Some peoples have the mixed fortune to live on the fault lines between frequently clashing civilisations. Prominent among these are the Palestinians, caught between the hammer of (western) Israel and the anvil of the (eastern) Islamic world, and further north on the Black Sea we find the Crimeans. A famous civilisational clash occurred there (October 1853 – February 1856), between the British Empire, France, the Ottoman Empire and Sardinia on the one side and Tsarist Russia on the other.
In 1950, A.J.P. Taylor wrote in his essay Crimea: the War that Would Not Boil:
John Bright, with ponderous Victorian wit, called the Crimean War "a crime"; most historians have presented it as a bewildering series of diplomatic and military blunders. With the experience of the last five years to enlighten us, we should do better: we know that the diplomatic tangles since 1945, which may seem bewildering to the future historian, conceal the reality of 'the cold war' . The Crimean War was the cold war in an earlier phase. Two world-systems, mutually uncomprehending, lurched against each other, each convinced of its defensive good-faith. The struggle between them was fought in a ragged way at the edges. Both sides shrank from the head-on collision which would have produced a war to remake the world — Russia from lack of strength, the Western Powers from lack of conviction, Though the Crimean War seemed indecisive, great decisions followed from it. Without it neither Germany nor Italy could have been united; without it Europe would never have known "the liberal era ", that halcyon age which ended in 1914 and which, for centuries to come men will regard as 'normal times', just as the barbarians looked back to the peace and security of Augustan Rome.
- A.J.P. Taylor, From Napoleon to Lenin: Historical Essays, Harper, NY 1952, p 60.
I have long been a keen student of history, and have had the privilege of knowing some of Australia's finest historians, including Professors Russel Ward and Manning Clark.
One time in conversation with Ward the subject of the Crimean War came up. Knowing little about it, I asked him what he thought of it.
He replied that it was still a mystery to him, too. The best explanation he had ever heard, however, had come from his old history master at the school he attended in his youth. In response to that very same question in (the boys only) class, the master had replied along the following lines:
"Well, argument rages amongst historians on that. But the fact was that the English wanted to have it out with the Russians, and one day someone in the Foreign Office took a look at the map. There was Russia, with the Crimea hanging down underneath it like a great pair of testicles, and so they made their decision straight away. That would be an excellent place to give 'em a kick."Still an explanation as good as any around today.
