The historian Hans Kohn argued that this type of nationalism emerged in the
West and was ‘rational’ as against cultural or ethnic nationalism which was
‘mystical’ (Kohn 1946: 3–4). In ethnic or cultural nationalism nations are deWned
as units formed by individuals who share acommon history, and therefore form
part of the same ethnic group—orraceas expressed in the nineteenth century—,
speak the samelanguageand evince a distinctive set of customs or culture (Smith
1991a). This typology is not without its critics. The opposition between these two
types of nationalism may only be a mirage. On the one hand, one could argue
that in order to attain sovereignty a national community must exist, but that
national communities cannot be understood without recourse to history and
language (Smith 1991a: 13–14). On the other hand, ethnic nationalism may
either accept civic rights and sovereignty or, on the contrary, ignore them and
be compatible with regimes dominated by reactionary aristocracies, such as
nineteenth-century Russia, and the twentieth-century authoritarian and totali-
tarian regimes. Despite this criticism, the use of this typology when charting the
changes nationalism underwent over the nineteenth century demonstrates its
usefulness. Thus, whereas in the early years of nationalism the emphasis was put
on rights and sovereignty, making nationalism a liberal ideology, this started to
change around the mid nineteenth century, when language, race, and history—
elements already present in early nationalism—became the dominant features
which deWned nations and their right to self-government. The relevance of this
change will be demonstrated mainly in Parts I and IV of this book.
Archaeology and post-colonial studiesThe analysis of the practice of archaeology beyond Europe in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries undertaken in this volume beneWts from dis-
cussions in theWeld of post-colonial studies. Despite the term itself not being
employed until 1989 inThe Empire Writes Back(Ashcroftet al. 1989), the
generally accepted point of departure of post-colonial studies is Edward Said’s
bookOrientalism(1978). Said deWned Orientalism as the eVect of imperial-
ism on the study of the Orient and described it as ‘the corporate institution
dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it,
authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over
it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and
having authority over the Orient’ (Said 1978: 3). At the beginning of a later
book,Culture and Imperialism, Said suggested that imperialism is ‘a word and
an idea today so controversial, so fraught with all sorts of questions, doubts,
polemics and ideological premises as nearly to resist use altogether’ (Said
1993: 3). Nevertheless, in his opinion, imperialism can be employed to refer to
6 Archaeology in the Nineteenth Century