According to the December 1855 edition of the Irish Quarterly Review, ‘every man who loves the honour of our nation’ should know ‘facts which are important to all who desire to form sound opinions on The War’. This was a very emphatic statement, and one which illustrates why most Irish newspapers during the war dedicated nearly half of their pages to news of the conflict in the East, or to people, things and events that were related to it, if only marginally. These lines also concluded a forty-two-page article on the fall of Sevastopol and a variety of other aspects of the war with Russia.

Irish popular, or public, response to the Crimean War was a mixture of martial and oftentimes imperial enthusiasm, and local or national interest, with a minority strain of criticism, opposition and nationalism. These responses were manifest in the editorials of newspapers and journals, public gatherings, poems and ballads, and memorials. As well as being a distinct period in Ireland's relationship with the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Crimean War also represents a period of distinct change in the tradition of military and Anglican-familial funerary memorials, and it also occurred at the beginning of an era which saw a broadening of the Irish newspaper industry, the decline of popular poetry and balladry, and the emergence of a public monument movement. Emphasis on Irish expressions of enthusiasm, support and oftentimes ‘British’ and ‘imperial’ patriotism during the Crimean War does not seek to perpetuate the idea that Irish people necessarily ‘turned British’ during the war years. Rather it serves to illustrate the ambiguous nature of Irish identity at that time (as well as before and after) – within the union and as part of the empire – and to epitomise the often elusive, contradictory and paradoxical nature of the same, while also demonstrating the interest Irish people showed in the war. Ireland in the nineteenth century was simultaneously a bulwark of the British Empire and an undermining force, and while this dichotomy was just as much the case during the years of the Crimean War, the former was, at least implicitly, far more pervasive.