In a word, yes.
Essentially, the Crusades saved Western Europe from conquest by Islam which would have brought Western Civilization to an end. Inasmuchas Western Civilization brought us the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and the Age of Exploration, without Western Civilization, world history would have been altered in a way that is unimaginable.
For the first 500 years after Christ, the entire Middle East was Christian (with sizeable minorities of Jews) before the Arab Muslims swept over the region and throughout the Mediterranean, which was also fully Christian, spreading Islam by conquest. Over a period of 400 years, Muslims captured two-thirds of the Christian World.
Finally, following the defeat of the Eastern Roman Empire (called Byzantium) at Manzikert, the defeated Byzantine Emperor asked for help from the Pope in the West. At some point, Christianity as a faith and culture had to defend itself or go the way of Zoroastrianism. The Crusades were that defense.
The Pope encouraged armed pilgrimages to rescue the Holy Land and their Christian brothers and sisters in the East. Tens of thousands of pious, warlike people turned their military energies toward this great and worthwhile endeavor. It was terribly expensive to go on crusade, plus crusaders had to brave terrible hardships. More than half of them would die while on crusade.
As many people point out on the internet, until recently, the crusaders were always admired in the West. The word “crusader” became synonymous with dedication to do good. We spoke of “crusading reporters” and called Batman “the Caped Crusader.” Eisenhower called his memoirs “Crusade in Europe” because the Allies were trying to liberate Europe from the Nazis just as the crusades tried to liberate both the Holy Land and Europe itself from the conquering warriors of Islam.
Since the 1960s, an anti-Western, anti-Christian bias has become popular among the “chattering classes”, and few people but (esoteric) historians of the Medieval period and the Crusades were even interested in what the Crusades were actually all about. That changed when two planes were flown into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Then a train was bombed in Madrid on March 11, 2004. Then another train was bombed in London on July 7, 2005. Westerners began to ask, “Why do they hate us so much”? The answers to that question were either informed by the results of Crusade Scholarship done since the 1960s OR by the anti-Western and anti-Christian biases of the “chattering classes” who really didn’t know (or care) much about what the Crusades had actually been about.
The following videos are by Real Crusades History. Taken together, these videos give you a good sense of how the Crusades saved Western Civilization.
If you click on the first video, you will be taken to a playlist that will play 12 different videos, one right after the other, for almost 2 hours. If you don’t want to do that, scroll to a video you do want to see & click on it. None of the rest of the videos connect to a whole playlist of videos.
An interesting article on Google is called “Refutation to the Real History of the Crusades by Kadafi.” (Just google “Did the Crusades save Western Civilization” and this article will pop up.) It is a very interesting read for those of you who enjoy spotting biased scholarship.
Try the Search feature on both Google and YouTube for “Did the Crusades save Western Civilization?” It’s a fascinating exercise. You will come across some unbiased scholarship, some articles that are biased to the left, some articles that are biased to the right. You will wind up with a new appreciation for the unbiased scholarship of both Thomas Madden and Jonathan Riley-Smith although you will find wackos on both the left and the right being critical of both of them — especially Thomas Madden.)
And finally, if you want to spend a fascinating afternoon or evening, go to the website of Real Crusades History Good stuff! Happy reading.