Archaeology and Colonial Power - The British Mandate and the Palestine Archaeological
3 Video Views·Nov 9, 2024
The Palestine Archaeological Museum (PAM) formed a key part of the British Mandate Government’s policy on antiquities. Despite inheriting many of its collections, and attitudes, from the previous Imperial Museum of the Ottoman government, The British Mandate museum was an element of narrative in which Britain ‘rescues’ Palestinian antiquities from the negligent Turks. I explore how the museum functioned as part of the fabric of colonial power - over both the intellectual and physical spheres – namely the production of knowledge and the material relics of the past. This cemented Britain’s claim over both the physical territory of Palestine, which as ‘The Holy Land’, held a prominent place within British culture. Using archival research, I present the museum as a case study in how heritage and cultural resource management acted as part of the imperial ambitions of empires. I examine the museum and wider antiquities law were expressed as a political response to the previous Ottoman government’s management; this is important as Ottoman antiquities law can be seen as a direct response to western exploitation of archaeological resources across Ottoman territory during the 19th century. My research illustrates how, throughout the history of the PAM, the Palestinians have been relegated to background actors in the management and construction of knowledge over their own history. I suggest that the PAM in both its Ottoman and Mandate incarnations, acted as part of a long tradition of using heritage to show the dominance of conquering powers in Jerusalem (St Laurent et al. 2013).
CHLOE EMMOTT, PHD CANDIDATE, UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH
I'm going to talk about using the various incarnations of what I'm just calling the
Palestine Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem as a sort of case study in colonialism and archaeology
and all that sort of thing. I accidentally jumped forward too far. It was founded in 1901
in the Ottoman Empire as part of the Museums of Antiquities and their Imperial Museum,
which was the big one based in Istanbul, sort of like our British Museum.
I suggest that this museum falls under Bruce Trigger's definition of imperial archaeology,
which states, imperialist or world-oriented archaeology is associated with a small number
of states that enjoy or have exerted political dominance over large areas of the world.
Now, while it's not the most perfect definition, it, I think, helps to explain the situation here,
particularly with regards to the British, as even during the Ottoman Empire, it was before
the British mandate, they had no sort of official control over everything, but they still dominated
archaeology in Palestine, particularly through institutions such as the Palestine
Exploration Fund. A lot of this goes back to the British sense of ownership and connection to
Palestine as the Holy Land. They sort of used the terms interchangeably, pretty much,
and this is what I'm getting at. This is a quote from the Archbishop of York in 1865 at the
foundation of the Palestine Exploration Fund. In particular, the first sentence there,
this country of Palestine belongs to you and me. It is essentially ours. And the photograph
in the background is the Jerusalem Survey Party, from Charles Warren, Joseph Marmot, loads of
people. They were sponsored by the Palestine Exploration Fund to do a survey of Jerusalem,
and later on, there was the Survey of Western Palestine, which mapped the entire country
from the West Bank onwards. They were the definitive maps of Palestine and what was
defined as Palestine from the end of the 19th century onwards. As part of the reaction to this,
the Ottoman state developed stricter antiquities laws, and it was not just what was going on in
Palestine. There were other explorations in, I think, particularly Troy and Ephesus,
and when you go to the British Museum, there's a lot of stuff from there. They were like,
why are you taking all this stuff? We want... Then it was all part of the, sort of, around that
period. The Ottoman period is going through, the Ottoman Empire is going through a series of,
sort of, modernisation reforms and trying to portray themselves as a modern European empire
and equal to the Western European powers. This involves their fantastic Imperial Museum,
as you can see. It's designed in the neoclassical, very European style. The director was Osman Hamdi
Bey, who was something of what people term an Ottoman Orientalist. He was, sort of, quite
European-orientated, and I just love that picture because it's just relaxing on my head.
They sponsored quite a few excavations and had this grand museum, and they also decided
that they needed local museums across the empire, and that was where the Jerusalem Museum came in.
And, I'll jump forward again, they had a few years of this, sort of, little museum in Jerusalem.
It didn't get much attention, particularly didn't get any attention, really, in British guidebooks,
which I think is interesting, but when you look at the very close relationship...
Does that work? Yeah, okay. There was a very close relationship between the Palestine Exploration
Fund and Thomas Cook, they're travel people, so that's probably why they didn't get in the
guidebook, because the Palestine Exploration Fund also wanted to do their own museum, which was
pretty much overtly dedicated to biblical archaeology, so there's a slight conflict there.
