page_title: Foreign relations of the Ottoman Empire
section_title: Crimean War 1854–56
hierarchical_section_title: Foreign relations of the Ottoman Empire / 19th century / Crimean War 1854–56
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Le congrès de Paris, 25 février au 30 mars 1856. Fin de la guerre de Crimée.Dansk: Congrès de Paris
context_page_description: The foreign relations of the Ottoman Empire were characterized by competition with the Persian Empire to the east, Russia to the north, and Austria to the west. The control over European minorities began to collapse after 1800, with Greece was the first to break free, followed by Serbia. Egypt was lost in 1798-1805. In the early 20th century Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Bulgarian Declaration of Independence soon followed. The Ottomans lost nearly all their European territory in the First Balkan War. The Ottoman Empire allied itself with Germany in the First World War, and lost. The British successfully mobilized Arab nationalism. The Ottoman Empire thereby lost its Arab possessions, and itself soon collapsed in the early 1920s.
context_section_description: The Crimean War (1854–56) was fought between Russia on the one hand and an alliance of Britain, France, Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire on the other. Russia was defeated but the casualties were very heavy on all sides, and historians look at the entire episode as a series of blunders.
  The war began with Russian demands to protect Christian sites in the Holy Land.  The churches quickly settled that problem, but it escalated out of hand as Russia put continuous pressure on the Ottomans. Diplomatic efforts failed. The Sultan declared war against Russia in October 1851. Following an Ottoman naval disaster in November, Britain and France declared war against Russia. It proved quite difficult to reach Russian territory, and the Royal Navy could not defeat the Russian defences in the Baltic. Most of the battles took place in the Crimean peninsula, which the Allies finally seized. London, shocked to discover that France was secretly negotiating with Russia to form a postwar alliance to dominate Europe, dropped its plans to attack St. Petersburg and instead signed a one-sided armistice with Russia that achieved almost none of its war aims. 
  The Treaty of Paris signed March 30, 1856, ended the war. Russia gave up a little land and relinquished its claim to a protectorate over the Christians in the Ottoman domains. The Black Sea was demilitarized, and an international commission was set up to guarantee freedom of commerce and navigation on the Danube River. Moldavia and Wallachia remained under nominal Ottoman rule, but would be granted independent constitutions and national assemblies. However, by 1870, the Russians had regained most of their concessions.
  The war helped modernize warfare by introducing major new technologies such as railways, the telegraph, and modern nursing methods. The Ottoman Empire and Russia, with their weak industrial bases, could not keep up with the major powers, so they could no longer promote stability. This opened the way for Napoleon III in France and Otto von Bismarck in Prussia to launch a series of wars in the 1860s that reshaped Europe.
caption: Diplomats at the Congress of Paris, 1856, settled the Crimean War; painting by Edouard Louis Dubufe.
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