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The Crimean War: British grand strategy against Russia, 1853-6
Abstract
This new edition of Andrew Lambert's ground-breaking study The Crimean War: British Grand Strategy against Russia, 1853-1856, focuses on British grand strategy, the development and implementation of national policy and strategy. With a revised introduction contextualising the 1990 text, and the addition of a new bibliography, the book is now available to a new generation of scholars, and situated in the historiography of the Crimean War.
... By the time war ended in 1856, British losses totalled 21,097, of which 16,323 were deaths by disease (Lambert, 2011(Lambert, [1990, p 15). Returning to England, Nightingale was determined to see that permanent reforms were made. To this end, she set about producing a persuasive set of statistics from the data she had gathered in the Crimea. ...
... By the time war ended in 1856, British losses totalled 21,097, of which 16,323 were deaths by disease (Lambert, 2011(Lambert, [1990, p 15). Returning to England, Nightingale was determined to see that permanent reforms were made. To this end, she set about producing a persuasive set of statistics from the data she had gathered in the Crimea. ...
... Conditions in the Crimea were dire. Infectious disease was rife: soldiers were dying in their thousands of illnesses including typhus, typhoid, cholera and dysentery(Lambert, 2011(Lambert, [1990, p 143). Shortly after her arrival, Nightingale wrote to her friend Dr William Bowman, describing the horrors she was facing:But oh! you gentlemen of England, who sit at home in all the well-earned satisfaction of your successful cases, can have little idea from reading the newspapers, of the horror & misery (in a military Hospl.) of operating upon these dying and exhausted men […] I have no doubt that Providence is quite right and that the Kingdom of Hell is the best beginning for the Kingdom of Heaven, but that this is the Kingdom of Hell no one can doubt[14 November 1854, p 36). ...
This essay is an account of the making of England and her Soldiers (1859) by Harriet Martineau and Florence Nightingale. The book is a literary account of the Crimean War, written by Martineau and based on Nightingale’s statistical studies of mortality during the conflict. Nightingale was passionate about statistics and healthcare. Whilst working as a nurse in the Crimea, she witnessed thousands of soldiers die of infectious diseases that might have been prevented with proper sanitation. After the war, she launched a campaign to convince the British government to make permanent reforms to military healthcare, compiling a dataset on mortality in the Crimea. She worked with the government’s Royal Commission investigating healthcare during the war, but also worked privately with Martineau to publicise her findings. Martineau and Nightingale grasped that the lay reader was more receptive to statistical information in a literary format than in dense statistical reports. As such, Nightingale’s data was interwoven with Martineau’s text. The pair illustrated their book with Nightingale’s ‘Rose Diagram’, a statistical graphic which simply illustrated the rate of mortality.
... Οι όροι της Συνθήκης Ειρήνης των Παρισίων του 1856, που τερμάτισε τον πόλεμο, προέβλεπαν την απόσυρση της Ρωσίας από τις Παραδουνάβιες Ηγεμονίες και ένα ευρωπαϊκό καθεστώς εγγυήσεων για αυτές, ενώ κατέστησαν τη Μαύρη Θάλασσα σχεδόν πλήρως αποστρατιωτικοποιημένη ζώνη για τη Ρωσία. 40 Ωστόσο, η κινητοποίηση που υπήρξε κατά τη διάρκεια του πολέμου από την πλευρά της Βρετανίας και των συμμάχων της, η παρεπόμενη ήττα της Ρωσίας, ακόμη κι αυτή ίδια η Συνθήκη δεν ήταν αρκετές για να ανατρέψουν τη στρατηγική πραγματικότητα, που είχε παγιωθεί στην περιοχή της Μαύρης Θάλασσας και της Ανατολικής Μεσογείου μετά την προσάρτηση της Κριμαίας από τους Ρώσους. Πενήντα περίπου χρόνια μετά το τέλος του πολέμου του 1828-29 και παρά τη μεσολάβηση της Συνθήκης των Παρισίων το 1856 με τους σκληρούς για τη Ρωσία όρους, αυτή κατάφερε να εξασφαλίσει την παρουσία της, για άλλη μια φορά, στις βόρειες ακτές του Αιγαίου, με τη δημιουργία της Μεγάλης Βουλγαρίας και ενός προπλάσματος αρμενικού κράτους στην πλευρά του Καυκάσου το 1877. ...
