What a fuster-cluck the whole Crimean War was from both sides. ( )

In A Brief History of the Crimean War, Author Alexis Troubetzkoy claims the Crimean War was the first “World War”. While that’s dubious – you can make a much better case for the Seven Years War – it is true that the Crimean War involved action in the Balkans, Armenia, the Russian Pacific coast, the White Sea, the Aland Islands, and, of course, Crimea. It’s also true that the Crimean War had to be the bloodiest conflict fought for the most obscure reason in history (even the War of Jenkin’s Ear comes in a distant second). The whole first half of the book is devoted to background – the conflict in Kosovo dates back to 1399, the Irish struggles to 1171, but the roots of the Crimean War begin in 636, when Khalif Omar signed a firman guarantying the Byzantine Empire the rights to possession of the holy places in Jerusalem. As the Byzantines waned and the Latins waxed, more and more of the Orthodox privileges were usurped or transferred to various western European powers, most notably France. However, the antireligious Revolution removed France from the scene temporarily, and Russia reasserted the right to protect the Holy Places as the inheritor of the Byzantine Empire. Matters may have remained there had it not been for the ascent of Napoleon III, who was looking for just about any excuse to restore France to a semblance of the glory of Napoleon I. The particular trigger was Greek Orthodox monks denying Roman Catholic monks the right to enter the front door of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. (They were offered a side door). Negotiations developed the degree of complexity only possible in religious disputes; if the Catholics were allowed to enter the front door, would they want a key to it or would an Orthodox doorkeeper unlock it for them? And if the Catholics were granted a “key”, would it be an actual piece of metal or just a symbol? And if it were a real key, would the Catholics be allowed to place it in the lock and turn it? And if they were allowed to unlock the door, would they then want to open it themselves and walk through? In the midst of this – well, Byzantine – discussion, Tsar Nicholas got involved; that, in turn, brought in Louis Napoleon, who declared that if Russian troops set one foot over the Turkish border, the French would invade – Belgium. (Why Belgium? Because if Tsar Nicholas was allowed to expand his empire, then France clearly had the right to expand hers, and Belgium was a lot more convenient than Moldova.). Now the British got involved, since they had guaranteed the national integrity of Belgium back at the Treaty of Vienna in 1815. You might think that British animosity would be directed against France, not Russia, but the Foreign Office noted that Britain did a huge trade with the Ottomans which would presumably disappear if Istanbul fell to the Russians. Thus it eventually came about that British and French troops found themselves fighting Russians in Crimea to protect the right of Catholic monks to open a door in Bethlehem.


After that, the rest of the book is anticlimactic. The Crimean fighting is given cursory treatment compared to the other books I’ve reviewed (The Reason Why and The Destruction of Lord Raglan). Accounts of the actions in the Balkans, the Baltic, the Arctic, Armenia and the Pacific were interesting because they get scarcely any attention at all in other works. Troubetzkoy doesn’t have a flair for tactical description, but he probably explains the strategic situation better than any of the contemporaries understood it. A good read, and the headslap moments certainly aren’t the authors fault. Oh, and the British eventually do get to fight in Belgium. ( )

The Crimean War is informative but difficult book to follow that suffers from an absence of chronological or even logical presentation. Although the author freely admits that his work is not a history of the Crimean War, the final product resembles a hasty publication of research notes, rather than a thematic work. The author also makes a number of references to places, events and persons who are neither identified nor described anywhere in the book. To these unfortunate shortcomings must be added a dearth of maps that invariably diminishes any history. ( )

The Crimean War is a confusing introduction to this episode. It is written in a consciously un-linear manner, so that parts of the outcome of the war are described at many points throughout the text. The book is explicitly not a military history, but the narrative suffers from a lack of maps which makes the action difficult to follow. Finally, the edition I read contains numerous typos and some small errors which were very distracting.

That said, the book is very strong when it comes to its stated goals of providing in-depth descriptions of the personalities most responsible for bringing about the Crimean war. The prose itself is well composed -- I had no trouble completing the book in a few days. I just wish it had a better structure. ( )