the culture of conquest didn’t start with Europeans crossing the Atlantic. European institutions and the worldview of conquest and colonialism had formed several centuries before that. From the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries, Europeans conducted the Crusades to conquer North Africa and the Middle East, leading to unprecedented wealth in the hands of a few. This profit-based religion was the deadly element that European merchants and settlers brought to the Americas. In addition to seeking personal wealth, colonizers expressed a Christian zeal that justified colonialism. Along with that came the militaristic tradition that had also developed in western Europe during the Crusades