Written by the leading authority in the field, this study offers a fresh account of the Crimean War in its widest European and World contexts. Arguing that the modernity of the Crimean War has consistently been overlooked in comparison to the American Civil War, while in fact many of the battle-field technologies used in the latter were developed in the former, Baumgart probes the conflict's key issues: its origins and diplomacy, the war aims of the combatants, the capacity and characteristics of their armies, and the nature of the fighting itself.