The “Crimean War” was not a world war, but it was fought around the world. Although by far the greatest part of the fighting took place in the Black Sea area, campaigns were conducted elsewhere, in the Baltic, the White Sea, and the Pacific. John D. Grainger's The First Pacific War: Britain and Russia, 1854–1856, is an in-depth study of this latter theater of war, the Anglo-French naval campaign against Russia in the Pacific Ocean.

Grainger sets out to provide not only a detailed account of the naval campaign, but also, and more important, to reevaluate the significance and consequences of the campaign. Thus, in addition to the title's protagonists Britain and Russia, the regional powers China and Japan, and the part played by the United States, figure quite prominently in Grainger's account. The result is an original, fresh look at an aspect of the Crimean War that is too often overlooked or deliberately ignored by historians.

Grainger's choice of title suggests that, rather than as a remote—and ultimately insignificant—campaign of the “Crimean War,” the fighting in the Pacific is perhaps best understood as a conflict in its own right, a conflict that was of great importance for the region in which it was fought. The consequences of the fighting that took place in the Pacific were very great, “perhaps greater than those in the European theatre,” the author suggests (xi). Although the events of the Pacific campaign were certainly not decisive for the outcome of the war, they had a profound impact on the region, for they involved not only the Western Allies and Russia. Most significantly, there were important consequences for China, Japan, and the United States, all of which were powers not actively involved as belligerents. Grainger suggests that eventually the main victim of the conflict was China, and the greatest beneficiary was the United States. The war in the Pacific “changed the whole balance of power in the Pacific area, bringing Russia in strength to the coast, damaging China seriously, and alerting both Japan and, above all, the United States to the importance of the region” (ix).

The overall structure of the book follows the events in the Pacific from the first encounter between Allied and Russian armed forces, to preparations for further action cut short by the conclusion of peace. The opening chapter looks at British interests in the Pacific region and examines the British naval presence there before the outbreak of the war. The first and only major engagement of the campaign, the unsuccessful Allied assault on the Russian harbor and town of Petropavlovsk in 1854, is the object of chapter 2. The following chapter analyzes the belligerents’ preparations for the following year. Special attention is paid to Russian ambitions in the Amur region, and British and Russian efforts to conclude treaties with and gain the use of ports in Japan. Chapter 4 describes the Allies’ return to a now abandoned town of Petropavlovsk, and the subsequent chapters 5–7 examine the naval activities in the Gulf of Tartary, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the British search for the Amur estuary with its Russian settlements and suspected naval bases. British plans for a further campaigning season in 1856 are the object of the penultimate part, while chapter 9 assesses the consequences of the war in the Pacific. The book also contains a number of helpful maps, an index and a short but useful bibliography.

Grainger's study is not intended to be a comprehensive history of the campaign in the Pacific theater of war in all its aspects, indeed he tells us that a number of sources and accounts in various languages remain to be explored. His book is primarily written from the perspective of the Royal Navy, “for the central players in these events were always British” (xiv). Importantly, however, Grainger also devotes considerable space throughout his book to provide an account of Russian actions and ambitions in the area. In this respect, especially Muravev's push along the River Amur and the establishment of Russian settlements at the expense of a Chinese empire torn apart by civil war are significant. In addition, therefore, to a detailed account of British naval activity, Grainger's study contains much information that helps understand events in a Pacific campaign that otherwise, due to its distinct lack of fighting, might seem marginal and unimportant.

Moreover, Grainger's account of the Royal Navy's actions in the Pacific helps qualify the still widespread image of the Crimean War as a conflict primarily characterized by a long series of British “bluffs and blunders.” Any mention the Pacific theater receives in scholarly studies is still often limited to the unsuccessful Anglo-French assault on Petropavlovsk, an episode made all the more intriguing by the suicide of the British commander-in-chief, Admiral Price, before the start of the action. To be sure, the assault on the Russian base has been rightly criticized; the attack—as it turned out the only substantial combat action of the campaign—“was a failure due to bad planning, minimal reconnaissance, and incompetent command” (49). Yet to take this failure as representative of the entire Pacific campaign would be a very unjust verdict. “The war in the Pacific was not a joke, as some have portrayed it, or a matter of bungling incompetence, as others have interpreted it” (xv). Two Royal Navy squadrons operated in a distant and to some extent still uncharted part of the world. Grainger points out that the navy's initial primary objective was the protection of own and the destruction of hostile shipping in the region. The investigation of a vast area and the search for Russian vessels in partly unknown waters was an immense task. “Despite early mistakes, and in spite of the difficulties, the Navy emerges well from the ordeal” (xi).

John D. Grainger's The First Pacific War: Britain and Russia, 1854–1856 is a very useful study not only for those interested in a detailed account of the Royal Navy's Pacific campaign, but also for anyone interested in the wider context and consequences of the unfortunately named “Crimean” War.