Ambassador emeritus Veijo Sampovaara has donated books concerning the Crimean war to Turku University Library

​Veijo Sampovaara has had a long career in Foreign Ministry.  Sampovaara has served in seven different countries and acted as an ambassador in Mexico, Canada and Chile. He was born in Turku in 1938 and graduated as a Bachelor of Political Science in 1963 from the University of Helsinki.
 
History is the special hobby of Sampovaara. Some of his subjects of interest are the time subsequent to French Revolution which led to Napoleonic wars and to the birth of the national states and the development in the European politics of the great powers which led to the Crimean war.

The interest in the Crimean war inspired Sampovaara to get from the London-based antiquarian bookshops the contemporary literature concerning the subject and now he decided to donate it to Turku University Library. The donation contains the following publications:

• The Illustrated London News magazines from the years 1854 –1856
•  Henry Tyrrell’s works The History of the War with Russia: Illustrated (1855-1858) and The History of the Russian Empire (1859)
•  Edward Henry Nolan’s eight volume work The Illustrated History of the Present War against Russia (1857)

The open donation occasion was arranged on Tuesday Aug 21 in the Koskenniemi meeting room of Feeniks Library. Head of Services, Ludvig Forsman, says that the university library received the information about this exceptional donation gratefully and enthusiastically.
 
– Most of these books have not been found in the collections of any Finnish university library before. With the help of these rare contemporary descriptions, the researchers and students from Turku will have clearly improved possibilities to study the Crimean war which also concerned Finland, Forsman says.
In Sampovaara’s book donation especially the illustrations of the contemporary artists are emphasized.

– The Crimean war occurred during the time when photographing had begun to become common. However, the bulk of the illustration of the war is drawings which the artists made on the basis of the war correspondents' descriptions. Because the battleships with their big sails were a handsome sight, there are a lot of these pictures and there were no limits in the imagination in drawing them, said Sampovaara in the donation occasion.

HK, translation Erik Lindgren.