were published in 1758) and then tried to impose Greek architecture as a model in Paris, just as James Stuart and Nicholas Revett were doing in England at the time.

In the nineteenth century, circumstances governing the knowledge of antiquity changed: more became known, and the information began to be organized differently. Archaeology became more obviously the pawn of politics and was now part of any plan by the great powers aimed at the occupation of the Mediterranean basin; there was rivalry between France and England in Greece and then between France and Germany after 1870. The French government was anxious to support any undertaking that would enhance France’s prestige. In this context, one should mention the great scientific expeditions, the creation of the French schools in Athens and Rome, and the competition to lead the most prestigious excavations. Simultaneously, although slightly more slowly than in Germany, archaeology developed as an academic subject in France through the creation of university chairs and specialized courses.

The link between politics and archaeology can be clearly seen in the scientific expedition to Morea that took place from 1829 to 1831 when French troops were in the Peloponnese to take part in the liberation of Greece. It was a multidisciplinary expedition (physical sciences, archaeology, architecture), and though it could not be counted a great success on the archaeological level, its members did oversee excavations at Olympia, where the site of the temple of Zeus was plotted, and they brought back metopes for the louvre museum. The conquest of Algeria in 1830, followed by the establishment of the French protectorate in Tunisia in 1881, yielded a vast field of research for French archaeologists. This research, inspired partly by curiosity and partly by scientific interest, was also the result of a desire to justify the conquest by and the superiority of European culture. Other smaller-scale expeditions, of a nonmilitary nature but driven by the political will of successive French governments, were led by Philippe Le Bas to Greece and Asia Minor in 1843 to bring back inscriptions, and by Leon Heuzey, who set off in 1861, at the request of Napoleon III, to visit the ancient battle sites in the north of Greece. The latter discovered the archaeology of Macedonia, excavated the royal Hellenistic palace at Palatitsa, and carried back the stone parts (door and bed) of a royal tomb to the Louvre.

In the nineteenth century, France founded two institutions that played a crucial role in archaeological research in the Mediterranean. It was felt that a loss of political influence had to be compensated for by a win in the cultural and scientific spheres. This sentiment was true for the French School of Athens, whose creation in 1846 was justified by the necessity to spread the French language, customs, and influence, and it was even truer for the School of Rome, which was born after the defeat of France in 1870 by Germany. In Rome in the first half of the nineteenth century, the French and Germans had helped to found the Institute of Archaeological Correspondence (1829), the ancestor of all the Roman scientific institutes. This particular institute, which had the aim of publishing all the archaeological discoveries in the Mediterranean region, had a French section headed by several famous amateur antiquarians and scholars. The institute lost its international character after 1870 and became entirely German. Finding itself without any scientific institution in Italy, France sent out a young scholar trained in Athens, Albert Dumont, to establish a branchof the institute, which became autonomous in 1875.

The two pillars of French archaeology abroad were in place, and the evolution of those two institutions reflect French activity in Italy and Greece up to the present day. The scientists using these schools for running expeditions or publishing their finds have long held all the university chairs of ancient history. Unlike the situation in the eighteenth century, archaeology was no longer the preserve of enlightened amateurs and artists; it was now the domain of professionals and academics. At the Collège de France, a chair of Latin epigraphy was created in 1861 and a chair of Greek epigraphy was created in 1874; at the Sorbonne, G. Perrot held the first chair of Greek archaeology in 1876. However in France there were fewer positions