By Lar Joye
In this issue I will talk not about artefacts but about replicas. Most museum collections have gaps and omissions that reflect their own institutional history. In 2002, the design team of the Soldiers & Chiefs exhibition in Collins Barracks faced a number of challenges with regard to the military history collections in the National Museum. In the first place, the collection was not yet fully catalogued on computer, which meant that a lot of time was spent in storerooms cataloguing and sourcing objects for the exhibition. Further, the military collection was only created in 1948, and the items we had reflected the story not of regular soldiers but rather of the officers who led them, who only accounted for c. 8% of most armies. The officers’ uniforms, which comprised over 90% of the uniform collection, were normally tailored and often found well preserved in attics, while regular soldiers’ uniforms had traditionally been surrendered on retirement (I suspect owing to concern that retired uniformed soldiers might unite to form their own army!). Other gaps concerned the Irish soldiers who fought abroad, the important role of women in armies and the very small collection of First World War items.
There were few objects relating to the terrible civilian experience of the Nine Years War (1594–1603), the Confederate Wars (1641–53), the War of the Two Kings (1689–91) and the mass killings of the 1798 Rebellion. Since, however, the winners of wars not only write the history but also tend to establish the museums, we had plenty of items relating to the Irish in the British Army, as well as material associated with William of Orange. To rectify these gaps, we borrowed objects from museums all over the world, where in many cases the Irish story is held—Paris, London, New York, Vienna, Leeds, Los Angeles and Nashville, to name but a few. In the end, 30% of the objects on display were on loan. Finally, we used fifteen life-size replicas to tell the Irish story in the exhibition, including an Irish musketeer from 1598, an Irish pikeman from 1646, a red-coated Jacobite grenadier from 1689, and a lonely 1798 ‘Croppy’ prior to being executed in Dublin. The story of the Irish is dispersed around the world, as we faced terrible wars at home and mass migration abroad for over 400 years, and it was only through the use of loans, replicas, the support of private donors and a very successful public appeal in 2004 that we could fill the gaps in the Museum’s collections.
Lar Joye is Dublin Port Heritage Director and current chair of the Irish Museum Association.