under Islamic rule. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
the link between religion and nation would constantly be reworked, mainly
because of the diVering views towards religion between conservatives and
radical liberals. Whereas theWrst linked their own nation with one particular
faith, radicals disentangled both ideologies and backed secularism. Although
this debate between the two poles of the political spectrum took place in every
Western country, it was in those such as Russia, a bulwark of conservative
politics, that religion became a central political issue. In the colonies the eVect
was a stress on the conversion of the new colonial subjects to the Orthodox
religion, an emphasis that was not found in France. Despite the existence of
missionaries, no similar attempts at mass conversion of Muslims to the
Catholic religion occurred in North Africa. In the French Empire, the politics
of the state was less conservative and nationalism stubbornly maintained
much of the rhetoric created during the French Revolution, including the
allegiance to secularism.
It is interesting to note, however, that, in spite of the diVerences highlighted
above regarding the way in which religion was dealt with, a comparison of the
archaeological practice in the Russian and French colonies does not result in a
clear duality. On the contrary, the picture developed in this chapter seems to
indicate that in both the issue of politics and religion aVected only to a limited
extent the practice of archaeology. This led to the interest in prehistoric
archaeology being secondary and that of the Islamic period almost non-
existent until the end of the period (numismatics being the exception).
Even the development of Byzantine archaeology, in spite of its link with the
Christian religion, was subordinate to the archaeology of the Great Civiliza-
tions. This seems to show the weight that discourses about the past created
during the early modern era still maintained through to the First World War
watershed.
Archaeologists’ relative lack of interest in pasts other than those of the
Great Civilizations was not mirrored by the clergy. Archaeology and religion
were closely linked in the attempt by the authorities of each Christian faith to
engage in archaeological research. This was mentioned in Chapters 5 (espe-
cially note 1) and especially 6, as well as in this chapter in relation to the
Orthodox Church in Russia and its interest in Byzantine archaeology. An
analysis of the religious authorities’ involvement in archaeology leads to an
interesting conclusion: it was not a direct consequence of nationalism, but of
the power the discourse of the past had been granted as an explanatory device
to ascertain the right of particular identity groups to exist. Thus, in a context
in which the power of the Churches faced threats as diverse as progressive
nationalism, atheism, agnosticism, and the development of the positivist
thought in science (Chapter 6), they took on archaeology in order to justify
276 Colonial Archaeology