A British Colonel in the Ottoman Army at the 1853-56 Ottoman-Russia War: Brigadier William Fenwick Williams's Military Reports

Abstract

As it is known, the Crimean War was the first war in which the European great powers countered Slavic expansion in the alliance and used modern technologies for warfare. Ottoman State was not equipped enough to conduct this war in terms of its economic and military qualifications. However, the overseas policies and foreign threat perceptions of states, such as England and France obliged them to give economic and military support to the Turks in the Ottoman-Russian conflict. As a result, the Allies assigned their key officers to the Turkish Army to boost the Ottoman Armies’ ability to fight the Russians. Actually, the Ottoman-Russian War of 1853-56 went down in history as the Crimean War since the Allies had intense clashes in Crimea. In the same years, the Ottoman Armies campaigned serious struggles against the Russians in the east. The Eastern front, where geography and climatic conditions had a significant impact on the situation of the war compared to Crimea, remained in the shadow of the popularity of the Crimea Front. However, the same opinion was not the case during the war years, and the United Kingdom sent William Fenwick Williams, one of its successful officers, to the Anatolian Forces stationed in Erzurum on behalf of the Allies. The reports that Williams wrote to the British embassy in Istanbul are important in terms of understanding the army of the Ottoman Empire in the period of dissolution. The directives that Williams had sent to the Ottoman headquarters could be effective in changing the structure of the Turkish army. Therefore, this study will focus on the military reports that were sent by Williams during the Ottoman-Russian War of 1853-56 and try to analyze them.