Britain declares war against Russia

Illustration of the Crimean War

On 28 March 1854, Britain declares war against map iconRussia, thus entering the Crimean War. Image: Russo-British skirmish during Crimean War (anonymous plate). This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

In 1854, in defense of the Turks and of British access to eastern trade routes, Britain entered into war in the map iconCrimea (click for geospatial information). The two-year campaign represented the nation’s first major military engagement since the end of the Napoleonic wars. It thus sheds light on mid-Victorian attitudes towards national identity, offering a counter-narrative to views of the 1850s dominated by responses to the Great Exhibition of 1851. As literary and visual representations of the war reveal, reactions to this conflict were both more nuanced and more ambivalent than our preconceptions about Victorian jingoism might anticipate.

Articles

Stefanie Markovits, “On the Crimean War and the Charge of the Light Brigade”