we can understand the creation of institutions which, in their purpose, were
similar to the Louvre in countries such as Greece and Mexico (Chapter 4).
The institutionalization of archaeology would eventually blossom later in
the century. The early protagonism of France may explain why certain French
historiographers of archaeology point to the transition between the eight-
eenth and the nineteenth centuries as the date of birth for archaeology
(Gran-Aymerich 1998), while English-speaking scholars tend to provide
a nineteenth-century date (Daniel 1975; Trigger 1989). The diVerence in
opinions is partly related to the type of archaeology studied. Whereas the
appeal of the ancient Great Civilizations in the era preceding and even
following the revolutions occupies Gran-Aymerich’s (1998) history of archae-
ology, a similar degree of scientiWc investigation of prehistoric archaeology,
Daniel’s (1975) and Trigger’s (1989) main interest, was not in existence until
the nineteenth century. Alain Schnapp’s (1995: ch. 5) version is somewhere in
between. Indeed this duality will be one of the central themes of the account
provided in this book. It illustrates the importance of contextualizing
the emergence and development of archaeology during the late eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries in the political climate of the time, and also the
versatility of the ideology of nationalism, for it can integrate several types of
past into the history of a national origin.
NATIONALISM IN THE ERA OF THE REVOLUTIONS:
A POLITICAL BACKGROUNDMost authors date the emergence of nationalism to the transition between the
end of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. In that period a
series of revolutions erupted throughout Europe and the Americas: 2 the 1775
Wrst partition of Poland, the 1776 American Declaration of Independence, the
1789 French Revolution, and the 1783 Dutch Revolution, followed by nu-
merous others in subsequent decades. Of them all, the French Revolution was
the most inXuential, probably due to (and as a reaction against) Napoleon’s
aggressiveness. This turbulent period acted as a hinge between the Ancien
Re ́gime and the nationalist world in which archaeology eventually developed
as a professional discipline. It inspired many other political reforms all over
2 Although England’s Civil War, which led to the execution of King Charles I in 1649, has
been seen by some as an even earlier precedent (Anderson 1991: 21), the rhetoric around these
events lacked the vocabulary and the philosophy which characterized the revolutions at the end
of the Enlightenment.
The French Revolution 63