The Crimean War in the Arctic

Polar Record ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 21 (135) ◽  
pp. 577-581 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian R. Stone

Few wars have a more misleading name than the Crimean War. Far from being a local conflict, fought in the Black Sea peninsula from which the name derives, hostilities took place in many different areas of the globe. Major military operations, largely between Turks (siding with Britain and France) and Russians, occurred in the Balkans and the Caucasus, and a considerable naval effort was made by the British and French to prosecute the war against Russia in the Baltic and Black seas, and also in the Far East and the Pacific (Stephan 1969). The war even reached North America; elements of the Royal Navy reconnoitred Russian settlements in Alaska in 1855 (Tyrrell 1856, 2: 355).

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-255
Author(s):  
Marc De Bollivier

The article analyzes the modern Western historiography of the Crimean war of 1853-1856. The authors refer to problems and issues that prevail in the French and British studies of the events of 1853-1856. In the Western historiographical tradition based on researches of the XIX-XX centuries, still remain insufficiently explored aspects of the Crimean war, for example, the siege of Sevastopol, military operations in the Baltic and White seas, in the Pacific ocean, in the Caucasus. Despite the obvious trend existing in modern European science, associated with the study of the Crimean campaign in the context of the first pan-European war, the attention of historians of Western Europe is more focused on the study of the First world war. However, in recent years there has been a clear interest of French, English and Italian authors to the Black sea region, to the history of the Crimea and, as a consequence, to the Crimean campaign. Generalization of modern experience of historiography of the Crimean war allows to define prospects for further researches.


Polar Record ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 30 (172) ◽  
pp. 39-42
Author(s):  
Ian R. Stone

AbstractThe period 1877–1878 was one of tension between Britain and Russia caused by the Russo-Turkish War and the consequent threat to the route to India. The Royal Navy was deployed to deter the Russians in seas adjacent to the Balkans, but also undertook intelligence gathering missions further afield. Two of these were to Petropavlovsk in sub-Arctic Kamchatka and were undertaken by Commander A.L. Douglas in HMS Egeria. The British, with their French allies, had sustained a serious defeat there during the Crimean War and wished to ascertain the state of Russian defences should there be fresh hostilities. In the event, Douglas discovered that the Russians had abandoned Petropavlovsk as a fortified post and that there was no garrison. His reports were, therefore, negative, but included interesting information concerning Petropavlovsk in this era.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (27) ◽  
pp. 91-114
Author(s):  
Luis Alexander Montero Moncada ◽  
Maria Paula Velandia García

In this article, we examine the elements that are being developed by NATO and Russia in a strategic competition in Europe. Having analysed these elements, each sub-system, as described by the Realist Theory of International Relations, is facing major changes in today’s world politics. From Northern Europe to the Balkans and the Black Sea region, the analysis focuses on areas of tension that could potentially become problematic for the interaction between the two actors. Besides, the Baltic region is explained further due to its continuous activity regarding either hybrid or tradition war tactics. Finally, we draw a parallel between NATO, the EU and the USA as main actors in European Security and how the latter has been changing drastically since Donald Trump took office. We conclude by analysing potential risks, scenarios and conflicts between NATO and Russia in short range projections.


1971 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-31
Author(s):  
Keith Jackson

Direct diplomatic relations between New Zealand and Malaya/Singapore are a relatively recent innovation dating back only to 1955, and, significantly, the original decision to station troops in the area in peacetime preceded the establishment of formal diplomatic links. It is true that even before the Second World War there had been a growing consciousness of the strategic significance of the area, but it was seen in terms of Singapore as a link in the chain of Imperial defence, never as a region in its own right. Regions were subsumed in the worldwide defence strategy of the British Empire. Thus New Zealand contributed financially to the construction of the base for the Royal Navy at Singapore, but her military commitments were in helping to guard the Suez ‘lifeline’. New Zealand air-force units were stationed in Singapore in 1940, but despite the national trauma associated with the fall of the base and the apprehended threat to New Zealand’s own security, the ground forces remained in the Middle East. Indeed, New Zealand's formal Commonwealth responsibilities were to remain in the Middle East until 1955 and public interest continued to focus on that area to a surprising degree. The lessons of the Pacific War for New Zealand, therefore, were less concerned with the strategic importance of any particular area than with the indispensability of a United States alliance. As one research group put it, ‘in the immediate post-war years New Zealand showed a greater sense of international awareness, but no sense of particular involvement with the Far East; still less with South-East Asia.


2021 ◽  
pp. 186
Author(s):  
Nadezhda S. Nizhnik

The review of the XVIII International Scientific Conference "State and Law: evolution, current state, development prospects (to the 300th anniversary of the Russian Empire)" was held on April 29-30, 2021 at the St. Petersburg University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Russian Empire existed on the political map of the world from October 22 (November 2), 1721 until the February Revolution and the overthrow of the Monarchy on March 3, 1917. The Russian Empire was the third largest state that ever existed (after the British and Mongolian Empires): It extended to the Arctic Ocean in the north and the Black Sea in the south, to the Baltic Sea in the west and the Pacific Ocean in the east. The Russian Empire was one of the great powers along with Great Britain, France, Prussia (Germany) and Austria-Hungary, and since the second half of the XIX century – also Italy and the United States. The capital of the Russian Empire was St. Petersburg (1721 - 1728), Moscow (1728 - 1732), then again St. Petersburg (1732 - 1917), renamed Petrograd in 1914. Therefore, it is natural that a conference dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the formation of the Russian Empire was held in St. Petersburg, the former imperial capital. The conference was devoted to problems concerning various aspects of the organization and functioning of the state and law, a retrospective analysis of the activities of state bodies in the Russian Empire. The discussion focused on various issues: the character of the Russian Empire as a socio-legal phenomenon and the subject of the legitimate use of state coercion, the development of political and legal thought, the regulatory and legal foundations of the organization and functioning of the Russian state in the XVIII century – at the beginning of the XX century, the characteristics of state bodies as an element of the mechanism of the imperial state in Russia, the organizational and legal bases of the activities of bodies that manage the internal affairs of the Russian Empire, as well as the image of state authorities and officials-representatives of state power.


