History of the collections

It was indeed at that time that France, like many European countries, evolved from a remote curiosity about Asian countries to an openness, an admiration and a determination to get to know and understand others. The missions of explorers eager to peruse and map new horizons were soon followed by those of anthropologists, linguists, and ethnologists ardently plunging into this discovery of the globe, whose distances were reduced thanks to the progress of sea and land travel.

This was also the time when Europe pursued a colonial policy. Nonetheless, the ambitions of most of these discoverers, pioneers of a knowledge upon which we still today found many aspects of our understanding, belonged to a scientific approach striving to acquaint us with hitherto unknown civilisations. Émile Guimet journeyed over Japan (a country never colonised) in 1876 and spoke with the superiors of Buddhist monasteries before acquiring, following their shrewd advice, major pieces of statuary; Louis Delaporte drew, photographed, and made casts of the temples of Cambodia and in 1873 with the king of Cambodia’s approval shipped to France examples of Khmer sculptures; Victor Collin de Plancy and Charles Varat assembled testimonies of Korean culture and sent them to France with the Korean authorities’ support.

In the first half of the 20^th century the progress of archaeology as a full-fledged discipline empowered Joseph Hackin, through his work within the Délégation Archéologique française in Afghanistan, to largely contribute to the enrichment of the Musée Guimet collections. Paul Pelliot, in Central Asia, Jacques Bacot in Tibet, and the researchers of the École française d’Extrême-Orient enabled the museum to take part in this extraordinary flourishing of our knowledge of Asia, its populations, its religions, its History.