through completely diVerent historical experiences. Some, like Turkey, were
declining empires, whereas others, such as Italy and Japan, became imperial
powers themselves by the end of the period. In some, like those of Latin
America, elites had been part of the Western world in the early modern era,
whereas others were completely closed to it. Despite this bewildering diver-
sity, all these countries shared the eventual acceptance of the Western dis-
course about the past characterized by its rationality and by its conformation
to a linear chronology. In the type of narration imposed by the West, the
establishment of periods, and, increasingly, also of ethnic attribution, was of
fundamental importance. The past so constructed was not purposeless, but
rather had a key role: knowledge about it was deemed essential in order to
understand the present and to imagine the future. For the powers the study of
the antiquities of their informal empire—as well as those of their formal
colonies (see Part III of this book)—became one more tool of surveillance and
observation, another attempt to grasp the Other’s nature and the historical
background of the diVerences between their own national character and that
of other parts of the world. The authoritative version of the past constructed
by the imperial powers was politically useful to them. It explained the
imperialist success of Britain and France, and later of other powers, as the
later inheritors of classical civilizations. It also demonstrated the way that
other civilizations had failed to pursue successfully the idea of progress.
Evidence from the past legitimated the contemporary political order.
The hierarchy of archaeological remains established by the European im-
perial powers, with the ancient classical civilizations at the peak and others
lower down the scale, inXuenced the type of archaeology that would be
developed in informal colonies. The closer the Great Civilizations were to
the classical model, the less the prehistoric antiquities attracted the attention
of the imperial powers’ scholars. Thus, lithic studies were practically unheard
of in Greece, 16 Turkey and Mesopotamia. In the same way, the guidance
provided by the biblical accounts for the archaeology of Palestine and Leba-
non led to an almost complete disregard of any other previous periods of its
history until after the First World War. In contrast, in countries where the
Great Civilizations were far removed from the classical pattern a few individ-
uals—though usually not the same people as those dealing with historical
antiquities—paid some attention to prehistoric remains. This took place
exclusively in China and Japan. In Latin America, as will be seen in Chapter 10,
16 Italy, however, was an exception to this. It is important to remember that the congress
organized in La Spezia in 1865 was that of the Italian Society of Natural Sciences, but it was later
turned into theWrst International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archaeology. The
congress met again in Italy in 1871. Foreign archaeologists interested in lithic collections
included William Allen Sturge (1850–1919) (Skeates, pers. comm.).
202 Archaeology of Informal Imperialism