Then, World War I happened, and the British gained control of Palestine, and part of this, sort of,
imperial narrative of, we are the great victors, we are securing Palestine for the civilized world,
and this is illustrated, I think, by Edmund Allenby, who famously walked through the gate
in Jerusalem, the photograph behind there, and emphasized, sort of, the care and the protection
that the British would give to the sacred nature of Jerusalem, and particularly the buildings,
and that sort of historic nature, and here's a quote from him here, and it's interesting to note
that the Antiquities Legislation excluded, sort of, currently in use religious buildings, they
weren't protected in the same way, and it's this sort of protective, in a slightly patronizing,
incredibly patronizing way, that the British used with regards to archaeology. In 1919,
John Garstang, the Professor of Theories and Methods of Archaeology at the University of
Liverpool, was sent around to create a report for the future of archaeology in Palestine,
and this is a detailed from it, including the keeper of museums, the keeper of monuments,
it's about 20 pages, I think, incredibly detailed report, and he was, this is all before the mandate
got declared in 1922, so they were getting in there early, and a sentence in Garstang's report,
which emphasizes this superiority of the British and their role, they saw themselves as the great
emancipators of Palestine, he states, popular sentiment at home and abroad, which under the
almost passive negligence of the Turkish regime remained calm, will not tolerate any appearance
of neglect now that the country is emancipated. It's this idea that the British were incredibly
superior to the Turks, they were the Westerners, they were the inheritors of this great civilization,
and they would protect the antiquities better, and it's in this context that they took over
the museum, and this is an extract from a military report from Ronald Storrs, he was the first
military governor, and I'm not sure if you can read it, but it says, in order to save
god antiquities, and to put into practical effect, the population at present, I believe, before,
he sort of has an entire little, like, letter, this is an emergency communication in occupied
territory from 1918, he had plans to create a museum in the citadel at Jerusalem, and he's,
in this letter, he's making plans to safeguard the antiquities and store them safely.
He also states in the same letter, I'm about to set aside certain rooms in the citadel museum
for purposes of the safeguarding of antiquities. And this military elite, we have people like
Ronald Storrs and Alan B, they were very interested in antiquities, it was sort of,
I'd say more than a hobby, it was almost sort of related to their presence there. I mean,
Alan B himself would speak at the opening of the Mandate Museum, and many government records make
clear the importance of heritage to the post-war political project of the British,
which I think was mostly propaganda. And this is an example of such, it's from a memo on the
Archaeological Joint Committee on Proposal for the International Control of Antiquities
Existing in Countries Under Turkish Rule, which is basically the western governments
getting together and saying, what are we going to do with these antiquities we know best?
And in particular, I think the phrase, the inheritance of the whole civilised world
goes back to this, everything is related to civilisation, and western Europe is the pinnacle
of civilisation, and we know better than the people who live there. And that is missing?
Oh, it's turned on now, sorry. These are more sort of examples from newspapers on the opening
of the, there's quite a sort of push in the press to be like, we're opening this new museum,
and I particularly like this one for the headline, it's called Seeking Palestinian Antiquities,
called the English Duty, but it's the duty of Great Britain as the mandatory power
for Palestine to explore Palestine's antiquities. And this was expressed by
Allenby himself, who was referred to there as conqueror of Jerusalem.
And there's another, this is from an article by Garth Bannock himself,
you can look that up. Four of them, they have like, the illustrated London News,
they're very detailed, he sort of, he set up the Department of Antiquities in the museum,
and they were sort of mixed up together, which was quite a bit of confusion later on.
And he says that we cannot help but feel reassured as to have written to the
reports on sort of how archaeology is progressing in Palestine now that it's
more under our control what's going on. So finally, they got a place for the museum,
and they opened it here. It's quite a small museum, and very traditional, as you can see.
But it was still sort of trumpeted in the paper as this amazing museum.
Though what is interesting is that the British deliberately positioned themselves in opposition
to the Ottomans, because the vast majority of the collection here was inherited from the Ottomans.
