Britain Won the Crimean War but Lost the Peace

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“Britain won the Crimean War but lost the peace” The aftermath of the Crimean War left a ruined world. The treaty of Paris had huge implications on all of the countries and soon what seemed like a treaty that was in Britain’s favour soon became a treaty that worked against them. Britain wanted Russia to come off worse in the treaty and this supposedly happened but only lasted a couple of years and then Russia revoked “The Black Sea Clauses” and all that Britain had worked for (peace, power and preservation) had all been lost. For a while it seemed like Britain came out on top and peace throughout the world had been restored but the tables soon changed, and the Russian sphere of influence didn’t seem to be getting smaller and was trying to gain control of Constantinople and the vital route through the straits Initially Britain maintained the balance of power, but gradually lost the peace due to the laws of the Treaty of Paris. One of the main reasons why Britain lost the peace was because of the implementations against Russia. The black sea was to be neutralised. Both Russia and the Ottoman Empire were forbidden to maintain warships or costal defences on the Black sea. This was a huge downfall for Russia as they now had no naval bases to protect the south (from the Mediterranean) this left Russia very vulnerable and weakened the threat of expansionism to the falling Ottoman Empire, this is proved by the “four points” policy in the Treaty of Paris which states that warships of all nations were excluded from the Black Sea. Russia harboured expansionist views and much desired to have control of Constantinople and the Straits, this would allow them to gain power and would make trade for Britain very much harder. This was one of the main points that drove Russia into isolationism in 1856 and by undertaking such extreme actions they lost the friendship with Austria,
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