[.ca] Crimea: The Great Crimean War 1854-1856 (ISBN 1403964165)

From Amazon.com:
The mid-19th-century Crimean War, pitting England, France, and less powerful allies against Russia, was one of the first major international wars in history. In the execution, it was none too inspiring. As Trevor Royle writes in his sweeping study of the conflict, "it encompassed maladministration on a grand scale and human suffering, if not without parallel then at least minutely recorded by the watching war correspondents"--the war being the first as well to have been widely reported. It was, a contemporary British journal put it, a war of "lions led by donkeys," young men commanded by doddering veterans of the Napoleonic campaigns who served in an unlikely alliance. The English officers, Royle writes, could never shake the habit of calling their French comrades "the enemy," and never quite trusted them, either. The result was carnage: not only the loss of a good portion of the Light Brigade in the most famous--but not the most inept--incident of the war, but also the destruction of whole regiments left to blunder about in the fog and smoke, thanks to their commanders' inadequate intelligence-gathering efforts. Not much changed at war's end. In the eventual peace treaty, France and England and Russia kept their territories more or less intact, and the struggle for power between Russia and the neighboring Ottoman Empire, in whose defense France and England had ostensibly gone to war, stretched out for another generation. It ended with a Russian victory that allowed Russia to assume control of Turkish holdings in the Balkans, which, Royle notes, lay the seeds for still another international conflict, World War I. Royle does a fine job of negotiating through the many complexities, diplomatic and military, of the Crimean War. His descriptions of battlefield tactics (or the lack thereof) are among the best in the literature. More comprehensive than Robert B. Edgerton's Death or Glory: The Legacy of the Crimean War, Royle's Crimea is likely to stand as an enduring work on this strange, wasteful conflict. --Gregory McNamee

Good but not Enough:
As a reader already observed, this book is, to begin with, very anglo centered as it happens with boring regularity with almost every anglosaxon historian, no matter the issue. French partner in this war appears, of course, how it could be otherwise, but always as if from a side, as a distant guy that by chance was there. I think the subjet is the Crimean war or should be so, not England in-war-in-Crimea. From a sheer military point of view the book lacks too much. Battles are more or less described, but maps are a joke and the equipment of both sides scarcely mentioned and poorly defined. A reader of this kind of books want to know more: want to know details about personal weapons, artillery, technical innovations, uniforms, etc. It is the more so as the author himself recognizes this was the first modern war, an intermediate step between Waterloo and the slaughters of I World War. There is some of all of it, but prone to be poor and cursorily explained. Even more, the autor makes a serious mistake confusing the innnovation of the Minie bullet -to be used with muskets already in use- with a supposedly new "Minie rifle" that never existed. Nevertheless, the political side of the war -french again appearing as a guest and often under a disdainful light- is well developped and informative. Same with many personalities, including, this time, french officers. Last but not least, the quality of the paper in this paperback edition is the worst I have ever seen in this kind of binding. I doubt it will resist more than 10 years in a shell. For the same reason the discrete number of photos available -not acceptable in a book about the first photographed war in history- are a miserable account of bad quality and neglect.

Fantastic and fascinating!:
This was my first book about the Crimean war and i was looking for something that could get me started on the subject.The author does a magnificent job in explaining the causes of the war and at the end of the book does a great job of explaining briefly the consequences in the future.What i like most about this book is the bold and clear explanations the author gives when explaining the situations sorrounding this war.He talks firm and clear about Lord Clarendon,about Lord Palmerston and some of the other players in the Crimean conflict.I found fascinating the accounts of the soldiers in thir battles and how stupid were their generals during the conflict.This is a great start for someone looking for information on how things carry on all the way to World War I and II.The author explains how everything came back around for the allies....Excellent book!!

Don't let the "lack" of maps stop you!:
While shopping for a history of the Crimean War I hesitated at first to purchase this version because of the negative comments regarding the maps. I'm glad I went ahead and bought a copy because it is a wonderful narration of the Crimean War, and I found the maps to be quite adequate. The only problem with the maps is that they aren't referenced in any manner. There's isn't even a list of maps in the table of contents. No problem. I simply wrote my own list on one of the blank pages following the table of contents. The maps do a poor job of providing the "big picture" as they are mostly restricted to the theater of battle. But there are hundreds, nay, thousands, of maps accessible on the Internet to provide additional perspective. So I say to the cry babies below: Get of your lazy, complaining butts and do a little work! It is well worth the small amount of effort!

