The First Pius Dea Crusade was the first of a series of military campaigns launched by the Galactic Republic while under the control of the Humanocentric Pius Dea cult. Sanctioned in 11,965 BBY by the Republic's Pius Dea Supreme Chancellor Contispex, the crusade targeted Hutt Space, the realm of the Hutt species, which had long been unpopular with the Republic. The First Pius Dea Crusade ushered in dozens of other crusades during the subsequent millennium that were aimed at various non-Human species and had long-lasting repercussions on the relations between the Core Worlds and Rimward regions.
In 11,987 BBY, the Humanocentrist religious sect Pius Dea brought about the impeachment of the Galactic Republic's Supreme Chancellor Pers'lya and the election of its member, Senator Contispex. He began a decades-long process of achieving effective Pius Dea control over the Republic's institutions, including its navy. The cult exploited pro-Human sentiment in the Republic as well as tensions within the long-unpopular empire of the Hutt species, members of which for centuries had preyed on Republic colonists at its periphery, beyond the region known as the Rim. Those tensions had arisen in the wake of the series of calamities and catastrophes known as the Hutt Cataclysms, which had caused disarray in the Hutt domains by 15,000 BBY.
In 11,965 BBY, Contispex sanctioned a pre-emptive strike against the Hutts in the form of an invasion of Hutt Space. In what became known as the first of the Pius Dea Crusades, Republic forces originating in the centermost territory controlled by their government, in what would later be known as the Slice portion of the Mid Rim, advanced beyond the Republic's borders toward Hutt Space. The attacks traversed Rimward along the Ootmian Pabol hyperlane and were also launched from two of the Republic's Ordnance/Regional Depot outposts situated outside its territory—Ord Wylan and Ord Yndar, the former of which served as the origin point for an advance toward the Toydaria system.
Under the biological and ideological dynastic successors of Contispex—who would eventually become known as Contispex I—during the subsequent millennium, the Republic carried out at least thirty-four crusades at various regions along the Republic's borders. The Third Crusade of 11,939 BBY was once again aimed at the Hutts, but eventually the Pius Dea began to target other species neighboring—and constituting—the Republic as well, undoing millennia-worth of cultural integration and deepening tensions between the Core Worlds and Rim regions that would go on to last for tens of thousands of years. In 104 ABY, Doctor Gabrel Treon noted the initial targeting of the Hutts by the Pius Dea Republic in the article "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Praji: A Cartel of Genes," published in the Byblos Journal of Historical Science.
The 2005 reference book The New Essential Chronology by Daniel Wallace and Kevin J. Anderson was the first source to mention the Pius Dea Crusades. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Praji," an article authored by Nathan O'Keefe and published as part of the StarWars.com Hyperspace feature on February 5, 2009, gave the first indirect mention of the first of those conflicts specifically, and it was finally identified by the 2012 reference book The Essential Guide to Warfare by Jason Fry and Paul R. Urquhart. In the endnotes for "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Praji," O'Keefe commented that the Hutts being the target of the first Pius Dea Crusade "makes sense," characterizing members of the species as a "problem" that pre-dated the foundation of the Galactic Republic.
- The New Essential Chronology
- The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Praji on Hyperspace
- The Essential Atlas
- The Essential Guide to Warfare
- "10 Key Battles" — Star Wars Insider 133