... Such passionate academic interest is understandable given that the Crimean War was the 19th century's world war in which all great powers of the time took direct or indirect part in it, and their vast armies and navies fought on seven fronts for almost 3 years. Although many studies were conducted to explain the British and French motivations to declare war against Russia (e.g., Lambert, 2016;Snyder, 1991, pp. 158-165;Copeland, 2014, pp. ...
When does the war party win in the decision-making process? Why does the peace party lose even if war is too risky? In this article, we show that certain balancing acts of the peace party might increase the confidence of the war party. We examine how the Ottoman Empire’s risky Crimean War decision and its war declaration against Russia on 4 October 1853 were shaped by internal debating through time, foreign penetration, and dynamic interplay between the Ottoman decision makers and a changing European strategic environment. The large literature on the Crimean War does not include a systematic analysis of the Ottoman origins of the Crimean War and the Ottoman war decision. We trace the Ottoman decision-making process in the fateful months of 1853 to establish the origins of the Crimean War. We empirically demonstrate the gradual formation of the Porte’s war decision by showing how the peace front stumbled upon war by inadvertently changing the decision structure in favor of the war party within a year.
... After Russia lost the Great Crimean War of 1853-1856 she intensifi ed its cultural infl uence in the region of the South-East Europe for the purposes of beating the Habsburg (the Roman-Catholic) rivalry and to spread an idea of the Pan-Slavism in this part of Europe. 2) However, the Great Crimean War was in essence the British war against Russia (Figes, 2010;Lambert, 2011;Small, 2014) in order to stop further Russian victories against the Ottoman Empire (Isaacs, 2001, 156;Anisimov, 298−299). After this war it became obvious for Russia that the West European great powers 3) are her enemies, especially the United Kingdom. ...
... By 1854, between 1.5 and 2 million Irish left their country due to evictions, starvation, and harsh living conditions. E. The Crimean War [3], [8] The Crimean War went down in history as the first modern war. England and France allied in order to stop the Russians who marched into the Ottoman Empire under the command of Tsar Nikolaus I. ...
This paper examines the reign of Queen Victoria and her personal development during 63 years of being the head of the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth. She succeeded to the throne at an incredibly early age that did not only influence her reign and her effect on the British people but also the development of the economy and industry. In addition, the work examines her reforms of the educational and of the social system, on which she worked closely together with her husband Prince Albert of Saxe - Coburg and Gotha. Furthermore, this includes an analysis of the Victorian society and her role model effect on the stereotypical Victorian woman. The focus lies primarily on Queen Victoria's family background, such as the wedding with her cousin Prince Albert and the royal children. Additionally, the paper treats political and historical issues, for instance, the Industrial Revolution and the great famine in Ireland. Both raised critical problems for the Queen and her husband. Eventually, the work discusses her late years and widowhood until her death in 1901. She will forever remain an incredible woman, who has left behind a legacy that still impresses people today.
... After Russia lost the Great Crimean War of 1853-1856 she intensifi ed its cultural infl uence in the region of the South-East Europe for the purposes of beating the Habsburg (the Roman-Catholic) rivalry and to spread an idea of the Pan-Slavism in this part of Europe. 2) However, the Great Crimean War was in essence the British war against Russia (Figes, 2010;Lambert, 2011;Small, 2014) in order to stop further Russian victories against the Ottoman Empire (Isaacs, 2001, 156;Anisimov, 298−299). After this war it became obvious for Russia that the West European great powers 3) are her enemies, especially the United Kingdom. ...
... NITIALY, wars were conducted via physical instruments and signs like whistles or flags. Especially with the usage of telegraph in Crimean War [1] in the 19th century, remote command and control (C2) became possible. The rapid development of the instruments like satellites [2] within the space dimension increased the range of C2, while the improvement of ground positioning systems [3] increased the precision of C2, and lastly computers and internet increased the obscurity of C2. [4] Although the C2 instruments have changed through the history [5], its crucial role in warfare has kept its importance; it is a necessity to have sheltered, mobile, and modern C2 centers, while it is indispensable to train the leaders to effectively put to use this capability [6]. ...
