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I'm currently reading Orlando Figes' The Crimean War, which I bought before the Russia-Ukraine crisis blew up. It's pretty interesting so far - still years from the outbreak of war, going over the trends that were leading up to it. I have two early comments.
1) For some reason, Figes seems to use the term "Asia Minor" to refer to southwest Asia in general, rather than only Anatolia. I'm not sure I've seen that usage before.
2) It was a bit startling to read of the roles of Florence Nightingale and Charles Dickens in whipping up anti-Russian fervor before the war. (Years earlier, after the suppression of the Polish revolt of 1830, Russia worked to suppress Polish Catholicism. A group of nuns, commanded to transfer their allegiance to Orthodoxy, refused and were brutally treated over a period of years. A handful of them eventually escaped; one of them was examined by Nightingale in Rome, to confirm her story of years-long torture. Nightingale wrote up a report, which she then put away; as war approached, she sent the manuscript to Dickens, who polished it and published it in one of his magazines.)
1) For some reason, Figes seems to use the term "Asia Minor" to refer to southwest Asia in general, rather than only Anatolia. I'm not sure I've seen that usage before.
2) It was a bit startling to read of the roles of Florence Nightingale and Charles Dickens in whipping up anti-Russian fervor before the war. (Years earlier, after the suppression of the Polish revolt of 1830, Russia worked to suppress Polish Catholicism. A group of nuns, commanded to transfer their allegiance to Orthodoxy, refused and were brutally treated over a period of years. A handful of them eventually escaped; one of them was examined by Nightingale in Rome, to confirm her story of years-long torture. Nightingale wrote up a report, which she then put away; as war approached, she sent the manuscript to Dickens, who polished it and published it in one of his magazines.)
