Crimean War Research Paper

The Crimean War has been considered by many to be a war of blunders and mistakes, even though many of them were preventable. Poor planning, communication, and insight led the Crimean War to go into the history books as an incompetent and unnecessary operation on both sides.
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The main cause of the war was because of Russia’s desire to extend their influence, specifically over the Ottoman Empire. From this stemmed two main disputes: first of all, Russia was granted protective oversight of the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman empire, and France had oversight of the Roman Catholics. The first dispute arose when the Ottoman sultan yielded to French pressure, despite knowing that this would anger the Russians, and assigned the care …show more content…
Britain and France allied with the Ottomans while Austria remained neutral.
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Overall, the allies had far more advantages during the war. They had a more efficient and effective cavalry, infantry, and artillery as compared to the Russians. They were more technologically advanced, and the French navy had metal warships to go against the Russian’s wooden vessels. The allies also kept their armies better supplied because they transported supplies by steam ships, while the Russians had to rely on trains and marches to get supplies. But even with these clear advantages, the Allies suffered many casualties because of the lack of insight from the generals that led the armies. …show more content…
In this way, the Crimean War could be regarded as a foretaste of modern warfare. It gave a brief future view into the experience of troops in the First World War and anticipated the scale of casualties caused by deadly artillery fire.
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After the war, both the Russians and the Ottoman Empire undertook reforms to address weaknesses that were exposed in the war, and it was during this time that serfdom was abolished. For many years after the war, European affairs were unstable, which led to a lot of exploration into different foreign policies.
Out of all of the countries involved, Austria was the most negatively affected because of their decision to remain neutral. Russia felt betrayed that Austria hadn’t sided with them, and the western powers were dissatisfied with the weak commitment that Austria had displayed. Because of this, Austria became diplomatically isolated, and became vulnerable to domestic political issues.

Historian A.J.P. Taylor describes the war as “a bewildering series of diplomatic and military blunders,” and I wholeheartedly agree. Many of the mistakes made during this war were careless and overall