Baggage and Belonging: Military collections and the British Empire, 1750 - 1900

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A repository of virtue?: The United Service Museum, collecting, and the professionalization of the British Armed Forces, 1829–1864
(2018-04-14)
Hartwell, Nicole M
By examining the development of the United Service Museum (established in London in 1831) this article demonstrates how the practice of collecting knowledge and material culture during the nineteenth century was considered an important avenue through which to inculcate virtuous behaviour in officers of the British armed forces. Although the museum’s curators favoured objects that reflected the development of the ‘science of warfare’ from the mid- to late-1850s and beyond, in the first half of the nineteenth century the collection of knowledge of other cultures and the natural world was considered just as significant for the professionalization of the services. By tracing these shifts in the museum’s collections policies this article highlights the complexities of the role, meaning and purpose of military museums, and makes a call to reappraise the nature of their collections, challenging the view that they should be exclusively seen as repositories of ‘spoils of war’.
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Uncovering stories of military collecting
(2018-09-09)
Hartwell, Nicole M
Nicole Hartwell tells the story of a delicately embroidered Italian textile whose appearance is at odds with the tumultuous and bloody period of British Indian history to which it is connected.
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Dividing the spoils: Perspectives on military collections and the British empire
(2020-09)
Lidchi, Henrietta
;
Allan, Stuart
At a time of heightened international interest in the colonial dimensions of museum collections, Dividing the Spoils provides new perspectives on the motivations and circumstances whereby collections were appropriated and acquired during colonial military service. Combining approaches from the fields of material anthropology, imperial and military history, this book argues for a deeper examination of these collections within a range of intercultural histories that include alliance, diplomacy, curiosity and enquiry, as well as expropriation and cultural hegemony. As museums across Europe reckon with the post-colonial legacies of their collections, Dividing the Spoils explores how the amassing of objects was understood and governed in British military culture, and considers how objects functioned in museum collections thereafter, suggesting new avenues for sustained investigation in a controversial, contested field.
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Baggage and Belonging Catalogue 2020 - Black Watch Museum objects
(2020)
Hartwell, Nicole
;
National Museums Scotland
The catalogues provide provenance-based information on a range of objects, with more detailed information developed and shared with the custodians of the collections. In certain instances, where collections featured substantial quantities of potentially relevant artefacts, we have made a selection. In addition to regimental and corps museums, the collections of our project partner, the National Army Museum, and relevant collections at National Museums Scotland held in the Department of Scottish History & Archaeology and the Department of World Cultures were surveyed.
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The officers' mess: an anthropology and history of the military interior
(2020-09)
Kirke, Charles
;
Hartwell, Nicole M
This chapter uses a model of British Army organisational culture and historical analysis to examine the nature of the ‘military interior’ – specifically the public rooms in the officers’ mess and the artefacts found within. The authors seek to combine their expertise to create a broader understanding of how military culture is lived out in this space, dynamically in terms of how the members treat the mess as both a domestic space and a focal point for performance of battalion and regimental identity, and statically as a place where artefacts – from regimental silver to pieces acquired on imperial campaigns – are displayed. By placing these artefacts in their historical mess settings, this chapter examines the various meanings that can be ascribed to them in this culturally distinct environment. These meanings may be associated with the nature of the military hierarchy; with the expression of mutual respect and affection towards present and past mess members; with operational performance and success; and with the identity of the battalion or regiment.
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Afterword: material reckonings with military histories
(2020-09)
Lidchi, Henrietta
Looking at European developments from 2017 to 2019, the Afterword situates the volume among the resurgent interest in questions of contested histories, calls for restitution, and the resurgence of provenance research. It argues that given the varied ways European nations are addressing questions of colonial collections, it seems contradictory that the collections of military museums are seemingly absent from the debate. The chapter consequently considers the affective values of objects, and the symbolic nature of return, arguing that there is a distinction to objects in UK military collections, linked to the idea of ‘sentiment’. Looking again at the conflict highlighted in the Introduction, it addresses two initiatives in 2018 in the UK which discussed the 1868 capture of the fortress at Maqdala and two items, again linked to Emperor Tewodros II, which over time have troubled their national custodians. It considers how such questions were addressed through display at the Victoria and Albert Museum and links this to the National Army Museum’s gesture of returning hair samples linked to Emperor Tewodros. Comparing these two initiatives it seeks to understand the historical moment in which such discussions, and therefore the issues addressed in Dividing the Spoils, can be more widely understood.
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Black Watch alliances in Seven Years War revealed
(2014-07-11)
Lidchi, Henrietta
;
Allan, Stuart
This summer a group of historians, anthropologists and First Nation community members assembled at the Woodlands Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario. They met to share knowledge and discuss research into the civilisations and arts of the Great Lakes region. Part of their discussion revolved around an object from the collections of National Museums Scotland, an elaborately engraved powder horn made around 1758 during the Seven Years War (1756-1763) also known in North America as the French and Indian War.
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Mementoes of power and conquest: Sikh jewellery in the collection of National Museums Scotland
(2020-09)
Voigt, Friederike
This chapter traces the historical trajectory of pieces of jewellery and personal effects in the collection of National Museums Scotland which once belonged to the last Sikh ruler of Panjab, Maharaja Duleep Singh (1838–93). Deposed from the throne after the Second Anglo–Sikh War, exiled and deprived of his possessions, religion and identity, Duleep Singh has been considered a pawn of Empire. Rather than interpreting the jewellery as signs of royal splendour, the chapter foregrounds the historical significance of these jewels. Using archival sources, the chapter traces their different ownerships back to the dispersal of the Lahore treasury, or Toshakhana, following the defeat of the Sikh army by the British in the Second Anglo-Sikh War 1848–49 and emphasises the multitude of perspectives of the different agents involved in the British Empire in India on these objects.
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Framing colonial war loot: The ‘captured’ spolia opima of Kunwar Singh
(2022-07-01)
Hartwell, Nicole M
This article investigates the provenance of four artefacts associated with the military commander Kunwar Singh (1777–1858), who fought a guerrilla campaign against the British during the Indian Uprising of 1857–8. By analysing how these objects were documented and inscribed, it can be shown that, through the invocation of what is characterized here as ‘martial discourse’, British officers framed the acquisition of the arms, armour and ceremonial possessions of an enemy commander in very specific ways. As an overlooked aspect of nineteenth-century British military culture, an examination of martial discourse helps to clarify how British officers presented acquisitions in colonial military contexts. Fundamental to the examples considered here – which include ‘taken in action’, ‘captured’ and ‘spolia opima’ – was an implicit and shared understanding within the British military establishment that artefacts deemed to signify victory and military prowess could be elevated above, and distinguished from those taken during acts of unsanctioned appropriation and looting.
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Introduction
(2020-09)
Lidchi, Henrietta
;
Allan, Stuart
At a time of heightened international interest in the colonial dimensions of museum collections, Dividing the Spoils provides new perspectives on the motivations and circumstances whereby collections were appropriated and acquired during colonial military service. Combining approaches from the fields of material anthropology, imperial and military history, this book argues for a deeper examination of these collections within a range of intercultural histories that include alliance, diplomacy, curiosity and enquiry, as well as expropriation and cultural hegemony. As museums across Europe reckon with the post-colonial legacies of their collections, Dividing the Spoils explores how the amassing of objects was understood and governed in British military culture, and considers how objects functioned in museum collections thereafter, suggesting new avenues for sustained investigation in a controversial, contested field.
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Baggage and Belonging: Military collections and the British Empire, 1750 - 1900

Baggage and Belonging: Military collections and the British Empire, 1750 - 1900

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