Plausability Check: No Crimean War?

How determined was Imperial Russia to go to war with the Ottoman Empire in 1853 using the whole protector of Christians thing as a pretext?

Apparently the British sent a squadron of warships to Constantinople but the admiral in charge got the hump over the local chargé d'affaires ordering this so got the order cancelled which meant only the French squadron turned up to back the Ottomans. If both the British and French squadrons arrived at Constantinople as a show of force backing the Porte, and Austria had from the outset been much clearer in her stance of feeling threatened by Russia's troop movements and told them in clear terms that they wouldn't remain neutral but actively fight against them would the Russians still of gone ahead with it?
 
How determined was Imperial Russia to go to war with the Ottoman Empire in 1853 using the whole protector of Christians thing as a pretext?

They weren't. Nobody wanted or expected war, except maybe, after a certain point, the Ottomans themselves.

Apparently the British sent a squadron of warships to Constantinople but the admiral in charge got the hump over the local chargé d'affaires ordering this so got the order cancelled which meant only the French squadron turned up to back the Ottomans. If both the British and French squadrons arrived at Constantinople as a show of force backing the Porte, and Austria had from the outset been much clearer in her stance of feeling threatened by Russia's troop movements and told them in clear terms that they wouldn't remain neutral but actively fight against them would the Russians still of gone ahead with it?

I very much doubt it.
 
Ah, well that was easy enough then. Now I just need to start chugging through all of the possible knock-on effects of no war. :)
 
They weren't. Nobody wanted or expected war, except maybe, after a certain point, the Ottomans themselves.



I very much doubt it.

The Ottomans absolutely did not want a war, but the Russians were in occupation of Ottoman territory and they had no choice - but much of the blame goes to Stratford Canning, the British Ambassador, who probably did want a war, and encouraged the Ottomans to think Britain would go to war with them. If he hadn't, the crisis would probably have been resolved diplomatically.
 
Ah, well that was easy enough then. Now I just need to start chugging through all of the possible knock-on effects of no war. :)

I invite you to check out my Course of Human Events TL, in which Russia's occupation of the Danubian Principalities was resolved w/o a general war on the scale of the Crimean War.

The Ottomans absolutely did not want a war, but the Russians were in occupation of Ottoman territory and they had no choice - but much of the blame goes to Stratford Canning, the British Ambassador, who probably did want a war, and encouraged the Ottomans to think Britain would go to war with them. If he hadn't, the crisis would probably have been resolved diplomatically.

Yes, very likely indeed, though with a fair amount of sabre rattling.
 
The Ottomans absolutely did not want a war, but the Russians were in occupation of Ottoman territory and they had no choice - but much of the blame goes to Stratford Canning, the British Ambassador, who probably did want a war, and encouraged the Ottomans to think Britain would go to war with them. If he hadn't, the crisis would probably have been resolved diplomatically.

Canning had his own motivations, but London didn't want a war (the disconnent between the telegraph-controlled drones in Vienna and the independent diplomacy happening at the same time in Constantinople was one principal cause of the war).

I'm not saying the Ottomans were waging a war of aggression or anything; unlike the Russians, who had precipitated the crisis, they would obviously have been in a better position if nothing had happened at all. But, the crisis having started rolling and the tensions having been repeatedly upped by willy-waving manouvres from Russia and the "liberal alliance" ending with Russian troops on the Danube and Anglo-French ships in the Aegean, the Russians, who had taken the initiative in the first place, starting frantically trying to bale out (Olomouc etcetera), whereas the French preferred to paper over things and replace an effective Russian protectorate of the empire with an effective Franco-Russian one. It was the Ottomans who took advantage of Russia's overstretched position and the heavy commitment of the allies to resolve things decisively (under pressure from both public anger at Russian grandstanding and Canning, obviously). This is what I eamht by "after a certain point". The Ottomans were the only power (except maybe Britain) that wanted no change in the status-quo; but once it was endangered, this made them the power most eager to use arms to uphold it, when France and Britain would have been willing to sell out.

My point is that, when it came to it, Petersburg and Paris certainly didn't want a shooting war, and London was in two minds and not going anywhere without France. The Russians were the most "revisionist power" in this case, and the Ottomans the least, but everybody but the Ottomans and sections within Britain would have preferred the thing to have been to have been resolved by Russian climbdown and Ottoman concessions, not war.

You seem to be arguing two ways at once. The Ottomans had no choice but to respond to Russian provocations (which is pretty much correct: they weren't going to surrender part of their independence to any one or two powers in the changed circumstances, whatever those powers imagined; however, the idea that it was impossible for diplomats to imagine that the Ottomans would ever do anything else (that is, quietly take the abuse) is rather undermined by how the Russians got their way north of the Danube in 1848 and before that) and they would never have done the thing they had no choice but to do if it hadn't been for Stratford Canning.

This is obviosly contradictory. You seem to be at once arguing that the war was a misdeed and "blame" is to be apportioned (to the British, obviously), and that it was an unavoidable Ottoman defence of territorial integrity and independence.

I "blame" Russia for starting the crisis, and give secondary blame to nearly everyone, with the Ottomans getting the least share by a considerable margin and Canning a rather large portion. The war, the thing with the shooting and stuff, is however distinct from the crisis.

The Ottomans wanted no crisis. When it came, they wanted it to be resolved violently, since they obviously didn't want to be made to make concessions to reward Russia for marching into other people's stuff. Both Russia and France stood to profit from a crisis but neither wanted it resolved by war. And Britain was as usual not quite in one head about it. I think we'd have preferred there to be no crisis, but there were elements who wanted it resolved by negotiation and making the Ottomans give stuff away, and other elements who wanted to kick the Russkies back east of Mogilyov.
 
Ah, well that was easy enough then. Now I just need to start chugging through all of the possible knock-on effects of no war. :)

It's a fascinating PoD, really, and underused. I'd have to reread some things to really consider the diplomatic butterflies, and Ottoman politics in the 1850s isn't my area, but off the top of my head...

-The British Army's reforms delayed.

-Nicholas I probably gets a few more years.

-Several political careers in Britain and France dramatically re-aligned.
 
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