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The Crimean War (2011)

by Orlando Figes(Favorite Author)

3.95 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0805074600 (ISBN13: 9780805074604)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Metropolitan Books

review 1: At least for non-specialists, the definitive history of a suddenly relevant war. What is striking is that 19th Century Russophobic agitation in the West so closely resembles the rantings of our neocons and humanitarians-of-convenience, and the utter indifferences of élites to the fates of what we today call grunts. A little bit too much narrative detail on battles, but good treatments of diplomacy, the media, and military medicine, among other things.
review 2: A monster of a book. Took me most of the month of April to read it but worth the effort. The Crimean War loomed as large in the minds of the Victorians as the First World War does today and yet what we know of it can be boiled to primary school kid projects on courageous nurses, that poem (Tennyson laid... more it on a bit thick apparently) and the names of a few pubs (The Alma, The Inkerman). It was a war of religious fanaticism, a war spurred on by Russophobia, a war that was encouraged for the first time by public opinion, which also shaped the treatment of the soldiers when it was discovered how badly they were suffering. It also goes someway to explaining Russian attitudes to the Crimea which persist to this day and the relationships that went on to forge the great alliances that ultimately led us to the cataclysm of WW1It really is time for us to revisit this war, to try to gain a deeper understanding of the issues and rescue it from primary school stories about ladies with lamps. less

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