time would show that, while their independence can only be understood in
terms of the appearance of nationalism in Western Europe, later in the
nineteenth century both areas would fall prey to informal imperialism, and
the evolution of the study of antiquities in them needs to be explained in that
context. The lure of imperialism takes the narrative into ever more exotic
lands (from a European perspective) from Chapter 5 to Chapter 10. It is only
in Chapter 11 that Europe once again becomes the centre of attention.
Informal imperialism—i.e. the cultural imperialism exerted by the Euro-
pean powers over other parts of the world—is analysed in Part II of the book.
Several cases are discussed: Italy and Greece in Europe, and Turkey 5 and Egypt
in the Ottoman Empire (Chapter 5), the biblical lands (Chapter 6), as well as
America and East Asia (Chapter 7). Although nationalism started in Europe
and white America, its eVects were noted on a global scale, mainly because of
imperialism. The European dominance of the world had started in the early
modern era with Europe’s appropriation of America and parts of Africa, Asia,
and Australia. The subjugation of many areas of the world led to the impos-
ition of economic and social values in vogue in Europe, although their
reception varied in diVerent parts of the world. The independent states
beyond Europe—including countries such as Japan and China—were not
static, but also went through changes that explain their reaction towards the
European way of life when they were eventually forced to open their frontiers
in the nineteenth century (Bayly 2004). Colonialism and imperialism spread
the notion of nationalism, and its adoption of a more racial, ethnic and even
religious understanding of its basis—the transformation from civil to cultural
nationalism mentioned in the previous section—made it more easily applic-
able to other parts of the world. The belief in history as the key to unravelling
contemporary events and the imposition of centralized bureaucracies facili-
tated the professionalization of archaeology everywhere in the world, a
process that was in progress at the end of the nineteenth century and would
not come to an end until the twentieth century.
In the organization of the information this book establishes a fundamental
distinction between formal and informal imperialism, or, as some would say,
formal and informal colonialism. Part II of the book deals with the latter, with
the Powers’ imperial expansion over independent but weak states, which were
subjected to a variable degree of manipulation. Thus, all countries included in
Chapters 5 to 7—Italy and Greece, the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Mesopota-
mia, and the biblical lands, Latin America, China and Japan—were sovereign
5 I have decided to use the term Turkey although it did not exist as an administrative,
political unit in the nineteenth century. The Anatolian peninsula was divided into several
provinces which belonged to the Ottoman Empire. They would become the Turkish Republic
in 1923. In most of the book I have tried to avoid referring to Turkey as such.
14 Archaeology in the Nineteenth Century