The Crimean War

Ashgate is pleased to announce the publication of a new edition of Andrew Lambert's ground-breaking study The Crimean War: British Grand Strategy against Russia, 1853-1856. In contrast to every other book dealing with the Crimean War this book is neither an operational history of the armies in the Crimea, nor a study of the diplomacy of the conflict. The core concern is with grand strategy, the development and implementation of national policy and strategy. The key concepts are strategic, derived from the works of Carl von Clausewitz and Sir Julian Corbett, and the main focus is on naval, not military operations. This original approach rejected the 'Continentalist' orthodoxy that dominated contemporary writing about the history of war, and in the war studies community generally, reflecting an era when British security policy was dominated by Inner German Frontier, the British Army of the Rhine and Air Force Germany. The initial thesis was completed as the Falklands Conflict reached a conclusion, the book developed as the 'Second Cold War' reached a climax, with the United States Navy publishing the forward offensive policy or 'New Maritime Strategy' in 1986. The connection between the peripheral maritime strategies analysed in the book and promulgated by the Americans was not accidental. Nor were the Soviets unaware of the connection.By the time the book was published in 1990 the Cold War was over, the strategic landscape for Britain was shifting away from the continent, and new commitments were emerging that heralded a return to maritime strategy, as adumbrated in the defence policy papers of the 1990s. With a revised introduction contextualising the 1990 text, and the addition of a new bibliography the book will be available to a new generation of scholars, and situated in the historiography of the Crimean War.