Crimea: The Great Crimean War, 1854-1856
|
List Price:
$19.95
Czech Hotels Travel Price: $19.95
Subject To Change Without Notice
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
|
Average Customer Rating:  
|
|
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 947.07
EAN: 9781403964168
ISBN: 1403964165
Label: Palgrave Macmillan
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 528
Publication Date: 2004-02-21
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Studio: Palgrave Macmillan
|
|
|
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
|
The Crimean War, one of history's most compelling subjects, encompassed human suffering, woeful leadership and misadministration on a grand scale. It created a heroic myth out of the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade and, in Florence Nightingale, it produced one of history's great heroes. The war was a watershed in world history and pointed the way to what mass warfare would be like in the twentieth century. New weapons were introduced; trench combat became a fact of daily warfare outside Sebastopol; medical innovation saved countless soldiers' lives that would otherwise have been lost. Ultimately, by failing to solve the Eastern Question, the war paved the way for the greater conflagration which broke out in 1914 and greatly prefigured the current situation in Eastern Europe.
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: Crimea
Comment: The prime players are Russia, Turkey, Britain, France. The issue is world power, or at least a strategic piece of the world's power puzzle. At issue in disguise were the holy prizes, masked in Russia's need to save '' the Christians '' in a Muslim ruled Turkey. It was a land within the Ottoman Empire in decline. ( a sick old man was the phrase of the time). With the battlefield looking like it should be Turkey, the Russian Crimean peninsula and actually the city of Sevastopol becomes the scene of the siege. There was an air of arrogance and possibly hubris amongst the European powers specifically amongst the people at large. Hubris spilled over into the leadership of each country as they were actually giving considerable thought to their strategic interest. England had concerns over an encroachment of influence immediately on their Indian colony. Russia was in search of a warm water port in the Mediterranean. France...well its not quite clear what she wanted outside of an influence in the Middle East as other than the Christian prizes there were no outside strategic interests. The one possible rationale for the French may have been the mood of the French where a convincing victory would remove the 1815 international shackles.
The Affair at Sinope is history's lesson in poetic justice. Russia took advantage of their naval supremacy over Turkey. In proactive reaction to ward off the deployment of additional Turkish troops in Maldivian front, Russian ships sank the Turkish ships while still in harbor. They annihilated the fleet with a first in the use of solid shells. The burning fleet caught the harbor on fire. Turkey's loss of 2000 soldiers and as many sailors. It gave the impression of a massacre to the rest of the world. Up to this point the world leaders were not anxious to war with Russia. That all changed as England and France took notice.
So one can look at the power strategic of military victory versus the power of the free press and ask which is most effective in terms of winning the long lasting minds of men.
Please vist my blog site for the complete review: key word search cigarroomofbooks
Customer Rating:
Summary: The hearlding of World War 2
Comment: The Crimean war shattered the peace of Europe that had been established since Napoleon and set the course for World War 1. The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the advances of Russia are prominent in the war. The famed charge of the light brigade occurred during this war and the trench warfare of World War 1 can be seen. This was really fought over a very small amount of land and in hellish terrain. The book is very well written and does an excellent job of discussing how the war progressed. Overall an excellent book and one that I would recommend.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly good history...
Comment: Were it not for Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade, it is arguable whether the Crimean War would have much notoriety. It wasn't overly long, there were very few set-piece battles and no individual heroes of note. It was, among european wars of history, a middling confrontation. How much better, then, is Trevor Royle's treatment with the excitement he brings to it.
Sensing Ottoman dissolution, tsarist Russia makes a play to position itself for benefit. Alarmingly, this could include access to the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles. Having none of it, Britain and France combine to contest Russia's territorial ambitions. Negotiations rapidly break down and Sevastapol is invested. What follows is a story of British incompetence, French duplicity, and Russia's teetering access to military means.
