Don’t have a clue about the Crimean Peninsula that everyone
on the news is talking about? Read on,
because ignorance is not bliss.
This is not the first time that the Crimean region has been
fought over. Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s
famous poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (that all you homeschoolers
almost certainly memorized – or maybe it was just me) immortalized the events
of an ill-fated charge into almost certain defeat ordered by poor military
leaders during the Crimean War.[1] The conflict was plagued by terrible
leadership and planning all around. Between
1853 and 1856, Russia fought against an unusual alliance of the Ottoman Empire
and France, England, and other European nations over (1) who had access to the Holy
Land and (2) Russian territorial expansion. Russia
favored the Orthodox Church while France and the others pushed for Catholic supremacy. (Rabbit
to chase: Thus Russian Expansionism is not new or somehow tied to
communism. Communist leaders simply used
nationalism to fuel public opinion since
expansion was already part of their collective heritage.)
Eventually, Russia lost the war, and the territory reverted
back to Ottoman Control for a brief time after going back and forth over the
century before.
The Crimean War bears horrifying similarity to the growing
tension today, and longtime Columbia professor Shepard Bancroft Clough’s (d.1990)
prophetic words capture the situation best even though they were published in
1969: “The Crimean War, which cost the lives of half a million men, was not the
result of a calculated plan, nor even of hasty last-minute decisions made under
stress. It was the consequence of more than two years of fatal blundering in
slow-motion by inept statesmen who had months to reflect upon the actions they
took.”[2] Let’s hope that while the last half of his
statement has most certainly happened, the massive loss of life can be
prevented before it is too late in 2014.
[1] The
opening stanza really foreshadows the end result:
“Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred:
'Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns' he said: Into the valley of
Death Rode the six hundred.” Read the
whole poem: http://www.nationalcenter.org/ChargeoftheLightBrigade.html#sthash.ykp0Ojd7.dpuf
[2] Shepard
Bancroft Clough, A History of the Western
World, vol 2 (D.C. Heath and Company,1969), page 1010.
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