Today in Labor History March 30, 1856: The Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Crimean War, between Russia and the victorious Ottoman Empire (allied with the UK, France and Sardinia-Piedmont). The flashpoint was a conflict over the rights of Christian minorities in Ottoman-controlled Palestine, and control of its holy sites.
The Crimean War was one of the first to utilize modern armaments, like explosive shells, railways and telegraphs. Much of these armaments came from Alfred Nobel’s family armament factory. It was also a particularly deadly war. Around 670,000 soldiers died in only four years, the majority from preventable infectious diseases (e.g., typhus, typhoid, cholera, and dysentery), not from battle wounds. Mortality rates for soldiers were 23-31%, compared with U.S. troop mortality rates of only 2% during the Vietnam War.
In the aftermath of the Crimean War, Russia sold Alaska to the U.S. out of fear that the UK would simply take it from them in their weakened military state. The last living veteran of the Crimean war was a Greek tortoise, named Timothy, who had served as a ship’s mascot during the war. He died in 2004, nearly 150 years after the war ended. Despite their victory, the Ottomans gained no new territory, and the war nearly bankrupted them, contributing to their decline as a super power. The Crimean War also helped forge the alliances and grievances that would lead to the First World War, and quite likely to the conditions leading up to Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea and its current fight with Ukraine.
Florence Nightengale became famous as a nurse during this war. Tolstoy fought in the 11-month Siege of Sevastopol. His experiences in this war contributed to his pacifism and anarchism. After witnessing a public execution in France, one year after the Crimean War ended, he wrote, “The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere.” The war also influenced his novel, “War and Peace.”
Indigenous outnumbered White settlers until ~1850 in Australia, according to Boyd Hunter who points to the impact of disease & frontier violence in his new review of Butlin’s back-cast population model.
If you see anyone parroting the talking points of a certain tech billionaire, maybe get them to watch this video
(which includes thoughtful commentary from the brilliant Jennifer Sciubba): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_mOHelAH44
PS
It might also be useful for anyone who's teaching on population topics.
Historical evidence of disease, fertility decline, violence & resource loss inform a back-cast prediction of high pre-contact Indigenous population in Tasmania & subsequent fast decline, according to a new paper by Byard & Maxwell-Stewart https://doi.org/10.1111/aehr.12282
Today, a young American woman between the ages of 25 and 34 face higher mortality rates than at any other point in more than 50 years. And had the mortality rate remained flat between 2000 and 2021, nearly 40,000 young women would not have died.
~Sara Srygley of PRB