3
The Archaeology of the French Revolution
The nineteenth century saw the emergence of both nationalism and archae-
ology as a professional discipline. The aim of this chapter is to show how this
apparent coincidence was not accidental. This discussion will take us into
uncharted territory. Despite the growing literature on archaeology and na-
tionalism (Atkinsonet al. 1996; Dı ́az-Andreu & Champion 1996a; Kohl &
Fawcett 1995; Meskell 1998), the relationship between the two during the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has yet to be explored. The analysis
of how the past was appropriated during this era of the revolutions, which
marked the dawn of nationalism, is not helped by the specialized literature
available on nationalism, as little attention has been paid to these early years.
Most authors dealing with nationalism focus their research on the mid to late
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the ideas that emerged during the
era of the revolutions bore fruit and the balance between civic and ethnic
nationalism (i.e. between a nationalism based on individual rights and the
sovereignty of the people within the nation and another built on the common
history and culture of the members of the nation) deWnitively shifted towards
the latter.
The reluctance to scrutinize theWrst years of nationalism by experts in
theWeld may be a result of unease in dealing with a phenomenon which some
simply label as patriotism. The term nationalism was not often used at
the time. The political scientist Tom Nairn (1975: 6) traced it back to the
late 1790s in France (it was employed by Abbe ́Baruel in 1798). However, its
use seems to have been far from common, to the extent that other scholars
believed it appeared in 1812. In other European countries, such as England,
‘nationalism’ wasWrst employed in 1836 (Huizinga 1972: 14). Despite this
disregard for the term itself until several decades later, specialists in theWeld of
nationalism consider the most common date of origin as the end of the
eighteenth century with the French Revolution as the key event in its deWni-
tion. Nonetheless, as is usually the case, there are no clear-cut features that
completely separate the onset of the era of nationalism from the previous
period. Indeed, the revolutions were a result of the Enlightenment and as such
they borrowed many of their ideas from it.