the Royal Museum of Armours, Antiquity, and Ethnology (Muse ́e royal
d’armures, d’antiquite ́et d’ethnologie) (Schotsmans 1985). In Vienna the
Imperial Cabinet of Coins and Antiques was the major institution. In Spain
the creation of a professional body dealing with archives, libraries and
museums in 1858 made, from 1868, the term ‘antiquarian’ oYcial for those
dealing with museums (the title would be substituted by that of ‘archaeologist’
in 1900).
TheWrst example of a museum as explicitly ‘national’ and exclusively
specializing in antiquities may have been the 1867 Museum of National
Antiquities (Muse ́e des antiquite ́s nationales) in France. There was a long
history behind this creation. The idea of a national museum had started in
Paris with the Museum of French Monuments, called by some the National
Museum of French Monuments (McClelland 1994: 165). After its closure in
1816 (Chapter 11), the idea of a national museum of antiquities had been
raised again after the revolution of July 1831. In 1843 the politician Franc ̧ois
Arago (1783–1853), who had supported the bill in the Assembly, declared:
Gentlemen, weWnd in various institutions around Paris Greek collections, Roman
collections, Egyptian collections. Not even the savages of Oceania have been neglected.
It is high time that we gave some thought to our ancestors. Let us see to it that the
capital of France also includes a French historical museum.
(in Pomian 1996: 43).A similar concern was expressed in Britain. In 1845 in hisArchaeological
Album, the English antiquarian and writer, Thomas Wright (1810–77), one
of the founders of the British Archaeological Association, had complained, ‘in
the British Museum, our native antiquities appear to be held in very little
esteem... It is discreditable to the Government of this country that we have
no museum of national antiquities’ (MacGregor 1998: 127). Finally a Depart-
ment of British and Medieval Antiquities and Ethnography was opened, in
1866, in the broadly philhellenist (and classicist) British Museum (ibid.136).
After the rejection by the British Museum to buy some British antiquities,
however, a private museum was formed with the name of Museum of
National and Foreign Antiquities. Opened in Liverpool in 1867, its existence
was anecdotal, as it closed after a few months (MacGregor 1998: 133–4).
In still non-uniWed Germany, the opening of the Central Roman and
Germanic Museum (Ro ̈misch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum) was decided
in Mainz in 1852. It was considered that the centralization of the collections
would make it easier to determine the boundaries between Germans, Slavs
and Celts in antiquity (Marchand 1996a: 169–70). The museum not only
contained some prehistoric but also Roman and early medieval archaeology.
Jealousy felt by provincial collectors, however, partly obviated these goals
Liberal Revolutions (c. 1820–1860) 359