The Barrier Kingdoms

This essay, Dixon’s second contribution to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, is one of several works dealing with the Crimean War (see also Campbell’s essay on St. Arnaud and Fulford’s poem about Sebastopol.) The February issue had already gone to press when news of the approaching end of the war reached England, and Fulford included an insert at the beginning of this issue promising another essay treating the new aspects of the question. Dixon’s “Prospects of Peace”, in March, fulfills Fulford’s promise.

Dixon patriotically sees England as the protector of European liberties, and Russia as an aggressor. He distinguishes Russia’s goal of domination from England’s goal of restitution, and argues that “We are at war for the express purpose of undoing whatever Russia has been doing in Europe and Asia for the last fifty years” (69).

First printed in The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine , February, 1856.