Over the next year, £1000 was raised among the Scottish community in Melbourne and Victoria, and the monument was unveiled at a special service at Scots Church on Armistice Day in 1928. In the same year that the Edinburgh memorial was unveiled, trustees of the Scots Church in Melbourne granted space in the church’s grounds for the erection of a memorial dedicated to soldiers of the Victorian Scottish Regiment (VSR) who had died in service to the British Empire within the Australian Imperial Forces during the First World War. On one pillar, it is written that the memorial is dedicated to ‘Scotsmen of All Ranks Who Fell while Serving With Units of the British Dominions and Colonies, 1914-1918.’ The memorial reflects a moment in the history of Scottish identity when the relationship between Scotland and the Empire was still strong enough that at the heart of this identity lay a claim for recognition of Scotland’s contributions to Britain’s imperial project. On the central shrine of the Scottish National War Memorial, opened at Edinburgh Castle in 1927, are the words ‘The Outposts of Empire’, and the crests of each British dominion are displayed. Instances where the state was involved with Scottish cultural maintenance therefore complicate and nuance our understanding of how identity and culture was constructed and maintained among Scots in the diaspora. While many celebrations of Scottish culture were harmless and sensible in relation to Australian politics, culture, and society, the regiment’s maintenance of Scottish identity was often far more assertive. As organisations that operated under the auspices of the government, Scottish regiments competed with emerging Australian nationalism and therefore offer the chance for us to place Scottish identities in their early-twentieth century Australian cultural context.
Through a case study of the Victorian Scottish Regiment, this article investigates the way in which imperial experiences influenced cultural identities, and explores Scotland’s military traditions and their relationship with Scottish culture in Australia. Citations have been removed for readability, and some images have been added courtesy of the Australian War Memorial. This post reproduces my 2014 article, ‘Warriors of Empire: popular imperialism and the Victorian Scottish Regiment, 1898-1938’, published in the Victorian Historical Journal, Vol. Many people come to this blog seeking information on the military service of their Scottish ancestors.
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