ABSTRACT
Wars abound in national origins’ myths, histories and legends, and this chapter considers in more detail how wars are materialised and evoked in national museums, and what sorts of emotions the museums attempt to elicit. Often a particular campaign or battle is identified as that seminal moment when a nation comes of age, remembered in popular culture (Edensor 2002), commemorated in ceremonies, speeches and national museums. In Australia it is Gallipoli, 1915–16. For Canada it is Vimy Ridge, 1917. For Turkey it is the Battle of Constantinople, 1453. For Malta it is the siege of Malta, 1565. In Britain it was once the Battle of Trafalgar, 1805, but now it is the 1940 Battle of Britain, as made explicit in the Imperial War Museum, London. For Serbia it is the Battle of Kosovo, 1389, a battle both the Ottoman Empire and Serbia claim to have won but which was, at the time, somewhat inconclusive. It is anywhere that men died fighting valiantly. The battle does not have to be won. Nor does it have to be decisive or indeed make any difference to the outcome of the war, though it often does. Glorious defeats work just as well as do inglorious humiliations.
