I was wondering if anyone can help.I am more of a military history fan but wanted to start branching out before I start my history degree in october. Long story short, I Started to read about the crusades and the author started to talk about prior empires and how they impacted the crusades and I felt as if I was missing so much context. Can anybody point out to me the absolute pivotal events in history that directly tie into the crusades and give me more historical context to help me understand, I am just looking for the absolute essentials and a handful of books that would help thank you in advance
Unfortunately, you're probably not going to get full context from any one place. The crusades drew in empires spanning from England in the west to the Mongols from the east. Even focussing just on the First Crusade, the political situation in the 11th century Middle East was a mess while Europe was similarly volatile. I've been studying the crusades for years and still don't know it all (especially some of the Byzantine context).
However, I tried to sum up the essentials in this post on the causes of the First Crusade.