The Crimean War in the Arctic

Abstract

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).