It is a well-known fact that today a nation’s
telecommunication networks, critical infrastructure, and
information systems are vulnerable to growing number of attacks
in cyberspace. Cyber space contains very different problems
involving various sets of threats, targets and costs. Cyber security
is not only problem of banking, communication or transportation.
It also threatens core systems ofarmy as command control.
Some significant recommendationson command control (C2) and
cyber security have been suggested for army computing
environment in this paper. Thisstudy addresses priorities of
“what should be done for a better army cyber future”to cyber
security researchers
... When the Crimean War broke out in March 1854 British planners simply transferred the plans for an attack on Cherbourg to Russian arsenals. [24] Once the massive British private shipbuilding and engineering industries had been harnessed to build anew flotilla the coastal warfare concept was applied. In a two day bombardment the dockyard at Sweaborg was destroyed by long range fire without the loss of a single man [25] . ...
Between 1860 and 1890 Britain greatly expanded her formal and informal empire, and her commercial activity, while avoiding war with any other major power. Although this period witnessed a revolution in the technologies of war, communication and transport, and profound changes in the European state system Britain secured her interests on low and falling defence estimates. This combination of circumstances was neither accidental, nor fortunate. It reflected a coherent response to the problems facing the state, and the development of core capabilities for a truly global strategy. In examining the development of British strategy between 1860 and 1890 this study will focus on the major influences, expanding and changing commercial activity, the emergent technologies of iron, steam, and telegraphy, and the vast extent of the potential defence commitment.(1)
This contribution addresses the strategical, political, and cultural significance of the Åland Islands between Russia, Sweden, and Finland
from 1809 to the present day. During the fi rst half of the 19th century, Russia fulfilled, with the conquest of the Åland Islands, one of its military goals which had been in place since the Petrine period, namely, to push forward the country’s military control as far as to the Western border of Finland in order to secure Russia’s capital St. Petersburg, and to threaten the capital of the kingdom of Sweden, Stockholm, in order to prevent a Swedish act of revenge for the loss of Sweden’s control of the Eastern Baltic during the Great Northern War. At the same time, the islands were, in a political and cultural sense, an important ingredient of the upcoming Swedish and Finnish national movements. After the loss of Finland, the countries had tried to find solace in national culture and past glories. In this respect, the question of why Sweden, during the Finnish Civil War, sent troops to the Åland Islands can be interpreted as part of Sweden’s anti-Russian military agenda as well as being part of its cultural mission to protect the islands against Finnish and Russian attempts to make the island part of Finnish or Russian culture, and to subdue the overwhelmingly-Swedishspeaking population in the context of a Finnish national state. This Swedish-Finnish opposition, though, turned, during the interwar period, into a secret collaboration against Russian military interests in the Eastern Baltic region, whereby the control of the Åland Islands played a central role. Despite minor yet critical situations, the islands have enjoyed relative calm ever since. However, the outbreak of Russia’s Ukrainian War threatens to cast doubt once again on the islands’ status.
The mid-nineteenth century's Crimean War is frequently dismissed as an embarrassment, an event marred by blunders and an occasion better forgotten. In The Crimean War and its Afterlife Lara Kriegel sets out to rescue the Crimean War from the shadows. Kriegel offers a fresh account of the conflict and its afterlife: revisiting beloved figures like Florence Nightingale and hallowed events like the Charge of the Light Brigade, while also turning attention to newer worthies, including Mary Seacole. In this book a series of six case studies transport us from the mid-Victorian moment to the current day, focusing on the heroes, institutions, and values wrought out of the crucible of the war. Time and again, ordinary Britons looked to the war as a template for social formation and a lodestone for national belonging. With lucid prose and rich illustrations, this book vividly demonstrates the uncanny persistence of a Victorian war in the making of modern Britain.
