Dividing the spoils

Perspectives on military collections and the British empire

Alan Lester, Henrietta Lidchi, Stuart Allan

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781526139221
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Museum Studies

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.

Part I

Ideologies of empire and governance

CHAPTER ONE

Spoils of war: custom and practice

Edward M. Spiers

A plentiful by-product of the British wars of empire in the mid- to late nineteenth century was plunder or booty, or as it became commonly known from the mid-nineteenth century term, ‘loot’ (allegedly from the Hindi word lut, to plunder). By these means artefacts from outside the UK would come to adorn, by turn, the Royal Collection, national museums, regimental museums and some stately homes across the country. With the passage of time, items of symbolic or national value have been claimed by their countries of origin (as the Afterword identifies) for restitution, repatriation or ‘return’.1 Although aware of these debates,2 this chapter will focus instead on the history and process of military looting. It will use contemporary accounts, records, and the literature linked to military campaigns to place the acquisitions in context and so indicate how practices changed over the course of the nineteenth century. This overview will address the varied nature of the loot seized, the challenges of bringing booty back from the theatre of operations, and the diverse attempts by the British Army to regulate looting during the many wars and campaigns waged in Africa during the mid- to late nineteenth century. In this chapter reference will be made to ‘plunder’, ‘booty’, ‘loot’ and ‘prize’, demonstrating how the vernacular terms and their technical meaning changed over time, and so created circumstances in which they were used interchangeably. As a starting point it is important to understand the military meaning of ‘prize’.

Technically all plunder taken in war belonged to the Crown and while particular artefacts, often appropriated or acquired from foreign heads of state, were reserved for the monarch and members of the royal family, the Victorian army had the sovereign’s sanction to regulate the division of the remainder as prize money.3 Sir Garnet J. (later Field-Marshal Viscount) Wolseley, who became the Army’s commander-in-chief (1895–1900), explained and effectively sanctioned this system in his Soldier’s Pocket Book for Field Service, which was issued to all soldiers. He did so because the system, though endorsed by the Treasury and War Office, was not described in army regulations. When capture was made or about to be made on active service, stated Wolseley, the general officer commanding (GOC) should call upon his officers to elect or appoint two or three of their number to represent him as prize agents (with another prize agent appointed from any naval unit involved). Whenever a capture was made, the prize should be collected and the GOC should determine which troops would participate in the sharing of the prize (although the final decision rested with the secretary of state for war). The prize agents would then advise whether the prize should be converted into money through an auction on the spot, or be sent home in the charge of a prize agent to be sold there. Any legal or other expenses incurred by the prize agents would be charged to the prize fund, and remuneration at the rate of 1.5 per cent upon the net amount paid to the prize agents. Money raised at auction had to be divided by shares, allocated by rank from a general with 400 shares down to a private with one share. ‘The practical effect of this principle’, wrote Wolseley, ‘will be to divide the available fund in the proportion of about 1/3 to the offrs., and 2/3 to the NCOs and privates, after deducting the share of the G.O.C.’4

Accordingly, soldiers’ letters, like those of Lieutenant Herbert Charles Borrett (4th Foot or King’s Own Regiment) from the Anglo-Abyssinian campaign (1867–68), sometimes recorded that ‘No looting, except of eatables, was permitted, and every thing found in the place was collected together. Theodore’s crown (made of red velvet, gold and precious stones), his seal, and other articles of value are now being exhibited in front of our Guards.’5 Serving in the same campaign, Ensign Walter A. Wynter (33rd Foot, Duke of Wellington’s Regiment) agreed that the looting orders had been very strict, and that he had had to hand over the head of a processional cross, which is ‘now in the R[oyal] A[rtillery] mess’.6 Yet Borrett retained ‘two Abyssinian swords picked up on the battlefield. A ring I cut off a dead enemy, part of a native bible, and a bullet that fell at my feet during the fight.’7

This apparent anomaly between a ban on looting and the acquisition of battlefield trophies reflected the endurance of another military custom, namely the right of a soldier to retain anything seized at the point of the bayonet. After sieges this was a fairly expansive concept, and, as Wynter conceded, it led to the trading of mementoes or the purchasing of items by private bargains outside of the prize system.8 Conversely, as plundering on the line of march could threaten military discipline, it contravened military law and the penalties could be severe. During the Peninsular War, Sergeant D. Robertson (92nd Gordon Highlanders) recalled that a sergeant major of his regiment was caught in the act of ‘plundering a house on the highway’ and was sentenced to death, only for the sentence to be commuted to 800 lashes ‘on account of his wife and family’. Several Guardsmen, added Robertson, were punished for similar offences.9

