Crimean War (1853-1856)
The Players:
Turkish Alliance
•Ottoman Empire•Britain•France
Russian Side• ....just Russia
CAUSES:
FIRST Cause:
• Russia : Orthodox Christians
• France: Roman Catholics
• 1851: Ottoman Sultan signed care of certain holy places in Palestine over to Roman Catholics
• Russia >:/
SECOND Cause• Russia wanted Moldavia
& Walachia (Romania)• Claimed right to protect
Orthodox Christians as pretext to occupy both provinces
• 1853: Russia places Black Sea fleet on alert at Sevastopol• France & Britain dispatch fleets
to Dardanelles
• Russia occupies Moldavia & Wallachia
• Ottoman Empire declare war on Russia
• Battle of Sinope: Turkish defeat
• March 1854: Britain & France enter the War through the Black Sea
• Battle at Alma River• British & French victory
• Battle at Balaklava• Valley of Death
The Charge of The Light Brigade 1854-Lord Alfred Tennyson
The Siege of Sevastopol
• February 1855: Turkish Alliance surrounds Sevastopol
• Russians retreat to Malakhov
• Final French attack -> collapse of Sevastopol (Sep. 9 1955)
• Turkish Alliance too exhausted to pursue conflict
• 1856: Treaty of Paris• Ends the Crimean War
Consequences• Russia:
• renounces claims to “protect” Orthodox Christians
• surrenders territory near Danube River
• Recognize Black Sea as neutral • withdraws from Moldavia &
Walachia• Start of road to revolution
(1917)
• Shattered Concert of Europe• Euro affairs become unstable
Continued...
• Freedom of navigation for merchant ships
• Opens new markets to French, British, and Austrian goods -> damaging Russian exports
• 1871 London Conference:• Russia repeals the clause on the neutralization
of the Black Sea• Claims need to protect southern border• Reestablishes its Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol
Significance: Beginning of War Journalism
• First War to be covered my war correspondents and photographers
• Begins in 1854 when a reporter from London, William Howard Russell (of The Times) is sent to the war front
• 1855: Roger Fenton travels to Crimea – the world’s first war photographer
• William Simpson’s sketches of Crimea receives rapid circulation
Florence Nightingale
Mary Seacole: Black Nightingale
• 1805: Born in Jamaica• Scottish father, Jamaican mother
• 1854: requested to join Florence’s army of nurses but was turned away
• Funded her own trip
• Set up hospitals for the wounded and nursed people on the battlefields, under fire
• “Mother Seacole”
• Returned to England in ill health and became less active
• Died 14th, May 1881
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