26 Oct. 2019 A visit to the Gordon Highlanders museum

Today I visited Gordon highlanders museum. The history of the regiment starts at 1794 and goes on until 1994, when it was embedded with Queen’s Own Highlanders. The regiment played a crucial and prominent role in many battlefields around the world both for defending the British empire and for expanding the territorial influence of the Commonwealth. The element of idolized heroism is predominant throughout the exhibition, at the same time you can notice the violently imposed force of the overpowered British empire on ethnical groups out of it. Spears and poisonous darts of African natives, Japanese military equipment from second world war, communist flags from Vietnam, an elephant’s tail taken as a trophy by a soldier and many other souvenirs indicate the imperialistic and colonial policy that the western world had over other cultures. The visitor can notice the resonance it has in our present.

On the contrary someone can’t deny the heroism these soldiers demonstrated while they were fighting in both world wars. You can empathize with the plight these men went through in the trenches. At the same moment in museum’s display there are some conspicuously preserved small fragments (like those I mentioned before) of the dreadful acts of military expansion and enforcement over weaker nations. Heroism is a very controversial term especially when the matter of discourse is the adducing of history via a museum’s exhibition. Of course when the history of a military regiment goes back 200 years it is inevitable not to be a ambiguous.

Finally I have to express two observations that cut my interest. Firstly the fact that artifacts and displays of cultures distant form Scottish are exhibited in Highlanders museum, gives them a different contextual frame and alters the narrative of the history behind them. If for example the African spears were exhibited in a museum in Egypt that would make them part of different story. If presumably someone had no idea about colonialism these he/she would consider these artifacts as put of context, like if they are intervene to the exhibit of the British history.

These second observation is that the soldiers in first world war wore kilts. And that’s an interesting detail, because it is both a traditional and medieval artifact that was used even in the 20th century and in a war where soldiers had to face mud, rain and poison gashes kilt’s are quite impractical . Howbeit kilts give the soldiers context, you know where they come from by a piece of clothing.

Generally I was impressed by the blending of cultures and eras.