"It was the East that pushed Europe towards the West," writes historian Alessandro Vanoli. Columbus and Magellan wanted to reach the Indies, where so much wealth came from, where knowledge had always come from. First and foremost, America was the West Indies. The concept of the West was born looking towards the east and was in parallel with the redefinition of Europe, a name-idea that the Greeks had invented and that had been used in the early Middle Ages, soon replaced by the term Christendom in opposition to Islam. There was then a time of alliance between Christianity and the Chinese Empire against the powerful Ottoman world.