German Cultural Imperialism and the Culture of Imperialism in the Ottoman Empire

Archaeology played one of the main roles to construct the structures of Western imperial and colonial projects on the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century. The re-construction of archeological material through imperialist patronage was adapted to holistic historical demands related with Western his¬torical paradigms. In this context, archaeology was used by all Western imperial powers, and museums were modularly designed as imperial imagined spaces based on imperial re-territorialization and interaction between empire and her territories. In this article, German cultural imperialism in the Ottoman Empire— although she was not a formal colony of the German Empire—is investigated both through Grofiwissenschaf—a term borrowed from Theodor Mommsen—and theoretical discussions of Edward Said and Eric J. Hobsbawn. At the same time, this article aims to address various debates around the relation of politics to culture, and to institutions created by the German Empire for its trenchant and powerful images against other European imperial powers.