The Crimean War extended into the Baltic, the White Sea, and even the Pacific. Baumgart argues that if the war had continued after 1856, the First World War would have taken place 60 years earlier. Not only were the five great European powers directly or indirectly involved; but all the smaller European states that had remained neutral sooner or later confronted the question of whether to join the fray or to stay outside. Ultimately the fighting ceased because diplomacy never lost its control over the use of war as an instrument in power politics. The author brings to this new study fresh insight, probing the conflict's key issues: its origins and diplomacy; the war aims of the belligerent powers; the capacity and characteristics of their armies; and the nature of the fighting itself.