The Second French Empire means many different things to scholars of French history. Undoubtedly, it was a time of great scientific endeavours, mostly underlined by the ideological currents of political thought and moral and social theory. During the life-span of the Second Empire, from 1852 to 1870, institutions of higher education were created and/or flourished, as France turned its gaze from inwards to outwards in an attempt to recapture the notion of what a modern empire should be, and how it should legitimate its existence in the shambles left by many republican experiences. History was an obvious choice for savants and politicians, for state and academia, to tap in order to bring a sense of purpose and explanation to the developments of the French state. The volume reviewed here considers the endeavours of those concerned with the history of the old Mediterranean empires and how these concerns were aligned, in many suggestive ways, to those reflected on in an investigation of the history of France itself, of her role in Europe since the ancient times, and of her future as the guardian of the classical tradition and builder of the new European future. To be a modern empire, seemingly, France simply had to look to the past.

This is therefore a remarkable book. It pushes forward the argument about the role of history under Napoleon III by isolating the experience of the French Second Empire in the investigation of the old Mediterranean world. It looks at the continuation of the tradition started by Napoleon I – as a product of Enlightenment thought – of the study of the archaeology and history of the Mediterranean world. The context had changed dramatically from the days of the first to those of the third Napoleon. The volume reflects the tension between the examination of classical antiquity and its role in creating the old medieval France, and the impetus to form France in the guise of what was emerging in the mid-nineteenth century as a ‘national state’. Each author looks at the link made by savants, scholars and those whose livelihoods were somehow attached to the development of a new idea of France emerging from its relationship to the Mediterranean provinces by shared history, geography, memory, language, ethnicity, ideology and culture.

The first chapter looks at the dispute over Nice as a French or Italian province in the late 1850s and early 1860s. Nice was a complex representative of the ‘principle of nationality’, in that its ethno-linguistic make up, Cavour claimed, aligned it to the Italian provinces on the eve of unification. The plebiscitary solution found by the men in power to ascertain the place of Nice as a French or an Italian territory reveals a great deal about the role of the press and of public opinion and the endeavours of liberal politics in the Second Empire. Likewise, Chapter 2 considers Rome and the Latin Sisters of Napoleon III, once head of the Second French Republic, leading the France of the likes of Charlemagne to protect Rome and Christianity in an Europe which was increasingly hostile to Catholicism and to the political traditions of classical antiquity. France in that light is presented as a sister, with a common history of civilisation and Latinity expressed in scientific terms through archaeological and historical investigation. The same theme is picked up in Chapters 3 and 4, on the archaeology of Pays niçois and on Napoleon III's counsellors in historical matters. Here, as in Chapters 8–10, the men whose ideological positions helped make and break the Second Empire are brought to the forefront of Napoleon III's empire. Victor Duruy, Hortense Cornu, Wilhelm Froehner are depicted as Louis Napoleon's men of choice, smart men, capable of both erudition and political pragmatism. Lacking his uncle's genius, so often hailed at the time when France watched her neighbours become stronger economically and politically, Napoleon III relied on historians, archaeologists and linguists to create for him the background against which his empire made sense to the French people. Chapter 5 on the acquisition of the Musée Campana looks at how the incorporation of an ‘Italian’ legacy into France permitted the creation of interpretative endeavours which sought to explain France's path from republic to empire and why an empire was a better type of state for fostering scientific endeavours.

Chapters 6 and 7 examine the creation of a military history for the Second Napoleonic Empire, showing the history of weaponry, artefacts and strategies described in the biblical text and present in French history since the very foundations of Europe. The sense of progress was combined with a feeling of continuity and tradition, linking France to the ‘Italian’ areas and to the Greek and, more loosely, Balkan areas, up to very recently kept outside the European remit due to Ottoman occupation. By establishing itself as a protector of knowledge of Greece, France positioned herself again as the gate to the Mediterranean world and the mediator between this world of antique knowledge and the modern science of European states. Chapter 8 goes further by describing Ernest Renan's mission in Lebanon (Phénice), at a time when the empire could be turning more ‘liberal’ by encouraging science and political activity.

The last five chapters look at the archaeological missions in North Africa (Algeria and Egypt) to consider the relationship between Napoleon I's endeavour to build a Franco-Egyptian link in the late-eighteenth century, and the contemporary place that Egypt occupied in European politics and imagination, between the modernising efforts of Mehemet Ali and the construction of the Suez canal. The reconstruction of Egyptian architecture in the Paris exhibit was again a way to establish a link between the two countries and their traditions of science and technology.

It is said that the Second Empire abandoned the synthesis between the Gothic and the Greek symbolisms, which was a product of eighteenth-century thought. In that sense, what emerged in the examination of classical history and the architecture of the Mediterranean world was the creation of a new French identity, linked to Christianity and to the political and military successes of the ancient world, but positioned to take the lead in the new European scene. A modern notion of empire emerged throughout Europe, deeply connected to the establishment of states and with the identification of races and ethnicities alongside the growth of nationalism. In looking at the Mediterranean sites of past glories, French scholars, savants, litterateurs and politicians were, in fact, looking at the future of France emerging from the archaeological ruins of the ancient world.