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How (Not) to Protect the Past? Heritage Protection Efforts and Power Struggles in Early Modern Greece

Yannis Galanakis    University of Cambridge, UK    

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abstract

This paper revisits the early protection measures taken with regards to the safeguarding of antiquities in Greece in the 1820s and 1830s and the ensuing power struggles. The focus is on ‘control’ and ‘ownership’, two major issues that shaped the nineteenth-century cultural politics of the country. It is argued that the 1834 law, that emerged out of these debates, is best understood as a crypto-colonial contraption. It gave the allusion to people and state officials of cultural and territorial integrity and control, when actually it facilitated local and international actors to thrive – licitly and illicitly – in the antiquities trade in the long nineteenth century.

Published
June 21, 2022
Accepted
June 3, 2022
Submitted
April 26, 2022
Language
EN
ISBN (PRINT)
978-88-6969-716-6
ISBN (EBOOK)
978-88-6969-623-7

Keywords: Heritage protectionLegislationNational identityGreeceClassical antiquity

Copyright: © 2022 Yannis Galanakis. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.