When and why do countries in a wartime coalition engage in diplomacy during hostilities? This paper establishes a theoretical framework of coalitional diplomacy that highlights each member’s private costs and benefits to fighting or seeking a negotiated exit. I argue that the propensity for coalition members to engage in negotiations is a function of the coalition’s balance of military contributions, as well as the coalition’s battlefield successes and failures. Evidence supporting these claims stem from a large-scale quantitative analysis of two centuries of interstate wars, as well as a close study of the Allies in the Crimean War.
When it comes to the naval history of the Crimean War very little attention has been given to the effort to establish a new home defence force during those years: the Royal Naval Coast Volunteers. To date the historiography has focused on the operations, ships, and officers of the campaign abroad, while omitting the effort of the Admiralty, through the Coastguard, and guided by the Naval Coast Volunteers Act 1853, to establish, recruit, and train a new naval reserve. Utilizing a four-nations perspective and drawing upon a cross-section of sources from the same, this article documents the efforts to establish the RNCV in 1854–6. It details the people, strategies, responses, and regions involved, before ending with a brief appraisal of those activities within the context of similar efforts to embody other naval reserves.
The Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy, is commonly believed to be cast from the bronze of Russian cannon captured at Sebastopol during the Crimean War. There is no corroboration for this belief beyond an entry in The Times in 1857. Historical sources suggest that neither the Queen nor her Prime Minister would have favoured an association of the medal with Sebastopol. From 1914, however, it is likely that many Victoria Crosses were indeed sourced from captured ordnance, but probably using Chinese guns. Some may even have been cast from entirely unprovenanced metal. Recent examination of VCs and putative sources of their metal by X-ray fluorescence suggest multiple sources of material, presenting medals variously of bronze, brass and copper.
Political leaders need ministers to help them rule and so conventional wisdom suggests that leaders appoint competent ministers to their cabinet. This book shows this is not necessarily the case. It examines the conditions that facilitate survival in ministerial office and how they are linked to ministerial competence, the political survival of heads of government and the nature of political institutions. Presenting a formal theory of political survival in the cabinet, it systematically analyses the tenure in office of more than 7,300 ministers of foreign affairs covering more than 180 countries spanning the years 1696-2004. In doing so, it sheds light not only on studies of ministerial change but also on diplomacy, the occurrence of war, and the democratic peace in international relations. This text will be of key interest to students of comparative executive government, comparative foreign policy, political elites, and more broadly to comparative politics, political economy, political history and international relations.
More than six times as many soldiers died in a hospital than in battle. These deaths are avoidable. However, raw data seldom inspires people to do something about problems. It must be compiled in a way that the problem is clear, and the solution is suggested. Figures must be presented in such a way that it will make people stop, think, and act. How do you convince the powers that be to make certain that soldiers who are wounded fighting for the ideals that they and their country stand for do not forfeit their lives in a hospital? How do you present this information in such a way that it will make a difference?
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, as the Russian Federation struggled to find its new place as a reduced Great Power within post-Cold War Eurasia, its relations with the newly-independent state of Ukraine were a matter of prime concern to Moscow. What had been its chief partner in the 293 million-strong Soviet Union was now its largest post-Soviet neighbour with a population of around 52 million as compared to Russia’s reduced population of 154 million. Moreover 11 million (22%) of Ukrainian citizens were Russian, constituting almost half of the 25 million who then found themselves outside the borders of the new Russia, while Ukraine enjoyed a largely unregulated 2,063-km common border with Russia, not to speak of a 1,720-km Black Sea coastline. Unfortunately, Ukraine soon came to be seen as a geopolitical ‘pivot state’ on the Eurasian chessboard, its status derived not from its internal strength but from the deep divisions within its borders between communities enjoying different civilizational identities, its sensitive strategic position, and its vulnerability to manipulation by Great Power diplomacy (Chase, Hill & Kennedy, 1996, pp. 33–37; Brzezinski, 1997, pp. 40–41). The potential for Ukraine to become the focus of an international struggle for influence, with the risk that it might be torn apart by a combination of internal or external forces, was therefore high.
