This small colloquium will explore late medieval projects of crusades that advocated an expansion of Europe and European values into the Near East. Utopian visions as well as hard-headed economic and military considerations are the hallmark of the treatises proposing these proto-colonial plans. Multiple topics and perspectives will allow us to place late medieval crusading ideologies into contexts that speak to modern critical approaches, such as colonial studies and post-colonial theory; critiques of Orientalism; and issues revolving around ideas of uses of the past in nationalist and imperialist projects.