The Crimean War: The Forgotten Struggle of Empires

In 1853, Tsar Nicholas I used a religious dispute as a pretext to invade the Danubian Principalities, in what is now Romania. The Ottoman Empire, struggling to maintain its dwindling influence in Europe, soon declared war on Russia, followed by Britain, which feared Russian expansion, and French Emperor Napoleon III, who sought to restore France’s former glory. The Crimean War lasted 18 months, caused enormous loss of life, and radically reshaped Europe’s political landscape. It also profoundly influenced the modernization of Russia and Turkey.

Drawing extensively on Russian, French, British, and Ottoman sources, Figes shows how nationalist sentiment, imperial rivalries, and religious conflict shaped each country’s decision to enter the war. From kings and ministers to journalists and writers reporting on the fighting, from officers and soldiers on the battlefield to women and children trapped inside besieged cities, Figes reconstructs the war from many perspectives. He also offers a new way to understand the “Eastern Question” of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, relations between Christians and Muslims in the Black Sea region, and the deepening divide between Russia and the West.