Empire and Artefacts: The "Lost' Museum of the Royal United Services Institute

This thesis is the first project to examine a deep understanding of the history and purpose of the Royal United Service Museum, 1829-1922. This project begins with an examination of the Museum's founders and what they thought a museum was and what its purpose was to be. In doing this it was necessary to learn who these men were, and where they fitted into the wider social and cultural networks that formed their ambition for it to be nationally significant.

The subsequent chapters of this thesis focus on three main phases of the Museum’s history in this period: 1831-1857, 1857-1895 and 1895-1922. Spanning from the late Georgian period to just after the First World War, it examines the changing context for the Museum during the nineteenth century and how it responds to a century of mainly overseas warfare. The impact this had on collecting and curating will be analysed, and how the Museum understood its own purpose will be compared to external points of view.

Finally, there will be a brief examination of the Museum’s history from 1922 to 1962 when the Museum closed and its collections were widely dispersed.