German Archaeologists and the Construction of the Anatolian-Baghdad Railway, 1888–1914

Abstract The article focuses on the archaeological excavations conducted along the Anatolia–Baghdad railway route in the period between 1888 and the outbreak of the First World War. While the excavations were not a direct interest of the German company constructing the railway, it did offer financial and diplomatic support to the archaeologists involved. This period witnessed heightened awareness of the need to protect archaeological artefacts from being taken abroad, a concern voiced in particular by Osman Hamdi Bey, director of the Imperial Ottoman Museum, and present in the ideals of the Second Constitutional Monarchy in 1908. German archaeological ambitions were fed by the possibilities of the new railway route. Those initiatives heightened awareness within the Ottoman Empire of the possible loss of antiquities. The article draws on Ottoman sources to shed light on the often-overlooked perspective of the Ottoman Empire within Germany’s colonial history.