This collaborative research partnership reappraises motivations for military collecting. It investigates cultures of collecting by members of the British armed forces while on campaign and garrison duty in Africa and India during the late 18th and 19th centuries.

Last updated: 22 February 2022

About the project

In 2017 National Museums Scotland was awarded a major grant by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/P006752/1) to examine the rich and diverse material legacy of late 18th and 19th-century British military campaign, building on pilot projects funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the British Academy/Leverhulme, and conducted in partnership with the National Army Museum.

Over 130 military museums in the UK preserve the historical collections of British regiments, corps and services. Their collections contain artefacts acquired by British servicemen in colonial warfare and on imperial garrison duties across the globe, variously acquired as trophies, prize, souvenirs, curios and specimens. These objects are little known outside the constituency of military history and within their current institutions rarely researched in reference to their complex intercultural biographies.

This interdisciplinary project seeks to reappraise the practices, culture and significance of British military collecting of objects from Africa and India during the period 1750 to 1900.

By tracing collections histories through archival and material evidence the project is investigating the meaning of non-European objects in military organisational culture and their value as material witnesses of encounters between non-European peoples and imperial forces. Furthermore, it reappraises the complex variety of motivations for military collecting. These range, on the one hand, from the deliberate and systematic looting of captured fortresses or cities with which we in the post-colonial world are perhaps now most familiar, to the exchange of gifts and trade between military allies on the other.

The project involves the examination of ethnographic material in the collections of regimental and corps museums across the United Kingdom to develop a greater understanding of the material legacies of Empire.

It has brought together an international group of military historians, anthropologists and material culture specialists to share their knowledge and expertise with corps and regimental museum curators. The project has led to a number of outputs including: conference presentations, journal and magazine articles, a book (Dividing the Spoils: Perspectives on Military Collections and the British Empire, Manchester University Press, 2020), knowledge exchange workshops, an international seminar (held at the National Army Museum in February 2020), and an exhibition at the National War Museum at Edinburgh Castle which opened in November 2020, titled ‘Legacies of Empire’. A second book is currently in preparation.

Alongside our core Project Team the project had an Advisory Board comprising university and museum-based academics working in the fields of cultural and visual anthropology, military history, military anthropology and archaeology.

This multi-disciplinary group convened bi-yearly to provide academic oversight and expert advice and networks for our project outputs.

Project catalogues

The catalogues of museum collections surveyed for Baggage and Belonging: Military Collections and the British Empire draw directly from existing museum documentation and project-based research. Most of the provenance research was undertaken by Nicole Hartwell, the postdoctoral researcher (2017-2020) on the project.

The initial remit of the project was to examine artefacts held in military collections across the United Kingdom that are associated with British military campaigns and garrison duty in Africa and India, c. 1750-1900. Following the initial survey, research increasingly focused on specific colonial campaigns.

The information contained in these catalogues is aimed at the interested researcher and is intended to be broadly representative of the content of collections held by regimental museums from colonial campaigns in Africa and India. The catalogues, however, are not fully comprehensive due to limitations of time and access, exacerbated by restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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.

The project team (Henrietta Lidchi, Stuart Allan, and Nicole Hartwell) would like to express their gratitude to all museums and archives staff who gave their time and support to facilitate research visits and answer follow-up enquiries over the duration of the project. They would also like to thank colleagues who offered their invaluable knowledge and expertise which facilitated the interpretation of the artefacts surveyed.