The Crimean War occurred from October 1853 to February 1856. It was a conflict involving Russia, France, Britain, Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire that centered around the status of the rights of Christian minorities living in the Ottoman Empire’s Holy Land. This war has also been understood to be the product of the Ottoman Empire’s disintegration, and specifically a tension between Russia’s insistence to protect Orthodox members of the Ottoman Empire and France’s and Britain’s insistence to manage the Russian Orthodox and Christian churches in Palestine. Public unrest emerged in Britain as the country’s involvement resulted in a high death toll and misinformation about the war spread. These tensions manifested in protests such as the 1955 Snowball Riot. Besides this dispute for former Ottoman territory, Britain and Russia were involved in conflicts over disputed territory in India.

While Mill explicitly refers to the American War for Independence and details his position on slavery, he only implicitly alludes to the Crimean War, as evidenced when he writes: “The renewed oppression of the Continent by the old reigning families, the English Government’s apparent acceptance of the conspiracy against liberty called the Holy Alliance, and the enormous weight of the national debt and taxation caused by that long and costly war, made the government and parliament very unpopular” (Mill 103). Mill notes that as a result of this war, the Radicalist movement was placed under scrutiny and eventually became more extreme as “a spirit that had ever appeared before” appeared (Mill 103). Mill uses the financial and military blunders produced from the Crimean War to contextualize the rise of radicalism in England and how Bentham’s school of thought gained more prominence. Thus, understanding the Crimean War is useful for making sense of Mill's philosophy, his involvement with Bentham, and his overarching views on liberty and utilitarianism. 

“Crimean War.” Enclopaedia Britannica, 27 February 2021, www.britannica.com/event/Crimean-War.