to maintain their independence in the early modern era mainly through the
closure of their frontiers. In the second half of the nineteenth century,
however, they were politically compelled to open up to the Western world.
In these Asian countries, their antiquity had already acquired prestige and a
tradition of study, which had developed independently to the West. In China,
nineteenth-century Western explorers were able to undertake their exped-
itions partly because they took place on the margins of China, i.e., geograph-
ical and cultural margins, mainly inhabited by non-Han populations. The
Confucian scholar-elite of Late Imperial China was not interested in their
Wndings, which were largely of Buddhist character. This would only change
after the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911. In Japan, as distinct from Latin
America, racial homogeneityWtted neatly with the racist trends developed in
Europe and, in the process of nation-building, a strong ethnic component was
included. This strengthened the interest in a search for origins that increas-
ingly adopted Western methods of research. The search for origins also led to
the easier acceptance of non-monumental archaeology, allowing, in Japan at
least, the institutionalization of prehistoric archaeology. After the initial
plunder of archaeological objects by foreign scholars for private and public
collections, the East and Central Asian countries reacted in an eYcient
manner against this situation. A greater control of their economy, relative
stability and solid political roots led to a smoother process of institutional-
ization in these countries. Thus, foreign interest in their antiquities was
controlled and managed in a more eVective way than in any of the Latin
American countries until well into the twentieth century.
The development of archaeology in both Latin America and East and
Central Asia shared several similarities but also showed diVerences. With
regard to the similarities, both were prey to the main European colonial
contenders in the mid nineteenth century. These included Britain and France,
later joined by Germany. In addition, however, each of these areas of the
world was under scrutiny by a rising imperial power: the United States in the
case of Latin America and Russia towards East and Central Asia. One moot
issue, however, is how to understand the presence of Swedish and Austro-
Hungarian explorers. It is diYcult to pinpoint the political context of their
endeavours. In theWrst case this is because most of the literature dealing with
Scandinavian empires refers to the early modern period, in the second
because the study of the connections between imperialism and informal
empires seems to have escaped scholars’ attention. As both these countries
were geographically closer to Russia, one wonders whether in the case of China
the explorers were inXuenced by the Russian Empire in its desire to control
Asia. (Yet, this argument does not work for the Swedes who were drawn
towards Latin America!) Some scholars seem to indicate that the interest by
168 Archaeology of Informal Imperialism