The First Pacific War: Britain and Russia, 1854–1856 (review)

The title is an attempt to attract readers. The book is about the Crimean War in the Pacific, which was certainly not the First Pacific War. John D. Grainger is writing here popular history and he writes fluidly, making good use of the British Admiralty records; but this book is of no interest to the specialist and even the general reader has to be skeptical about some of its claims about the consequences of Crimean War for the Pacific region. For instance, recent studies by Mitani Hiroshi and Michael R. Auslin on Japanese negotiations with the Western powers in the 1850s and 1860s would not back up the contention that it was British, French and Russian maritime activity in the waters around Japan during this war “which brought home to the Japanese government the real dangers of their isolation” (p. 188). Grainger’s book simply lacks the depth and breadth of poly-lingual sources featured in the well-written and interesting books and articles on the Russian push toward Japan and the Pacific in the mid-nineteenth century by specialists like John Stephan and the late George Lensen.

Grainger divides his book into nine chapters: The Royal Navy in the Pacific; the Pursuit to Petropavlovsk; Japan, China, the Amur River; Petropavlovsk Again; the Gulf of Tartary; the Sea of Okhotsk; the Amur Estuary; Plans, and lastly, Victims. Royal Navy operations begin with its Pacific Squadron searching with its French ally for two Russian warships known to be in the vast stretches of the north Pacific, which quickly leads to the abortive Anglo-French attack on Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula. The China Squadron subsequently searched the Sea of Okhotsk where British efforts were hampered by a lack of good maps and the pusillanimous caution of a Commodore. Ice meant that operations could only be conducted in that northerly Sea during a relatively short summer season, and the war ended before it could be taken to the Russian strongholds on the Amur River. Even if they were not spectacular, British actions were effective in preventing Russian warships from posing any danger to British merchant shipping and in avoiding a further deterioration of Anglo-American relations. Grainger points out the British were concerned about the possibility of United States involvement in the war (p. 64), and Russian posts in Alaska were treated as neutral for fear of giving offence to the Americans (p. 32). Within a few years of the end of the war the Russians had expanded southward at the expense of Imperial China to where Vladivostok now stands, and had sold Alaska to America, but the China Squadron barred any extension of Imperial Russia to Tsushima, Hokkaidô and northern Honshû. Despite its flaws, it is hoped this book will contribute to sparking further interest in things naval in the Pacific during a century that was marked by high imperialism and by high adventure.