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

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Indigenising folk art: eighteenth-century powder horns in British military collections
(2020-09)
Lidchi, Henrietta
;
Allan, Stuart
Engraved power horns are a well-known aspect of the material culture of the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), also known in North America as the French and Indian War. In looking at collections in military museums across the UK it emerged that powder horns were a distinctive form of material culture from this campaign. Powder horns were often personalised and artistically adapted, and they feature widely in North American collecting institutions and remain of considerable interest to private collectors. Though many are decorated with detailed maps of the theatre of war, others carry more personalised imagery or inscriptions and were made ‘on the hoof’ by amateur artists as mementoes. This chapter focuses on three examples which have an additionally important feature, the carrying straps likely procured from indigenous allies, which documentary evidence suggests might have been military issue. These include straps that are cut down tumplines (burden straps), glass wampum belts, woven belts or quillwork ‘prisoner ties’. Such items are known from early antiquarian collections. This chapter reviews the possible intercultural relationships encapsulated in the survival of these objects in military museums, and discusses their symbolic value within the military culture of the eighteenth-century British Army.
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Seeing Tibet through soldiers' eyes: photograph albums in regimental museums
(2020-09)
Henrietta, Lidchi
;
Rosanna, Nicolson
In his ‘Notes on Photography’ dated 1860 Captain Henry Shaw of the Royal Engineers itemised the uses to which photography could be applied for military and scientific purposes. He notes that over time, capturing scenes, places and persons would prove of personal interest to the photographer and more generally, justifying the physical encumbrance of carrying photographic equipment on campaign. Analysis of photographs and scrap albums recording the 1903–04 ‘Younghusband Mission’ into Tibet takes us beyond straightforward photographic representation into considering the afterlife of the images created on campaign. Evidence of practices of duplication, compilation and curation of images, shows the importance of recognising the album as acomposite artefact, drawing in official and personal photographs. Many of these albums were made after the event, and can include further visual material (eg: newspaper cutting or cartoons). A close reading of the combination of photographic prints on a page, combined with their captions, demonstrates the function of these albums as individual and collective memorials.
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David Stewart of Garth, Scott’s “Highlander of the Old Stamp”
(2020-06-28)
Allan, Stuart
Stuart’s title features David Stewart of Garth as Scott’s ‘Highlander of the Old Stamp’, which I believe is a quotation from a letter of Scott’s to J. G. Lockhart of 14 July 1828. The name rings a particularly sharp bell for me personally, since later that year Stewart, on the point of taking up a Governorship in the West Indies, wrote to Scott requesting that, as several ladies among his friends were anxious to have Scott’s autograph, he (Scott) would therefore ‘favour me with a few lines, and scribble your signature as often as the paper will hold’.
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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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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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Re-capturing the British Imperial Past
(2016)
Allan, Stuart
;
Lidchi, Henrietta
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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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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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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.
3
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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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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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