Mara Kozelsky. Crimea in War and Transformation

In Western historical memory, the Crimean War is associated with the Charge of the Light Brigade, Florence Nightingale, and the end of the age of sail and the beginning of modern war journalism. In recent decades, historians have tried to go beyond this all-too-familiar picture by exploring the global dimension of this conflict or by telling its story from the Russian, or the Ottoman, perspective. Mara Kozelsky’s thoroughly researched and archival-based monograph Crimea in War and Transformation contributes significantly toward a more comprehensive understanding of one of the most important wars of the nineteenth century. Unlike many Western historians, she refuses to follow the well-trod path that took the French and the British soldiers to victory by way of Alma, Balaklava, and Inkerman. Nor does she have much to say about the efforts of the defenders of Sevastopol that have traditionally interested the Russian authors. Instead, Kozelsky offers “a study of the relationship between war and the social construction of landscapes” (11). The main character of her account is Crimea itself and its ethnically and religiously diverse civilian population under the traumatic and transformative impact of the war.

Ancient history · Just war theory · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Transformative learning · Victory · Chinese history and philosophy · Demography · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies