Museum-building in nineteenth-century Algeria

This essay examines the fate of Roman antiquities in the course of the French conquest and colonization of Algeria, a military undertaking that began in July 1830 and resulted in the destruction of significant numbers of ancient remains over the following decades. Although French officials recognized the ideological significance of Roman remains for the French military and colonial venture, military officers who created the earliest museums to house this ancient material faced significant challenges from both the army and European civilian settlers. Roman monuments, while not anticipated as forming an integral component of the French campaign in North Africa, supplied not only raw materials but the ideological building blocks of an historiographic project that legitimized French presence in the region.

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Colonialism · Literature · Narrative · African history and culture studies · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History

• Berber genealogy and the politics of prehistoric archaeology and craniology in French Algeria (1860s–1880s)

  Open Access•Bonnie Effros•The British Journal for the…•2017

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