The Crimean War: A History (review)

Over the past two decades the Crimean War has struggled to escape the image imposed on it by historians of the Cold War era, when the existential ideological struggle between East and West shaped readings of the past. While some historians focused on international relations, determined to use the Crimea as a case study of how not to conduct diplomacy, others examined the development of strategy and the many failings of contemporary armies. The collapse of the Soviet Union provided opportunities to ask new questions, not least because the Yeltsin regime provided greater access to Russian archives. Noted British historian of Russia and Russian culture Orlando Figes has exploited the growing body of secondary literature to re-examine Russia’s war in another vast book. The analysis of Russia, supported by Candan Badem’s excellent work on Ottoman Turkey, provides a strong narrative drive through successive iterations of the Eastern Question, the descent into war, the chaotic nature of the conflict, and its impact on politics and culture.

The most important critique to make of this text is that it allows events to dictate the analysis of the war. Figes assumes that because the war happened, and since the main army campaign was in the Crimean Peninsula, the questions that matter concern Russo-Turkish relations and their impact on other powers. In reality Russia’s policy toward Ottoman Turkey was little different from that pursued against other border states, notably Poland, Sweden, and China, all of which were reduced to near impotence and stripped of substantial territories to become buffer states. The same concerns led the deeply irreligious Soviet Union to Finlandize another neighbour and construct the Warsaw Pact as a defensive glacis against the West in 1945. Figes makes great play of the role of faith in the descent to war; while it may have intensified Tsar Nicholas I’s zeal to reach Istanbul, he showed no concern for the rights of other Christians. In truth Russian policy was driven by a familiar combination of power, interest, geography, and anxiety. Orthodox and pan-Slavic agendas may have clouded the Tsar’s judgement and excited the populace, but the underlying policy of reducing Turkey to client status dated back to Peter the Great.

In essence this is another history of the so-called old Crimean War; while it emphasises the cultural dimension it makes only passing reference to events beyond the Crimean Peninsula. Consequently the major campaign in the Baltic, which threatened the Russian capital at St. Petersburg, is noted but not examined. When naval events are discussed significant new errors are generated. Constantine Nikolayevich, brother of Tsar Alexander II is denied his office as Navy Minister. The only major British warship to be lost, the steam frigate H. M. S. Tiger, ran aground in a fog near Odessa, but Figes invents a whole new battle to explain the loss, despite several published accounts. At another level the economic impact of the British blockade is hardly acknowledged. Sevastopol may have been the epicentre of wartime death and glory and the core cultural memory for both Russia and Britain, the two nations that actually remember the war, but that does not make it the decisive point. The threat to St. Petersburg posed by British industrial sea power clinched the case for peace. This critical point is missed because Figes claims the end of the war was marked by “modest festivities in Britain” (467). In fact Britain staged a massive victory parade on Saint George’s Day (April 23) 1856, featuring the Baltic fleet that had been built to destroy St. Petersburg. This fleet paraded before the Queen, Parliament, and people to demonstrate the reality of British power to the assembled diplomatic and military leaders of the great powers. The British Empire was secured by naval, not military, power, and it was represented by ships, not regiments. In 1877 Tsar Alexander II retreated from the gates of Istanbul because a British fleet arrived and another was assembling to...