Archaeology and the 1820 Liberal Revolution

Nationalism did not end with Napoleon’s downfall, despite the intention of those who outplayed him in 1815. Events evolved in such a way that there would be no way back. The changes in administration, legislation, and institutionalization established in many European countries, and by extension in their colonies, during the Napoleonic period brought efficiency to the state apparatus and statesmen could not afford to return to the old structures. Initially, however, the coalition of countries that defeated the French general set about reconstructing the political structures that had reigned in the period before the French Revolution. In a series of congresses starting in Vienna, the most powerful states in Europe—Russia, Prussia, and Austria, later joined by Britain and post-Napoleonic France—set about reinstating absolutist monarchies as the only acceptable political system. They also agreed to a series of alliances resulting in the domination of the monarchical system in European politics for at least three decades. These powers joined forces to fight all three consecutive liberal revolutions that raged across Europe and the Americas, in 1820, 1830, and 1848, each saturated with nationalist ideals. The events which provide the focus for this chapter belong to the first of those revolutions, that of 1820 (see also Chapter 11), and resulted in the creation of several new countries: Greece and the new Latin American states. In all, nationalism was at the rhetorical basis of the claims for independence. The past, accordingly, played an important role in the formation of the historical imagination which was crucial to the demand for self-determination. The antiquities appropriated by the Greek and by Latin American countries were still in line with those which had been favoured during the French Revolution: those of the Great Civilizations. However, in revolutionary France this type of archaeology had resulted in an association with symbols and material culture whose provenance was to a very limited extent in their own territory (Chapter 11) or was not on French soil but in distant countries such as Italy, Greece, and the Ottoman Empire (Chapter 3).

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