later Germanic institutions, the pre-Roman Gaulish race had basically
remained untouched (Carbonell 1982: 392–3).
NationalismEvolutionism supported universalism, the belief that human societies func-
tion and change by following rules that are common to all. In a similar way to
Xora and fauna, humankind was, therefore, seen as amenable for scientiWc
analysis and classiWcation. Thus, General Pitt Rivers argued that:
Human ideas, as represented by the various products of human industry, are capable
of classiWcation into genera, species, and varieties in the same manner as the products
of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and in their development from the homoge-
neous to the heterogeneous they obey the same laws.
(Lane Fox [i.e. Pitt Rivers] in Thompson 1977: 38).Belief in universalism, however, did not mean that evolutionists denied the
speciWcity of the particular national past. In practice, universal schemes were
applied to each country stressing, in teleological accounts, the particular
stages of its development. One of the leading voices at the time, the French
prehistorian Gabriel de Mortillet (1821–98), argued for a historical continuity
in France rooted in early prehistory leading towards the ulterior national
unity (Richard 2002: 182). The idea of a national past, on occasions with a
chauvinistic slant to it, was also present in international venues. The latter
were precisely what the name says, places where several nations met (i.e. not
where a melting-pot of nations resulted). Thus, in the displays of prehistoric
archaeology organized on the occasion of the Universal Exhibitions held
in Paris 1 in 1867, 1878, and 1889, nationalist ideology came through in the
ways the various nations interpreted the objects on display. As Nils Mu ̈ller-
Scheessel has pointed out, ‘much of the motivation for staging international
exhibitions drew from the desire to outdo other nations’ (2001: 400).
1 Universal and colonial exhibitions were common in the last decades of the century. They
started with the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace (1851), and the Great Industrial Exhibition
in Dublin (1853). As MacMaster points out, they proliferated between 1878 and 1914, during the
height of the colonial era. The major locations were Paris (in 1867, 1878, 1887, 1889, 1891, 1893,
1900) and London (1886, 1892, 1897, 1899, 1903, 1908, 1924), but other international exhibitions
were held in Moscow (1872), Vienna (1873), Italy (1888), Germany (1891), Antwerp (1894) and
Brussels (1897, 1910), as well as in major provincial cities like Glasgow (1901) (see about others
Kinchin and Kinchin (1988)), Cork (1902), Wolverhampton (1902, 1907), Bradford (1904), Lie`ge
(1905) and Marseilles (1906). They were very popular and MacMaster gives theWgure of 39 and 50
million people attending the Paris World Fair of 1889 and 1900 respectively (MacMaster 2001: 74)
(but is he translating from French and he means 39 and 50 thousand people?).
Evolutionism and Positivism 377