Dividing the spoils : perspectives on military collections and the British empire / edited by Henrietta Lidchi and Stuart Allan.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Lidchi, Henrietta, editor.

Allan, Stuart, 1962- editor.

Series:

Studies in imperialism

Studies in Imperialism

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cultural property--Repatriation.

Cultural property.

Military museums.

Cultural policy.

Great Britain--Colonies.

Great Britain.

Colonies.

Great Britain--Cultural policy.

Military museums--Great Britain.

Physical Description:

xix, 324 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2020.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: pt. I Ideologies of empire and governance

1. Spoils of war: custom and practice / Edward M. Spiers

2. The agency of objects: a contrasting choreography of flags, military booty and skulls from late nineteenth-century Africa / John Mack

3. Collecting and the trophy / John M. MacKenzie

pt. II Military collecting cultures

4. Soldiering archaeology: Pitt Rivers and collecting `Primitive Warfare' / Christopher Evans

5. The officers' mess: an anthropology and history of the military interior / Nicole M. Hartwell

6. Seeing Tibet through soldiers' eyes: photograph albums in regimental museums / Rosanna Nicolson

7. A regimental culture of collecting / Desmond Thomas

pt. III The afterlives of military collections

8. Military histories of `Summer Palace' objects from China in military museums in the United Kingdom / Louise Tythacott

9. Indigenising folk art: eighteenth-century powder horns in British military collections / Henrietta Lidchi

10. Community consultation and the shaping of the National Army Museum's Insight gallery / Alastair Massie

11. Mementoes of power and conquest: Sikh jewellery in the collection of National Museums Scotland / Friederike Voigt.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781526139207

1526139200

OCLC:

1198094173