German statesman Otto von Bismarck once envisioned nineteenth-century Anglo-Russian conflict as a duel between an elephant (Russia) and a whale (Britain). Although the German chancellor’s metaphor did not include France or smaller powers, it aptly described much of the Crimean War. When Britain and France joined the Ottoman Empire in this struggle against Russia in 1854, a unique example of a geographically expansive yet strategically limited conflict ensued among vast empires at different stages of economic and technological development. The British and Czarist Empires were already concerned with ruling on a transcontinental scale by the 1850s, though neither had yet reached its territorial apogee. Outside of Africa, in fact, an adversarial Anglo-Russian relationship prevailed everywhere in the world, albeit often at a distance. The vast distances that still separated Czarist and British territory instead ensured that Anglo-Russian conflict during the mid-nineteenth century manifested itself in conflict over so-called intermediate areas in the Baltic, Ottoman Empire, Caucasus, and Pacific. These areas became especially important during the Crimean War, when circumstances challenged Britain and France to attack the Czarist Empire outside Central Europe.
Several months prior to the Crimean War’s outbreak, British foreign secretary Lord Clarendon straightforwardly concluded that, “in the event of war between this Country and Russia, the Baltic must become a theatre of active operations.”1 In fact, the entire Crimean conflict was precisely timed to facilitate a British plan to cripple the Russian warships they thought were still anchored off Revel (Tallinn), Estonia.2 Allied efforts against Russia’s Black Sea stronghold at Sevastopol, on the other hand, was designed as a grand raid and not a protracted siege: in Clarendon’s words, “one blow in the Baltic was worth two in the Black Sea.”3 Planning for that blow commenced long before the war’s outbreak,4 and fused with concerns that Russian warships would slip undetected into the North Sea and attack British and French coastlines.5
Whether or not each epoch is equal to God, as Leopold von Ranke once suggested, certainly each new generation of historians creates a new version of the past, one that suits its needs or tastes or that, at any rate, suggests itself as a plausible reconstruction of past occurrences. This is also relevant for the study of the post-1945 East-West conflict. The Cold War is generally seen as the key organising principle of the second half of the short twentieth century. So ingrained, indeed, is this view in the intellectual habits of today’s political leaders and commentators — and not a few scholars, too — that they tend to cast back wistful glances at the ‘familiar certainties of the Cold War and its alliances.’1
The strategic basis of British foreign policy built around the ‘appeasement’ of adversarial Powers began with the rise of the Conservative, Neville Chamberlain, to the premiership in May 1937. Before this moment, although appeasement had a tradition in English and, later, British external relations stretching back to the seventeenth century if not before, the country’s diplomatists had employed it only tactically to support grand strategy. Since at least the reign of Elizabeth I until the late 1930s, this strategy comprised the pursuit of the balance of power — changing alliances or drawing close to other Powers to preclude the regional hegemony of one nation or alliance.1 It occurred, first, in relation to Western Europe and the security of the home islands and, then, as the expanding British Empire saw policy-makers in London defend the manifold interests of the only world Power, in key areas of the globe. Thus, appeasement had been just one of a number of tactical alternatives in the planning and execution of British foreign policy designed to ensure the security of Britain’s national and Imperial interests. These alternatives also included working with other Powers politically or militarily in short-term arrangements or longer-term alliances, unilateral threats or the use of military action, a reliance on conference diplomacy, and more.
Article “The NATO’s World Order, the Balkans and the Russian National Interest”, International Journal of Politics & Law Research, Sciknow Publications Ltd., Vol. 3, № 1, 2015, New York, NY, USA, ISSN 2329-2253 (print), ISSN 2329-2245 (online), pp. 10−19 (www.sciknow.org)
The central issue in most wars is how to win. The central issue in the Crimean War was whether there should be a war. Throughout most of the war, the question of peace or war remained an open one, dependent on military prospects, diplomatic vicissitudes, and the shuttlecock of parliamentary faction. That British public opinion was hotly for war was interpreted by players of the parliamentary game only as meaning that it might become pacific with equal volatility. The supposed political invincibility of Palmerston in 1855–6 had some reality outside Parliament, but little inside Parliament where it mattered. If events in Parliament varied in line with the war, it was also true that parliamentary prospects could affect the war.