1969 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Stephan

The Crimean War (1854—56), as its name suggests, was fought mainly on and around a peninsula jutting out from the northern shores of the Black Sea. Names such as the Alma River, Balaclava, and Inkerman are generally conjured up at the mention of this costly conflict. Strategic planning and operations on both sides, however, were not confined to the Crimea and the Caucasus. Far from Sebastopol, hostilities between Russia and the allied powers of Britain and France erupted in the seas of Japan and Okhotsk, and in the North Pacific Ocean. Accorded relatively little attention at the time, almost forgotten today, this Far Eastern1 theatre of the war offers insights into the growing role of Europe in East Asia. Whereas in the Crimea, the Allies achieved a victory of sorts while making immense human sacrifices, in the Far East they failed in many of their objectives but without incurring a great loss of life. The tragi-comic nature of tactical operations in the Far East should not obscure the war's broader implications: (1) the advance of Russia into the Amur River basin and Maritime Provinces then part of the Chinese Empire; (2) the intensification of British anxieties regarding Russian penetration into Manchuria and Korea; (3) the growing role of Japan in international relations; and (4) the progress of cartographical knowledge through surveys conducted in response to the demands of war.


2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Robarts

The Black Sea region from 1768-1830s has traditionally been characterized as a theater of warfare and imperial competition. Indeed, during this period, the Ottoman and Russian empires engaged in four armed conflicts for supremacy in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and on the Black Sea itself. While not discounting geo-strategic and ideological confrontation between the Ottoman and Russian empires, this article - by adopting the Black Sea region as its primary unit of historical and political analysis - will emphasize the considerable amount of exchange that took place between the Ottoman and Russian empires in the Black Sea region in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Building upon a case study of Bulgarian migration between the Ottoman and Russian empires and as part of a broader discussion on Ottoman-Russian Black Sea diplomacy this article will detail joint Ottoman-Russian initiatives to control their mutual Black Sea borderland.


1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 547-549
Author(s):  
Nicolae Harsanyi

I certainly find the present times most engaging: I have had the chance to live through events that will not be neglected by historians—the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the subsequent end of the Cold War, the failed Moscow coup and the breathtaking aftermath of undoing “mankind's golden dream” in its very cradle, the Soviet Union. There is so much hope in the air for East Europeans to return to development which was thwarted by decades of imposed socialist dictatorship. The sweet taste of freedom and self-assertion helps people to overcome the economic hardships ravaging the area. From the Baltic to the Balkans, from the Tatra to the Caucasus and beyond, nations, nationalities, and minorities show signs of vitality and righteous affirmation of their own complex existence on territories fragmented by conventional boundaries established with or without their own consent or approval.


1972 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 273-275
Author(s):  
I. A. Fedosseyev ◽  
A. F. Plakhotnick

Though Russia, in contrast with England, had no broad access to the oceans, Russian oceanographers always took a great interest in the world ocean investigations. To confirm this we would first of all like to mention the Russian cruises around the world, made by I. F. Krusenstern and Ju. F. Lisjansky in 1803–06, V. M. Golovnin in 1806–13 and 1817–19, M. P. Lazarev in 1819–21 and 1822–25 (the second voyage, the main result of which was the discovery of the Antarctic Continent, was made together with F. F. Bellingshauzen), O. E. Kotsebu in 1815–18 and 1823–26, and F. O. Litke in 1826–29. The names of several Russian explorers who carried on important work in various parts of the Arctic and the Pacific Oceans in different periods of the nineteenth century are well known. At one time valuable results of the oceanological investigations, carried out by Admiral S. O. Makarov on the ship Vitjaz in the Pacific Ocean in 1886–89, attracted much attention. The fact that Vitjaz is lettered on the pediment of the Oceanographical Museum of Monaco among the ten ships most distinguished in oceanographical explorations from the whole world testifies to the scientific importance of Makarov's investigations.


2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-214
Author(s):  
Silviu-Marian Miloiu

The Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies continued to organize in 2012 a series of events, one of the most meaningful of which was the third international conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies entitled European networks: the Balkans, Scandinavia and the Baltic world in a time of economic and ideological crisis opened on 25 May at Valahia University of Târgoviște and sponsored by the Romanian National Research Council, Niro Investment Group and other partners (http://www.arsbn.ro/conference-2012.htm). The main goal of the conference was to foster debate and academic discussion with regard to the challenges the Balkan and Baltic regions face today, within a time of severe global economic instability. The participants discussed and advanced solutions to problems such as the accession of Balkan states to the EU and/or NATO, with particular reference to the experiences of the relatively new EU and/or NATO Member States from South-Eastern Europe and the Eastern Baltic region; the economic, security or cultural threats posed by Balkan and/or Eastern European states or non-state actors to the Western or Nordic Europe as perceived there; the development of extremist movements and the Balkan organized crime in the Scandinavian countries; the Balkan Roma peoples as a “threat” for Western and Nordic Europe; strategies for integrating minorities in the Baltic Sea rim countries and the Black Sea areas.


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