They had taken care of it, it was in their museum, it was all catalogued. Yet you have
reports in the Sir Herbert Samuel's speech, he states, passing to the history of the museum,
pointed out how different our policy was to that of the Turk. And it's this public nature of this
very high-profile figure at the, it was said at the opening of the museum, that we are so different
from the Ottomans and the Turkish, we are better at this. You have another display in the museum,
and there's one story I think sort of highlights it all, is there's this story of these missing
cases of antiquities, which weren't really missing. They were discovered, I think in the,
I'm not entirely sure where, they found about 100 maybe more cases of crates of antiquities,
which the official line was that they had been packed away by the Ottomans to be shipped to
Istanbul or Constantinople, or a few reports say they were going to be shipped to Germany.
And the narrative is that W.J. Cuthune-Adams, who was the first director of the museum,
it's the fancy photo from the world's worst suit for wearing at an excavation,
claiming that there was no record of these, no one knows where they're here, they were trying to
secretly sneak them away back to Istanbul or again possibly Germany.
And he makes a big deal of that, he spent all this time creating a catalogue of them all.
However, in the archives of what is now the archives of the Rockefeller Museum,
which is what the museum is now, there is a page from the Ottoman catalogue which is
exactly the same antiquities. And as it ended up in Morocco, it's incredibly likely that
they knew it was there or it was there and they were just incredibly unlucky or a bit daft and
they spent hours, weeks, months doing this and it was over. Particularly as
the Ottoman museum was, a lot of the catalogue was worked on by F.J. Bliss,
who was an American archaeologist who worked with the Palestine Exploration Fund and ended up
actually getting fired by the Palestine Exploration Fund as he was working too closely with the
Ottomans on this very museum. So people knew, they knew there was something there, it's not
sort of complete ignorance if we have no idea these antiquities have turned up out of nowhere,
which is what they seem to do. And the museum was like launched with this great fanfare,
it's amazing. There's a plan of the museum and then it shows how tiny it is compared to the
Rockefeller Museum floor plan because that room was probably about the size of that room I'm
guessing, but they don't have any of the dimensions. So they're fanfaring this amazing great museum
which is pretty tiny. But this doesn't last long because by the mid-1920s,
but Garstang is writing in 1927 that the department and the museum have been left
in the lurch without such as a thank you. They seem to have got perpetually no money at all.
And a visitor, I think he was ex-government or military, this guy called William Basil
he tours various archaeological sites in Palestine and he visits the museum and just
has quite a long rant on how it's got no money anymore, they've completely abandoned it,
what's going on. It seems completely contradictory to this media narrative that everyone's playing,
the British are so brilliant, they're looking after everything so much better than the Ottomans
ever could and the museum has no money. And they've tried to publicise it a lot,
letters to hotels, Thomas Cook had a tour of Palestine. Come to Palestine, it's British now,
not tourism. And again, it was part of the British, we're so brilliant and benevolent,
they deliberately made a point of having all the tours in Arabic, Hebrew and English.
Though I've looked at some sort of visitor figures from I think about the beginning of
the 1930s and hardly anyone visited. But eventually they were saved by the massive
investment of millions of dollars by the American John D Rockefeller who built the Rockefeller Museum
which is still there today and this is a massive spread in a magazine.
Jerusalem's new treasure house, again this is still portrayed as how amazing the British are
despite the fact that they've had to be rescued by this donation from America
and because the whole museum was skimped and they had absolutely no money and they were running out
of places to store antiquities, no one was visiting, it was a bit of a disaster really but
they still managed to keep control of this narrative of we're on top of it, we're looking
after things so much better than the Turks. And this is the Rockefeller Museum today and
interestingly I found a little plaque which sort of says, the museum takes a long visit to
which I think in some ways I think it's true and in other ways I'm not sure if it's just by
practice they probably bothered to update it as they now have the big Israel museum on the other
side of the city. I think that's still what I take away from this is that throughout this
whole narrative of the changing hands of the museum from the Ottomans to the British that
pretty much the Palestinians are absent. The museum, both the Ottoman Museum and the British
Museum were aimed at sort of local elites, either Ottoman or British or tourists, there doesn't seem
to be, despite all their tours in Arabic, they don't seem to make much effort and I think a lot
of the publicity it's the museum didn't exist so much to be the museum, it existed as something
that we can tell people back home in all these newspapers and our fancy magazine spreads and this
is how well the British are managing everything, we're so much better even though on the ground
the situation was quite different and that is everything.