Paper Soldiers: the life, death and reincarnation of nineteenth-century military files across the British Empire

ABSTRACT

From the moment a man took ‘the king’s shilling’ and was sworn to serve as a soldier in the nineteenth-century British Army, his life proceeded as a file as well as a fighting man. Disorder and desertion drove the utilitarian purposes of discipline and tracking, while constant pressure to account for expenditure in lives and money added further impetus to the copious industry of military record-keeping. Individuals were enumerated, named, appraised and allocated pay. Such archives produce a disorderly silence where men are present but without voice. Carefully archived and always public, military files have a continuing currency through the post-army lives of soldiers into the twenty-first century for descendants and historians. Tracking the life of ‘files’ over time, the paper reflects on the shifting forms of knowledge produced. In particular, it notes the tensions between the densely written form of the files in a population of rank and file soldiers who were partially literate; the highly detailed individuation of the files within a heavily conformist institution, and the modernity of post-1850s record-keeping in an institution bound by tradition. It ends with a reflection on the limitations and opportunities presented by digital access to this substantial archive of imperial-colonial conflict.

Abbreviations: AJCP: Australian Joint Copying Project TNA: The National Archives, London WO: War Office

KEYWORDS:

• Military
• empire
• big data
• identity
• digitisation
• honour
• discipline

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. War Office series, The National Archives, London (hereafter TNA) described as ‘Records, created or inherited by the War Office, Armed Forces, Judge Advocate General, and related bodies’ spanning time period 1568–2007. There are 417 record series. http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/record?catid=259&catln=1. ‘Thin red line’ comes from line in poem by Rudyard Kipling ‘Tommy’. The phrase entered popular parlance by way of the hugely popular 1881 painting by Robert Gibb ‘The Thin Red Line’ depicting action at Balaclava in the Crimea nearly 30 years earlier.

2. The closest other late eighteenth/early nineteenth century equivalent in documentation of this level of society are the records of transported convicts, and especially the ship indents. Kent (1997) notes ‘The convicts transported to Australia were probably the best documented working-class citizens of the nineteenth-century British empire’. See also Maxwell-Stewart (2016) and The Digital Panopticon, https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/.

3. See also Bayly (1999), Laidlaw (2005), Ballantyne and Burton (2008).

4. For further information about the larger project, see www.soldiersofempire.nz. The research is supported by the Marsden Fund, administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand.

5. See lovely exegesis on Circumlocution Office at British Library: http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/lang/control1/circumlocution1/circumlocution.html.

6. In an era in which officers still purchased their commissions, and spent a career trading commissions, the WO 25 files (the equivalent of what we might later describe as personnel files) are records of patronage, sponsorship and commerce.

7. ‘List of casualties in the Engagement at Rangiriri, New Zealand, on the 20th and 21st November, 1863’ Journals of the Deputy Quartermaster General in New Zealand from 24 December 1861 to 7 September 1864, p. 75, WO 107/7, TNA.

8. Stephen Waterson (68th Regiment, 315), WO 97/2133, TNA.

9. WO 12, 50th Regiment, Period from 1 October 1863 to 31 December 1863, Statement of the Pay and Allowances of Privates (Form 5), AJCP Reel 3803.

10. WO 12; WO 17; WO 33/16; WO 107/7; WO 97, WO 25 and WO 121; WO 100; WO 22; and WO 90/3, respectively.

11. Caplan and Torpey’s Documenting Individual Identity (2001) reminds us of the circumstances and processes by which identification practices were developed, their varying capacities, provisions and purposes, the broader frameworks of modern notions of subjectivity and self, and the enabling as well as subordinating power that they unleashed.

12. In early nineteenth-century New South Wales, imposture could be a lucrative, even stylish, lifestyle. McKenzie’s ‘swindler’, John Dow aka Edward, Viscount Lascelles, pretender to an aristocratic lineage and heir to a huge fortune, used the trappings of dress as well as the demeanour of a ‘gentleman’ to make his way in the world. McKenzie (2009a) – see also McKenzie (2004, 2009b).

13. Anderson here also notes the frequent failure of such efforts.

14. Flogging or corporal punishment was still routinely used as punishment in the British Army and navy in 1840s–1870s. It was not abolished in the British Army until the 1880s. Instances of flogging in New Zealand were reasonably common.

15. Burroughs notes that branding was ‘a cheap, quick method of identifying deserters and unmanageable rogues, preventing fraudulent enlistment, and protecting the public from criminals’.

16. James Brien (65th Regiment, 1776), WO 97/1586, TNA; Michael Burke (50th Regiment, 4225), WO 97/1544, TNA.

17. Richard Pendergast (65th regiment, 3759), WO 97/1587, TNA.

18. James Carty (65th Regiment, 3159), WO 97/1586, TNA.

19. John Prescott (68th Regiment, 434), WO 97/1596, TNA.

20. 43rd Regiment, WO 100/18, New Zealand Medal List, TNA.