Historical context

Plundering precedents were almost certainly known to the Victorian soldiery, whether through folklore passed down the ranks or trophies displayed by regiments. One of the more famous of these events occurred after the rout of the French forces at the battle of Vitoria, Spain (21 June 1813), when soldiers, camp followers and non-combatants acquired the ‘loot of a kingdom’. On roads blocked by abandoned guns and transport, and in accompanying fields stuck fast in the mud, were the carriages, baggage waggons and all the impedimenta of Joseph Bonaparte’s court and army, including ‘vast numbers of carriages with ladies belonging to the French Army, nuns, wives of generals and officers, actresses’.10 These possessions were raided for ‘laces and velvets, silks and satins, valuable pictures, jewels, gold and silver plate, cases of claret and champagne’, and, among the goods seized, were the king’s carriage and sword of state, Marshal Jourdon’s baton, 5 million dollars from the military chest, and vast amounts of private wealth, with coins scattered over the fields, so ‘depriving others of their fair share of prize money’.11

Service in India had also yielded fabulous returns, especially after the storming of fortresses such as Seringapatam (Srirangapatna, 5 May 1799), where a colonel received prize money of £297 sterling, a subaltern £52 and a British private, £3 15s 9d, above all the private plunder.12 The confiscation of the Koh-i-Noor diamond under the terms of the Treaty of Lahore (1849), which ended the Second Anglo-Sikh War, enabled the East India Company to present Queen Victoria with this lavish gift in the following year (see also Voigt, Chapter 11). During the Indian Mutiny, or Uprising (1857–58) many incidents of looting occurred, particularly in the assault on the Kaiserbagh (Qaisar Bagh) complex, Lucknow (15 March 1858). Captured in a steel engraving of the later 1850s, this event prompted William Howard Russell of The Times to describe how British soldiers and their sepoy allies emerged from broken portals, ‘laden with loot or plunder’:

The men are wild with fury and lust of gold – literally drunk with plunder. Some come out with china vases or mirrors, dash them to pieces on the ground, and return to seek more valuable booty. Others are busy gouging out the precious stones from the stems of pipes, from saddlecloths, or the hilts of swords, or butts of pistols and fire-arms.13

The culmination of the Second Anglo-China War in 1860 produced even more notorious scenes of pillage and plunder (see also Tythacott, Chapter 8). After a series of victories, in which the British troops found ‘nothing worth having . . . in the way of loot’,14 the Anglo-French expeditionary force occupied the imperial palaces outside Peking (Beijing). When Wolseley, then a brevet lieutenant-colonel, entered the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) on 7 October, he found the ‘French allies’ already engaged in ‘indiscriminate plunder and wanton destruction of all articles too heavy for removal’. At these moments, he observed, soldiers ‘are nothing more than grown-up schoolboys. The wild moments of enjoyment passed in the pillage of a place live long in a soldier’s memory.’15 While the French indulged themselves over a two-day period, British soldiers were kept in camp, with their officers mindful of the riot and insubordination wrought ‘after the capture of Delhi’,16 but a few officers entered the palace. They faced huge temptations, as Frederick Stephenson informed his brother:

Fancy having the run of Buckingham Palace and being allowed to take away anything and everything you liked, and armed moreover with a thick stick and a deep-rooted feeling of animosity to the owner, being able to indulge in the pleasure of smashing looking-glasses and porcelain, and knocking holes through pictures. Such a scene I witnessed yesterday [ . . . ].17

As officers brought a large collection of valuables back to camp on carts, Lieutenant-General Sir James Hope Grant, the commander-in-chief, ordered them to donate their loot to the prize agents for immediate auction. Not all complied, including Wolseley, who kept a valuable French miniature in his pocket,18 but a two-day auction followed, raising 123,000 dollars. As Hope Grant and the other generals renounced their claims, the proceeds were split one third to officers and two thirds to NCOs and men, with each soldier receiving nearly £4.19

Far less orderly looting occurred nine days later. Following Anglo-French demands for the surrender of Peking, the ensuing negotiations produced the return of the bodies of eighteen European and Indian prisoners. Seized under a flag of truce, these men had been imprisoned, hideously tortured, and executed. In retribution the Earl of Elgin, who was Britain’s high commissioner to China, ordered the destruction of the Yuanmingyuan. Over 18–19 October, 3,500 troops looted and burned the vast complex of palaces. The French were once again to the fore, ‘leaving us’, as Wolseley reflected, with ‘little more than the bare shell of the buildings on which to wreak our vengeance for the cruelties practised therein on our ill-fated countrymen’.20

The looting, as ever, proved a hugely variable experience. While Gerald Graham arrived ‘an hour too late for loot; the Sikhs had been before us, and all the palaces were in flames – a fine sight’,21 another officer recounted how ‘two officers of the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: dividing the spoils
• Part I Ideologies of empire and governance
• Part II Military collecting cultures
• Part III The afterlives of military collections
• Afterword: material reckonings with military histories
• Archival sources
• Bibliography
• Index