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The article begins by discussing the notion of Central-Eastern Europe as a region that, having joined Latin Christian Europe shortly before 1000, has been struggling for centuries to “catch up” with the West. Yet at the same time, this region facilitated the global rise of the West by providing a ready model of a “proto-colonial” dependent economy, embodied by the Baltic grain trade. Moreover, its conquest proved crucial for the rise of the Habsburg and the Russian empires and for their acquisition of power status. Bordering on the Tatar steppe and the Ottoman Empire, Central-Eastern Europe also contributed to the continent’s contact with Islam, whose longstanding tradition was by no means limited to warfare.