Crusades and the Enlightenment

[tartus]

Hi everyone! I'm starting my extended essay and I am having trouble with deciding whether I should pursue the topic I have chosen, alter it or just choose a different topic all together. I chose to do the influence of the Crusades on the Enlightenment and although nothing is set in stone yet as the draft is not due for another 5 months I am still concerned as to whether this topic would be okay in terms of actually finding some correlation between the Crusades and the Enlightenment. Is there some potential here or should I go for a different topic?

[Proletariat]

Based on the very general knowledge that I do possess on those periods, I would have to say that it seems highly unlikely to find any meaningful influence the former would have had on the latter. The angle that would probably be pursued would be that of religion; Crusades being conducted under that banner obviously, while the Enlightenment was a rejection of divine right in favour for humanism and natural laws of governance and morality. The tricky thing is that you would be skipping over the Renaissance and the Reformation to try to make this thesis work, and I'm just very skeptical as to whether you would succeed. Certainly those two movements had much more impact on the Enlightenment than the Crusades did.

You may also consider an EE topic that is somewhat related to the History syllabus. Although I didn't write a History EE, I chose my IA on the Marshall Plan rather than the Medieval/Feudal period RQ that I had in mind before, and I could not be happier to have made that chance. Although maybe the Crusades is part of your syllabus, idk.

[tartus]

Ah okay, thank you so much! I was feeling a little unsure of it myself, thank you for helping me!!