Captain John Smith belongs in two worlds. He was an inhabitant of a European world that burst forth onto an expanded scene of world civilizations. His experiences on the European continent set the tone for his future relations with the larger world, mainly North America, and how he would portray his experiences later in life. His worldviews were formed by the destructive wars of religion of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-reformations. Yet the war against Islam, however, proved the biggest force in Smith’s life, as the wars did for other young European Christians. The Ottoman Empire rapid expansion into southern and central Europe served a role for young men like John Smith, Christian soldierdom of men like Smith provided contact with a non-Christian culture (Hindley). Contact with Islam accomplished a specific thing that is evident within the career of John Smith and speaks to the larger period of initial colonization of North America by the English crown. For Smith's time involved worldwide movements of people and the wars against Islam produced a unique expression about the lands Islam controlled. Europeans called this place “Tartary,” the wilderness of eastern Europe filled with Muslims, later-day khans and their hoards, the armies of the sultans and a melange of cultures. Western Christendom viewed this place as “eastern” and “oriental”; and so did John Smith after his campaigns in Tartary view America in a similar way, in effect influencing how later English colonists conceptualized a place that became the United States of America (Banerjee 150). John Smith was born a peasant; no worldliness described his origins. The accumulation of belongings through hard work, and more importantly, obedience and deference to people of higher stations never influenced Smith to follow his father’s life. Growing up in Lincolnshire, England, on rented land of Lord Willoughby de Eresby, John Smith heard tales of the hated Spanish, their oppressive king Philip II, and the dreaded Turks beyond England's shores. These historical forces had more power upon the young Smith than his father’s hard work It was after his father's death that he decided to travel to the continent. He would go to the "Low Countries" of Holland and fight Philip II's Spanish (Barbour 17). English foreign policy dramatically change