Buddhism, as well as an intense involvement of philologists in archaeological
research and the very timid appearance of theWrst native intellectuals inter-
ested in antiquities, such as Raden Saleh in Indonesia, Rajendra Lal Mitra, and
others in India, and, at the start of the twentieth century, a few less-known
scholars in Indonesia. Interestingly, the literature does not provide the names
of any native archaeologists from Thailand. The Dutch had been the earliest
power to set up a colony in the region, but, in contrast to events in Latin
America, the long decline of the preceding native empires meant that the
European bureaucrats could not make use of local administrative infrastruc-
ture in order to control the territory. The British had established themselves in
India as traders, and were subsequently asked to come in as revenue man-
agers. Both the Dutch and the British formed learned societies in the late
eighteenth century, which sought to study a very wide range of questions. As
India did not oYcially become a British colony until 1858, it is not surprising
that the best archaeology undertaken in theWrst half of the century was to be
found in Indonesia. There, a very active learned society promoted the preco-
cious organization of a museum and legislation protecting antiquities. Most
attention was focused on the ninth-century Hindu temple of Prambanan and
later on also on the contemporary Buddhist temple of Borobudur, both in
Java. The same pattern of attention,Wrst to Hindu and then to Buddhist
antiquities, can be observed in India. There, the discovery of the link between
Sanskrit and many European languages led to a greater emphasis on philo-
logical studies. France’s colonial presence in the area started only in the 1860s.
After a discovery phase in which the Khmer site of Angkor in Cambodia and
the Cham sites of Mi Son and Dong Duong in Vietnam wereWrst described
for the Western world, institutionalization started,Wrst with the opening of
the Muse ́e Indochinois in the Trocadero in Paris in 1882, and later on with
the Mission arche ́ologique d’Indochine of 1898, which from 1901 was
called the E ́cole Franc ̧aise d’Extreˆme Orient. This would be theWrst foreign
school to be opened in a part of the world without remains of the classical
Great Civilizations. Independent Siam did not remain unaware of the new
discourse of antiquities, but in fact made use of it to maintain its political
dominance.KingsRamaIV(r.1851–68),RamaV(r.1868–1910)andVajiravuth
(r. 1910–25) opened museums and encouraged the creation of societies.
Chapter 9 assesses the archaeology of the Russian Empire and French North
Africa. Firstly, it explores how the past was selected in these areas on the basis
of the classical model, by which the Romans, Greeks and other contemporary
peoples inXuenced by them, such as the Scythes, still retained their powerful
appeal as symbols of civilization. Secondly, it examines the inXuence religion
had in catching experts’ attention: whereas Byzantine remains were consid-
ered worth studying, the same did not happen with Islamic antiquities. As in
18 Archaeology in the Nineteenth Century