This book is based on unpublished material, from single letters by barely literate private soldiers to the voluminous correspondence of commander-in-chief Lord Raglan. The whole experience of fighting in the Crimea is captured here: the thrill of combat, the men's impressions of their allies--French, Turkish and Sardinian--the horrors of their first winter in the Crimea, the scandalously inadequate medical arrangements and the impact made by Florence Nightingale. Written by a leading authority in this field, this is a colorful, fresh account of one of nineteenth century's most famous conflicts.

Chloroform, telegraphy, steamships and rifles were distinctly modern features of the Crimean War. Covered by a large corps of reporters, illustrators and cameramen, it also became the first media war in history. For the benefit of the ubiquitous artists and correspondents, both the domestic events were carefully staged, giving the Crimean War an aesthetically alluring, even spectacular character. With their exclusive focus on written sources, historians have consistently overlooked this visual dimension of the Crimean War. Photo-historian Ulrich Keller challenges the traditional literary bias by drawing on a wealth of pictorial materials from scientific diagrams to photographs, press illustration and academic painting. The result is a new and different historical account which emphasizes the careful aesthetic scripting of the war for popular mass consumption at home.

This is a study of the British military intelligence operations during the Crimean War. It details the beginnings of the intelligence operations as a result of the British Commander, Lord Raglan's, need for information on the enemy, and traces the subsequent development of the system.

Volume 1: Turkish Army uniforms in the Crimean War Period, and Volume 2, which covers the Turkish Navy, the Contingents, Additional Cavalry Units and the Romanian Army, both acknowledge as its key source of information, the research by Charles A. Norman, a well-known British military artist and researcher. Norman’s work transliterated original observations, illustrations and notes made by two Crimean War Commentators: Joseph-Emile Vanson, and Constantin Guys. Constantin Guys was a reporter, and illustrator for The Illustrated London News, and in 1854 was assigned to the Crimea to produce drawings of wartime scenes which could be turned into engravings for news. Constantin Guys documented various Turkish uniforms, with his description of each scene, written in English on the back of the drawing or below it. The approach taken in this volume has been to overlay Norman’s original interpretations, combining this with other period written descriptions, illustrations, paintings, and photographs taken at the time, hopefully getting a closer interpretation of the Turkish Army uniforms seen in the Crimea. Many of the library and museum collections provide a significant amount of information. However, much of this is not accurately dated. The dating of these often slip by two or three years, and up to a decade earlier or later. The illustrations presented in both volumes are based on this combination of materials.

The Crimean War (1853-1856) was the first modern war. A vicious struggle between imperial Russia and an alliance of the British, French and Ottoman Empires, it was the first conflict to be reported first-hand in newspapers, painted by official war artists, recorded by telegraph and photographed by camera. In her new short history, Trudi Tate discusses the ways in which this novel representation itself became part of the modern war machine. She tells forgotten stories about the war experience of individual soldiers and civilians, including journalists, nurses, doctors, war tourists and other witnesses. At the same time, the war was a retrograde one, fought with the mentality, and some of the equipment, of Napoleonic times. Tate argues that the Crimean War was both modern and old-fashioned, looking backwards and forwards, and generating optimism and despair among those who lived through it. She explores this paradox while giving full coverage to the bloody battles (Alma, Balaklava, Inkerman), the siege of Sebastopol, the much-derided strategies of the commanders, conditions in the field and the cultural impact of the anti-Russian alliance.

A social history of one of the most tragically botched military campaigns in modern European history--and the most immediate precedent to the American Civil War.