Paper Soldiers: the life, death and reincarnation of nineteenth-century military files across the British Empire.

From the moment a man took ‘the king’s shilling’ and was sworn to serve as a soldier in the nineteenth-century British Army, his life proceeded as a file as well as a fighting man. Disorder and desertion drove the utilitarian purposes of discipline and tracking, while constant pressure to account for expenditure in lives and money added further impetus to the copious industry of military record-keeping. Individuals were enumerated, named, appraised and allocated pay. Such archives produce a disorderly silence where men are present but without voice. Carefully archived and always public, military files have a continuing currency through the post-army lives of soldiers into the twenty-first century for descendants and historians. Tracking the life of ‘files’ over time, the paper reflects on the shifting forms of knowledge produced. In particular, it notes the tensions between the densely written form of the files in a population of rank and file soldiers who were partially literate; the highly detailed individuation of the files within a heavily conformist institution, and the modernity of post-1850s record-keeping in an institution bound by tradition. It ends with a reflection on the limitations and opportunities presented by digital access to this substantial archive of imperial-colonial conflict. Abbreviations: AJCP: Australian Joint Copying Project TNA: The National Archives, London WO: War Office [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]