21. WO 33/16, TNA.

22. Anthony Toole (50th Regiment, 649), WO 97/1546, TNA.

23. See, for example, the records to be found in T9, Archives New Zealand, Wellington, recording payments of imperial pensions to former soldiers, and dependents, now living in New Zealand – some of whom served in the colony but many others who did not but who had subsequent to their military career, become resident in the colony.

24. Anthony Toole (50th Regiment, 649), WO 97/1546, TNA.

25. WO 12, 50th Regiment, Period from 1 April 1864 to 30 June 1864, Soldiers’ Remittances (Form 29), AJCP Reel 3803.

26. WO 12, 50th Regiment, Period from 1 April 1864 to 30 June 1864, Effects and Credits (Form 25).

27. James Hill, ARC 2002-401, Puke Ariki.

28. See Farge (2013), Derrida (1996).

29. By the 1850s–1860s, more men were living to see a period of civilian life following their lives as soldiers. This was due to shorter periods of service, improvement in mortality rates and the changing nature of warfare.

30. ‘Daniel Coughlan, 50th Regt, returns War Office parchment discharge certificate, cannot find address 1890’, R24327766, AD1/238, M&V1890/1519, Archives New Zealand; see also ‘Mr Frank Courtney, Lake Sumner, 25 May 1882 sends Post Office order for 7/6 to purchase NZ War Medal to replace one accidentally lost’, R24279773, AD1/161, M&V1882/957, Archives New Zealand; and ‘Claim of Edmond Healey to a pension. His claim was refused because he had no good conduct badges’, R24327723, AD1/238, M&V 1890/1453, Archives New Zealand.

31. ‘Bedford, Patrick – H. M. 18th Royal Irish Regt’. LS69/3/126, Archives New Zealand; AD 32/3/100, Archives New Zealand.

32. See New Zealand Defence website as example of precise guidance on who can claim for medals beyond lifetime of service person: http://medals.nzdf.mil.nz/default.htm#about. These honours continue to act as actual currency too. See, for example, Dunbar Sloane auction catalogue, 27 September 2016.

33. James Carty (65th Regiment, 3159), WO 97/1586, TNA.

34. James Hill, ARC 2002-401, Puke Ariki; Patrick Grace, ARC 2002-401, Puke Ariki; Edward Byrnes [Byrne], ARC 2002-117, Puke Ariki; see also James Charlton, ARC 2002-257, Puke Ariki.

35. See also ‘uneducated men’ in ‘Report of the Naval and Military Settlers’ and Volunteers’ Land-Claims Committee’. 1889. Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives, I-7, 1.

36. George James Colquhoun (65th Regiment, 1647), WO 97/1586, TNA; 1871 census of England and Wales.

37. 1864 Garrison Order Book, ARC2002-811, Puke Ariki.

38. Williams, Edward Arthur, ‘Sketches on the Waikato’, Misc-MS-1085, 78–79, Hocken Library.

39. The AJCP began in 1945 and lasted until 1993. Initially, the records copied were solely those from the Public Record Office; from 1960, the scope expanded to include sources from other repositories. The scope of records included in the AJCP widened throughout its life. Part 4 contains papers from the War Office at the Public Record Office/The National Archives. https://www.nla.gov.au/research-guides/australian-joint-copying-project.

40. There are many commentaries on this subject; an indication can be found at Colley (2002), Fieldhouse (1984), see also Peers (2002). Perry (2015) comments on a similar path of archives, copied from British repositories to Canadian holdings in the early twentieth century, moving as she notes, ‘from the space of empire to the space of the nation’.

41. See the related project to bring the names and brief identifying details of all 25,566 women convicts transported to Australia to contemporary attention through the Roses from the Heart convict women bonnets project. Part of the project was on public exhibit in Hobart 2016. Christine Henri, ‘Roses from the Heart’, https://embroiderersguild.com/index.php?page_no=327.

42. The Subaltern Studies critique took its cue from the military: the dominant mode of power in colonial India. Giving voice to those groups and perspectives silenced and subordinated by that power was its goal.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Marsden Fund [VUW1414].

Notes on contributors

Charlotte Macdonald

Charlotte Macdonald is a Professor of History at Victoria University of Wellington Te Whare Wānanga o Te Ūpoko o Te Ika a Māui. Her interests lie largely in nineteenth-century empire and colony, gender and culture. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Rebecca Lenihan

Rebecca Lenihan is a post-doctoral fellow at Victoria University of Wellington, working with Charlotte Macdonald on the Royal Marsden Fund of New Zealand ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Settler’ project. She is the author of From Alba to Aotearoa: Profiling New Zealand’s Scots 1840–1920 (Otago University Press, 2015).