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