Hungarian explorers in Asia is related to the search for the original land of their
own people. To return to the similarities between the development of archae-
ology in Latin America and East and Central Asia, another aspect to note is
that, being independent, Latin America and Asia were able to develop an
internal elite, in many cases formed in the West, or in their own countries
following Western standards. This assisted the adoption of the Western
method of building discourses about the past. Local scholarship was able to
engage—compete, contest, and participate—with the knowledge created in
foreign countries.
Exoticism was the main perspective adopted by the West. Despite the lesser
cultural distance between the West and Latin America and, to a lesser extent,
China, Japan, and Korea (especially when compared with the marked cultural
diVerences with other areas of the world such as sub-Saharan Africa, see
Chapter 10), the need to generate discourses about exoticism was strongly
felt. Indeed, it could be said that the exotic was fetishized, and that this image
was embraced by all of those involved with the imperial observation and the
acquisition of the Other (cf. Hinsley 1993: 118). Discourses created for both
Latin America and Asia permitted the consumption of their antiquities. The
exoticism and monumentality of their ancient art was praised, although at
times contradictorily, an attitude that was in direct contrast to the unfavour-
able Western opinions of the local populations, which tended to describe them
as lazy and stupid. This ambiguity of sentiment was mixed with ambivalence:
while criticizing the natives for not being civilized enough, at the same time
the Westerners wished to maintain their diVerences with the colonized. As
Bhabha said, the colonial Other had to be ‘almost the same, but not quite’
(Bhabha 1994: 86). The sense of superiority displayed by the Europeans and
North Americans was reinforced by the stereotypes that were being created
through exhibitions of art and antiquities, and by academic studies. Academ-
ics from the informal metropolises became absorbed in the classiWcation of the
Xora, fauna, and antiquities of these continents in a process of discovery/
recovery that characterized the Western imperial attitude.
Beyond similarities, there were also diVerences. One of the most striking
disparities between the institutionalization of Latin American and Asian
monumental archaeology is the diVerent disciplinary paths which they fol-
lowed. Whereas Americanism was mainly discussed in terms of ethnology and
anthropology, this was not so in the case of the archaeology of East and
Central Asia, which was primarily examined through philology. There is a
historical reason for this that is clearly linked to the existence (or not) of a
previous colonial experience. The political independence of the countries in
Asia during the early modern era had compelled traders and missionaries to
become proWcient in the various native languages spoken in the area. This had
Latin America, China, and Japan 169