Though governments will always withhold from their populations the true facts of war, its costs, its blunders and its barbarities, there can be no doubt that, thanks to our ubiquitous media, the people of the world have access to many more truths of war than they did a century ago. From imbedded reporters to corroborated reports of attacks, the people can, on a daily basis, keep abreast of campaigns and their atrocities without having to quit their couches. However, war wasn't always fought so openly. In fact, prior to World War II, the imbedded reporter was a rarely spotted species. Such newsmen were almost invariably creatures of the government, toadies who avoided the wrath of military censors by publishing propaganda pieces meant to shore up support along the homefront. So how and when did war become open? How and when were the consciousnesses of people the world over made aware of war's true price? How and when did the tide of humanism reach the battlefield and attempt to elevate the value of every human life?
In The Crimean War, Mr. Figes, a British historian of Russia, delves into this 1853-1856 European conflict, exposing not only the imperial and religious forces that caused it but the extent to which it popularized the horrific plight of the common soldier. For even in this relatively brief skirmish that pitted an ambitious and proud Russia against the Ottoman Turks and their French and British allies, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were felled by bullets on the battlefield and by disease and hunger off it. To demonstrate the role sickness, starvation and exposure to the cold played in the conflict, Mr. Figes vividly documents a single siege in which more than seven times as many French soldiers died off the battlefield as died on it.
This affliction was by no means confined to the French. Of the 130,000 lives lost during the yearlong struggle for Sevastopol, more than 100,000 were non-combat casualties. But unlike with past wars, such deprivations did not go unnoticed. Thanks to letters and news stories from the front that detailed the tragic conditions, the Crimean War gave birth to the careers of crusaders like Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole whose work on behalf of sick and wounded soldiers helped to change perceptions of the value of life.
But while Mr. Figes does a terrifyingly vivid job illustrating the battlefields, the notables who fought on them and the changes the media brought to them, he is equally determined to expose the roots of the conflict. Portraying the emperor of Russia as something of a boy taken by the trappings of war, he describes how Nicholas I clashed with the French over who was the rightful protector and overseer of the Christian population within the Ottoman empire, how Nicholas' militarism doomed any hope of a diplomatic solution, and how the European powers were, as a result, drawn into what was essentially a localized rivalry between the Russians and the Turks. Tragically, this is neither the first nor the last time that pride and theology have come together to empower war.
The Crimean War is a lengthy and detailed primer on what is, 150 years on, something of a forgotten conflict, quite overshadowed by the 20th century conflagrations that followed it and the Napoleonic tumults that preceded it. That said, Mr. Figes is successful in his attempt to humanize the war by bringing to light the humanistic trends it impelled and by connecting its casus belli to the seemingly universal human failings of pride and self-importance. In this, he makes this old war relevant to the 21st century reader. But while some might find the author admirably thorough, the level of detail Mr. Figes applies to the war's peripheral players, and the extent to which he seems determined to highlight every futile skirmish, causes the read to drag considerably. While there's much here to learn from and be immersed by, there's also plenty here to find oppressing and repetitive. (3/5 Stars)
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