Detailed, thoughtful look at a critical point in history:
In "Crimea: The Great Crimean War 1854 - 1856" Trevor Royle has produced a work that is impressive not only for its reporting of the facts surrounding a very muddled war, but also for successfully placing The Crimean War within a greater context of European history. While perhaps slightly too focused on the British point of view, Royle is nonetheless supremely evenhanded, and does a superb job of capturing the numerous diplomatic subtleties which surrounded the events in the Crimea. Like all successful military histories, Royle's begins well before the years that actually encompass the fighting. Instead he examines France's (embodied in Napoleon III), desire to climb out of the hole it was left in after Waterloo. Having been stripped of all influence in Europe, and having lost much of its colonial Empire, France had nonetheless learned valuable lessons in Algeria during the intervening decades. Moreover, what France lacked in industrialization when compared to Britain, it more than made up for with unabashed ambition. At the same time, Britain was at the peak of a Pax Britannica that would last until 1914. As such, it was primarily concerned with maintaining the status quo, and protecting the crown jewel of the empire: India. Thus it came to pass that when Russia used protestations of religious crimes (which were complete pretexts, in spite of their veracity) as a causus belli for war with Turkey, that Britain and France, longstanding adversaries and frequent enemies, were thrust together to preserve an Ottoman Empire that was too caught up in inertia to save itself. Britain to protect India's fragile northwest frontier, and France to regain some of the luster it had lost The result, of course, was The Crimean War, a bizarre set of misadventures that seemingly accomplished nothing, and yet set the stage for a host of events to come. Specifically, battlefield necessity saw the invention or adaptation of numerous devices, such as the telegraph, railroad, field hospitals, rifles (as opposed to muskets), sanitation, steam-powered warships etc., many of which are credited to the more famous American Civil War. As such, the Crimean war can rightfully be argued as the first modern war, and it is therefore well worth studying. For example, the difficulties that the fractious British-French-Turkish alliance faced are particularly telling in a world where strategies for global collective action are sorely lacking. As for the fighting itself, there were precious few of what one might consider battles, the Alma, Inkerman/Balaklava and the siege of Sevastopol being the notable exceptions. For the most part this was a war that presaged World War I, with protracted trench fighting in brutal conditions. Nonetheless, Royle does a good job of setting the stage for the various engagements, including geography, units, commanders and missed opportunities. In particular, he does a superb job of portraying the senior commanders on all sides in an objective manner. However, it is in this area that I must make one of my two complaints: there is a serious lack of both quantity and quality when it comes to the maps. Far too often, I was left referring to other sources in order to follow the battles; most absurdly, there is no map of the Black Sea/Crimean Peninsula until page 375! Moreover, rather than using detailed topographical maps, Royle elected to use the quaint, vaguely hand drawn maps that anyone who studies military history is familiar with (and abhors). What they posses in graphic appeal, they more than lose in lack of useful terrain and coordinate information. That said, it is the political intrigue that dominates this book and where Royle is truly in his element. He deftly captures the various power plays that come to influence the outcome of events, and at the same time provides an even handed running commentary on the skills/deficits of the various players. Which leads me to my second complaint: the problem is that Royle offers a wealth of information about British decision making, but the step down to France, Russia, Turkey and other associated players is severe. To be fair, this may be a function of the autocratic leadership in these latter countries, which served to compress the decision making cycle and limit correspondence that would shed light on events. Nonetheless, I felt that Turkey in particular could have been better rounded out. Finally, Royle quite succinctly places The Crimean War within the context of European conflict up through World War I. Just as in its tactics the Crimea foreshadowed the events of 1914-1918, so to did the grand strategy of 1854 rear its head sixty years later. By recognizing this fact, Royle has elevated what might have become a dusty recounting of a largely forgotten war into a superb examination of European (and by extension, world) politics in the ninety-eight years between Waterloo and Franz Ferdinand's assassination. As such, it work successfully as both military history and political science, and is well worth reading by students of both. Jake Mohlman

Anglo-centric but otherwise excellent:
I imagine it is hard not to see the Crimean War from a non-British perspective, because the other belligerents did not write their chronicles in English OR see the war as such a big deal. But what this book manages is to put the war into a wider Eropean context of great power rivalries and almost fanatical imperialism. So Russia wanted to join the imperialist club? France and Britain, hardly the best of friends, were horrified at the prospect. And as for Russia developing a strong Mediterranean presence, well, the Ottomans as well as the British and French couldn't allow that. GREAT READ.