How the Research Is Empirically Examined 87
support for countries that were attacked by radical forces.^58 For Britain, the
Crimean War was the only European war in which London was involved
in 1816–1914. In the decades that preceded the war, Britain relinquished
Europe and focused on its empire. However, as a major European power,
Britain could not ignore the events on the continent, and it was drawn into
the land disputes in the Crimean War. Britain was not interested in fight-
ing such a war because the size of the army that it could raise was about
a quarter that of the French army, and its influence over strategy reflected
those differences.^59
The Crimean War—Its Consequences. A number of studies argue that
the leaders of the countries could have solved the conflict without a war,
as both the tsar and Porte had the possibility of reaching an agreement
through contacts that led to the war, and Britain and France could both
have abandoned Turkey to its fate in its war against Russia. But consider-
ing the interests of their countries, all the political leaders had an inter-
national incentive to fight a war that was greater than the incentive of
negotiating an arrangement. However, the conclusion that many historians
reached that the key cause of the war was silly errors or incompetence of
political leaders was wrong.^60
In the Crimean crisis, no leader wanted a war of great powers. Each of
the leaders faced a series of significant choices that the system encour-
aged him to take, which eventually led to the outbreak of an unintentional
war. Unlike the assumption that the war was caused by irrational concepts
that were based on misconceptions of the key leaders, the players acted
rationally for maximizing their own countries’ interests. The multipolarity
of the international system led to two significant influence models: (1) it
reduced the options that the great powers had on the one hand; and on the
other hand, (2) it forced the great powers to choose certain options that in
many cases were in opposition to their aggregate interest.
The Crimean War was the first war of great powers after Napoleonic
France was defeated in 1815. The war had many consequences. Firstly, it
led to the end of the longest period of peace between the major European
powers for 300 years; secondly, it formed the conditions that facilitated the
unification of Italy and Germany; thirdly, it had a very significant effect
on the future of the development of diplomacy and of European society.
Although Austria maintained its neutrality during the war, its transi-
tion from supporting one side to supporting the other side annoyed the
Western powers and also caused alienation on the part of Russia. There-
fore, Austria remained without a great power as an ally in later struggles
against the revolutionary forces in Italy and against Prussia’s increasing
power.^61
The Crimean War also proved to London that Great Britain could not
be a naval power only—the Royal Navy did help defend trade and the