present and how much did the crusades really impact the idea of race amongst Europeans. Additionally were these concepts not present in other cultures?
Did cultures like the Babylonians not have more rural civilizations that they considered the people to be barbaric and naturally inferior?
The very short answer to this is "no." The Crusades did not really spark or result from a sense of white supremacy or racism, and the idea that other people were barbaric/inferior/different was not new and certaintly was not unique to Europeans. For more information I'd really reccomend these posts made by other people on this subreddit:
To what degree were the Crusades a racial campaign in addition to a religious one?
Did the European idea of race have its origins in the crusades?
What stereotypes or preconceptions did the Arab world hold about Europeans during the Medieval era?