Whose Remembrance?Highlighting the involvement of the peoples of the

former British Empire in the two world wars

October 2014

Emily Peirson-Webber

Research Manager, Imperial War Museums

EPeirson-Webber@iwm.org.uk

Anna Maguire

AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award Student , Imperial War Museums

and King's College, London

Amaguire@iwm.org.uk

Introduction: a neglected history

A wounded man being carried across

a river on an improvised stretcher

during the fighting in German East

Africa.IWM Q 57601

Indian troops marching through

Baghdad, March 1917.IWM Q 24196

Principle objectives:

• To engage with community groups

• To build on work already underway at IWM, to consolidate,

expand and disseminate knowledge and understanding of this

history and relevant collections, and identify gaps and how they

might be addressed

• To address how visitors from BEM communities can be

increased at IWM’s physical and virtual sites, and how fuller

understanding by these groups with a past history connected to

our subject matter could be developed and sustained.

Whose Remembrance?

• IWM Research Department

• Advisory group: academics and specialists

• Three specialist researchers:

o Ansar Ahmed Ullah, Swadhinata Trust

o Arthur Torrington CBE, Windrush Foundation

o Ouleye Ndoye, MA Anthropology student at Oxford

University

Research team and project participants

Visitors to Butetown for the opening

of the new Mosque enjoy a meal at

'The Cairo' cafe. Left to right, they

are: Abdul Aziz, from Calcutta, who

runs a cafe in South Shields, Mrs

Aziz and their daughter Joynob, Mrs

Annie Nian, with her son Kenneth

and Azin Ulla, a seaman from

Bengal, 1943.IWM D15293

Indian soldiers mingle with men of the

81st West African Division after the

latter had arrived in India for jungle

training. The first African colonial

troops to fight outside Africa, the 81st

Division went on to Burma in

December 1943.IWM IND 2864

Two workshops were held at IWM London:

• The historians’ workshop addressed the current state of

research into the topic and in particular the availability of sources

that allow the study of the experiences of colonial soldiers and

civilians.

• A workshop for museum professionals, community

representatives and social scientists discussed the

representation of this marginalised topic and the different ways

that museums have sought to explore this history.

One day when having a swim [by the Suez Canal], two companies of

troops from Jamaica came down and it looked funny to see these fine

bodied coloured men, for they were as black as coal, in the water with us

chaps, and it wasn’t very long before we were the best of friends. Other

days we would have a picnic as they called it. We would go over to one

of the sweet water canals and lay under the shade of the trees, telling

yarns or playing card till evening time and then we would come back to

camp.

Diary of William Barry, IWM Documents 15006

Two members of the South African Native

Labour Corps (SANLC) cleaning mess

tins, Dannes, February 1917.IWM Q 7833

A Maori lumber worker talking to a

Frenchwoman. Forest de Nieppe, March 1917.© IWM Q 4740

“The Whose Remembrance project has been

crucial in filling the gap in history that has

overlooked the contribution of colonial troops in

both world wars. I was privileged to hold an over-

subscribed screening of the documentary at the

House of Commons during Remembrance

month. It attracted individuals of all ages and all

professions, keen to learn more about this

neglected area of history, and to establish ways

of sharing this information.”

Diane Abbott MP

• Allowed IWM to reflect on its collections – how they might be

better contextualised, how access to this material might be

better facilitated, how the collections can be used to raise

awareness of the diverse stories IWM can tell.

• Raising profile of this history can encourage donations of

primary source material from families who realise that their

history matters.

• Diaries and letters of those in charge can be ‘mined’ for

incidental observations and insights into contemporary attitudes

to race and difference.

• Collaboration between researchers, museums and archives has

yielded strong outcomes.

Impact of research on IWM Collections

• Joint research and digitisation projects between universities,

archives and museums are an important route to showcasing

the latest scholarship carried out by academics and

independent historians.

• Cultural organisations need to forge links with communities and

their ‘brokers’ in order to ensure the narratives they promote are

representative of the communities they serve.

• It can be difficult to fully appreciate difficulties encountered

accessing collections from the ‘outside’ – important to engage

users.

• Making archives and collections more accessible is a challenge

but is not insurmountable!

Lessons applicable to other museums, archives

and cultural organisations

• Whose Remembrance webpage:

http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections-research/research-

programmes/whose-remembrance

• Researching the British Empire in the First World War resource

guide:

• http://www.iwm.org.uk/sites/default/files/public-

document/Researching_the_British_Empire_resource_guide.pdf

• First World War Centenary Partnership website:

• http://members.1914.org/

Further information