Introduction - Going to War: Europe and the Wider World, 1914- 1915
Journal: British journal for military history
Year: 2016

On 29 October 1914 the Ottoman fleet engaged the Russian Black Sea fleet in battle, with the minor skirmish resulting in the sinking of a Russian gunboat and a mine-layer. Two days later the Ottoman fleet bombarded the ports of Sevastopol and Odessa; the route to an Ottoman clash with Russia, and subsequent entry into the First World War, was now set. By 2 November Constantinople had entered into what would become, in the American diplomat and historian George Kennan’s over-used phrase, the ‘sem