Charting the Crimean War: Contexts, Nationhood, Afterlives

The Crimean War (1853–56) is much more culturally significant than its popular mythologies suggest. Now remembered mainly for the Charge of the Light Brigade and the Lady with the Lamp, the Crimean War is a pivotal moment in the history of modern warfare seen as both the last of the old wars and first of the new. The first total war, it inaugurated new forms of weaponry, tactics, communication, war reporting, military medicine, and new attitudes towards soldiers. The introduction outlines this issue of 19’s case for the conflict’s wide-ranging significance, placing the Crimean War in the context of earlier and later nineteenth-century warfare, and considering its varied cultural afterlives.