12
Archaeology and the Liberal Revolutions
(c. 1820–1860): Nation, Race, and Language
in the Study of Europe’s Past
THE POLITICAL BACKGROUND: THE LIBERAL
REVOLUTIONS OF THE EARLY 1820s AND 1830s AND 1848 1There was no return to the Ancien Re ́gime after Napoleon’s downfall in 1815.
Firstly, the early nineteenth-century economy was increasingly strengthened
by the industrial, imperial and trading expansion of the European powers
throughout the world (Chapters 5 to 10), which helped to stimulate Western
Europe’sWnancial growth. Adding immeasurable impetus to this movement
was the territorial expansion of Russia and the US, and later in the century
other countries such as Japan contributed by broadening their frontiers
manifold (Chapters 9 and 10). Factors such as these accelerated the enlarge-
ment and aspirations of the middle classes, who were precisely the group
leading most of the revolutionary activity in theWrst half of the nineteenth
century. Secondly, the reforms in administration made the state machine
more eYcient than that of the Ancien Re ́gime and this impeded a full
restoration of the old order. Also, for the eYcient functioning of the state,
the enthusiasm with which educated individuals identiWed with the nation
was extremely important to ensure their loyalty. The late eighteenth and early
nineteenth-century socio-political revolutions had brought a series of new
meanings to concepts such as conservatism, liberal, democrat, party, and the
distinction between left and right (Roberts 1996: 21). For example, liberalism
was a doctrine that favoured ‘progress’ and ‘reform’. It was also linked with
the type of nationalism that the French Revolution had promoted with the
sovereignty of nations and the belief that all citizens were equal in the eyes of
the law (although at this time ‘citizenship’, as propagated by the proponents of
this doctrine, mainly meant the prosperous classes and male citizens). For
progressive liberals, it was not only the established states that had the right
1 This section is largely based on Roberts (1996).