I came across Europe and the people without history by reading a citation about it in Karolyn Smardz Frost (2007).

The citation notes that Eric Wolf (1982) “demonstrated how colonial powers stripped those cultures they intended to exploit of heritage, pride, and self-identity” (Frost 2007, p. 355).

That’s an apt description.

Wolf describes specified political and economic factors at play during early European warfare. He describes a process, of political consolidation under central kingships, that required two things.

It required the ability to extract tribute to pay for war, and the ability to develop a war-making potential commensurate with the task of political consolidation.

The author describes three ways these abilities could be developed.

One involved external expansion against enemy powers, leading to the seizure of surpluses from other lands.

A second involved discovery of resources (home-grown or acquired as booty) to sell to merchants in exchange for needed goods or credit.

A third involved the enlargement of the royal domain, the area from which a king could extract direct support without the interference of intermediaries.

Seizure of external resources was a strategy favoured by the Iberian powers of Portugal, Leon-Castile, and Aragon in their reconquest of Muslim Spain. Another application of this strategy took the form of the Crusades, carried out by the kings of France and England after their initial consolidation of power starting in the 1100s.

The stated purpose of the Crusades was the reconquest of the Holy Land. On another level, however, Wolf remarks, “the Crusades were efforts to consolidate incipient political systems through an attack on greatly weakened enemies.”

With regard to the Crusades, and their role in history, here’s a February 2012 New York Times article that you may find of interest.