Railways and Commemoration: Anniversaries, Commemorative Cultures and the Making of Railway History

这个项目调查了铁路公共文化的一个关键方面：周年纪念。在此过程中，它将揭示铁路部门企业和商业身份的建立和维护，以及随着时间的推移，铁路历史叙事的构建方式，并将对铁路纪念文化的分析与作为现代社会显著特征的纪念的更广泛研究相结合。大多数关于周年纪念的工作都集中在政治纪念日、战争纪念日或文化人物的庆祝活动上：它主要涉及国家和国家社会层面的纪念活动。关于企业或机构纪念活动的研究要少得多，但这些活动为现代社会中发生的大量纪念活动提供了背景。虽然在科学和技术领域对纪念活动进行了重要的研究，但在商业历史和组织研究方面，只有少数研究涉及企业或组织如何唤起、解释和纪念企业的过去。铁路为这类研究提供了绝佳的机会。铁路有着悠久而多样的纪念传统，它们在两个世纪的技术和组织变革中得以延续，使它们成为纪念实践中连续性和适应性的令人钦佩的案例研究。铁路对现代社会塑造的中心地位也意味着铁路纪念实践与广泛的其他身份（地方，国家和国际）和话语（进步，技术，商业，旅行，专业等）的衔接反复相交。该项目的重点是英国的铁路周年纪念。自19世纪中期以来，周年纪念活动——无论是关注特定公司/线路的历史关键日期，还是著名的机车，还是标志性工程师和企业家的生活——一直是铁路历史文化的一个重要特征。通过周年纪念活动，铁路公司肯定和庆祝了自己的身份，并要求公众认可他们对进步和国家发展的贡献。纪念活动是重要的国家和地方场合，涉及铁路社区内部（雇主、工人和工会之间）和社区与其他利益之间的复杂互动，并产生了丰富多样的纪念形式- -演讲、游行、展览、晚宴、宗教服务、纪念、奖章、纪念品节目、纪念册、诗歌和视觉图像。周年纪念活动是一个迷人的棱镜，通过它可以看到纪念过程的社会动态，以及铁路在现代社会中的多方面参与。NRM的馆藏为这一领域的研究提供了无与伦比的基础。利用这些馆藏、其他档案馆（国家档案馆、大英图书馆、地方图书馆和档案馆）和媒体的资料，该项目将探讨以下问题：随着时间的推移，铁路周年纪念的形式是如何变化和演变的？这个纪念活动是如何构建和定义企业、团体和机构的身份的？纪念活动如何塑造和表达对铁路历史的不同叙事理解，以及它与地方、国家和跨国历史的关系？对周年纪念活动的研究如何产生新的和创造性的方法来处理物品以及它们在博物馆展示中的部署？如何利用这项研究来引发关于当今社会纪念功能的辩论和创造性思考，以及像NRM这样的博物馆在这些功能中的作用？

This project investigates a key aspect of the public culture of railways: the commemorative marking of anniversaries. In doing so, it will shed light both on the building and maintenance of corporate and business identities in the railway sector, and on the ways in which narratives of railway history have been constructed over time, and will also integrate the analysis of railway commemorative cultures with the broader study of commemoration as a salient feature of modern societies. Most work on anniversary commemoration has focused on political anniversaries, war commemoration, or the celebration of cultural figures: it has been largely concerned with commemoration at the level of the state and of national society. Far less work has been done on corporate or institutional commemorative practices, yet these supply the context for a great deal of the commemorative activity that occurs in modern societies. Though important research has been done on commemoration in the fields of science and technology, work in business history and organization studies has generated only a handful of studies dealing with how businesses or organizations evoke, interpret and commemorate the corporate past.Railways offer an outstanding opportunity for this kind of study. Railways have long and varied commemorative traditions, whose persistence across two centuries of technological and organizational change makes them an admirable case study of continuities and adaptations in commemorative practice. The centrality of railways to the shaping of modern societies also means that railway commemorative practices intersect repeatedly with the articulation of a wide range of other identities (local, national and international) and discourses (of progress, technology, business, travel, professionalism, etc.)The key focus of the project is railway anniversary commemoration in Britain. Anniversary events - whether focused on key dates in the history of particular companies/lines, or famous locomotives, or the lives of iconic engineers and entrepreneurs - have been an essential feature of the historical culture of railways since the mid-nineteenth century. Through anniversary commemoration, railway companies affirmed and celebrated their own identity, and staked a claim to public recognition of their contribution to progress and national development. Commemorative events were significant national and local occasions, involving complex interactions both within the railway community (between employers, workers and unions) and between that community and other interests, and generating a rich diversity of commemorative forms - speeches, pageants, exhibitions, dinners, religious services, memorials, medallions, souvenir programmes, commemorative volumes, poems and visual imagery. Anniversary events are a fascinating prism through which to view the social dynamics of the commemorative process, and the multifaceted involvement of railways in modern society.The NRM's holdings offer an unrivalled basis for research in this area. Drawing on these holdings, on materials in other archives (National Archives, British Library, local libraries and archives), and on the press, the project will explore the following questions: How have the forms of railway anniversary commemoration varied and evolved over time? How has this commemoration constructed and defined corporate, group and institutional identities? How have commemorative events shaped and articulated different narrative understandings of railway history, and of its relationship to local, national and transnational histories? How can research into anniversary commemorations generate fresh and creative approaches to objects and to their deployment in museum displays? How can this research be used to prompt debate and creative thinking about the functions of commemoration in today's society, and about the role of museums like the NRM in relation to these functions?