Royle weaves throughout the event the high intrigue behind the scenes where unilateral diplomacy, oneupmanship, and the perfidious maneuvering of supposed allies rules the day. On the war front, he portrays the sad lot of the British soldier. In stark contrast to the French, the British military was grossly underfunded, medical care was appallingly poor, conditions were squalid, and soldiers died of disease in droves. The comparatively healthy ones simply starved.
With Sevastapol fallen, Russia was compelled to consider armistice while conniving diplomats in Paris, St. Petersburg, Vienna and London brokered an inadequate peace. Accordingly, the relatively minor Crimean conflict set the table for future hostilities and presaged the disintegration of the Ottoman empire. Indeed, it was in a corner of the splintered Ottoman empire that a single shot rang out to begin a world war. Trevor Royle does an exemplary job in bringing Crimea to us and, in so doing, prepares the inquisitive reader for the explosive century to come. 4+ stars.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Read - Not enough about the combat
Comment: This is a very interesting book about an incredibly influential war. Despite the fact that the Crimean War was quite short and almost no great swaths of territory changed hands, this short, bloody little conflict had a huge impact on the formation of modern Europe. Trevor Royle's account of the war is a wonderful read. He covers the causes of the war (interesting enough, despite all the real politik, it was about a set of keys and a silver star in a church), the war itself and the aftermath. The details are wonderful and don't override the flow of the story. The only shortcoming comes during the presentation of the battles. Since there are so few, you'd think we'd get more details, but unfortunately the battles are somewhat glossed over. This doesn't so much detract from the book as, instead, it leaves you hungry for more. I found the natural links drawn by the author of Crimea as a progression from the Napoleonic style of war to the more modern American Civil War, which lead right into the mechanistic nightmare of World War I to ring true in more ways than simply because of the dates involved. Time to dig back through old issues of Military History Quarterly to find some articles on the battles so I can enjoy a much more thorough context for the war, thanks to this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good but not Enough
Comment: As a reader already observed, this book is, to begin with, very anglo centered as it happens with boring regularity with almost every anglosaxon historian, no matter the issue. French partner in this war appears, of course, how it could be otherwise, but always as if from a side, as a distant guy that by chance was there. I think the subjet is the Crimean war or should be so, not England in-war-in-Crimea.
From a sheer military point of view the book lacks too much. Battles are more or less described, but maps are a joke and the equipment of both sides scarcely mentioned and poorly defined. A reader of this kind of books want to know more: want to know details about personal weapons, artillery, technical innovations, uniforms, etc. It is the more so as the author himself recognizes this was the first modern war, an intermediate step between Waterloo and the slaughters of I World War. There is some of all of it, but prone to be poor and cursorily explained. Even more, the autor makes a serious mistake confusing the innnovation of the Minie bullet -to be used with muskets already in use- with a supposedly new "Minie rifle" that never existed.
Nevertheless, the political side of the war -french again appearing as a guest and often under a disdainful light- is well developped and informative. Same with many personalities, including, this time, french officers.
Last but not least, the quality of the paper in this paperback edition is the worst I have ever seen in this kind of binding. I doubt it will resist more than 10 years in a shell. For the same reason the discrete number of photos available -not acceptable in a book about the first photographed war in history- are a miserable account of bad quality and neglect.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Czech Trips Books
Czech Trips DVD
Czech Trips Softwares
Czech Trips Magazines
Czech Posters
Czech Art Prints
Czech Travel 2008 Calendars
2008 Monthly Calendars
Czech Hotels Travel Special Resources
Czech Arts
Czech Entertainment
Czech Government
Czech Business
Czech Culture
Czech Education
Czech Health
Czech Map
Sports & Recreation
Travel & Tourism
Food and Recipes
Czech Festivals
Czech Hotels
Czech Museums
Czech Transportation
Czech Destinations
Prague, Czech
Brno, Czech
Plzen, Czech
Czech Hotels
Prague Hotels
Brno Hotels
Praha Hotels
|
Czech Hotels Travel
Maintained by: Marketer Solutions | Link Building
