Godfrey on Harrison and Brown (2024)

When one thinks about transnational fashions exported from France in the nineteenth century, the mind goes invariably to the world of women. The emergence of “haute couture” in 1860s Paris, in particular, cemented a longstanding association of fashion, Frenchness, and femininity. And with the growth of illustrated journalism from the mid-nineteenth century on, French fashion squarely defined standards for feminine performance at home and abroad. There is no equivalent phenomenon, one might argue, that pertains to men’s fashion or masculine performance. But one would be wrong. 

In their lively, well-documented and well-illustrated book, Zouave Theaters: Transnational Military Fashion and Performance, Carol Harrison and Thomas Brown remind us that at least one version of men’s fashion in 1860s France, the colorful uniform of the Zouave soldier—a curious hybrid of Western military masculinity and Orientalist costuming—crossed the oceans in a spectacular act of intercultural cross-dressing. The style became so popular that Zouave-style jackets even became “a staple item of women’s wardrobes.” To quote the opening sentence of the book, “Zouave uniforms were the most important military fashion fad of the nineteenth century.” (8)

In the introduction and first two chapters of the book, Harrison and Brown track the origins of the exotically dressed Zouave troops from their emergence during the French occupation of Algeria in the 1830s to their bravura in the Crimean War (1854–6) that brought them to international prominence and the heart of European popular culture. They appeared in everything from illustrated journals to board games to grandiose paintings. From the start, the ethnic mix of French and indigenous Algerian soldiers dressed in an Orientalist fantasy of the “mission civilisatrice” captivated the French public. With the development of photography in the decades that followed, Crimea became the first war to be photographed, and Zouave soldiers in their distinctive uniform, with its short jacket, baggy pantaloons, and fez-like hat, were particularly photogenic and alluring. They were spectacular in more ways than one. For in addition to their reputation as fierce fighters—William Russell of the London Times called them “probably the most perfect soldiers in the world”(50)—Zouaves were characterized by a cheeky flamboyance that found its way onto the stage, whether at the theatre the Zouave regiment built on the battlefield at Inkermann or in metropolitan vaudeville theatres where Zouaves featured as entertaining stock figures in soft flowy pants that smacked of gender bending. As the authors note, the Crimean War turned Zouaves into “international headliners who could carry a plot and sell a production”(66). They were both a troop and a troupe and the play with national, racial, and gender identity fed the popularity of their look on both sides of the Atlantic (9).

For historians and students of nineteenth-century France the chapters on the colonialist origins and transformations of the Zouave troops in Algeria and the emergence of Zouaves as models of military panache in Second Empire France are particularly rich and rewarding and highly recommended. 

In the following three chapters the authors illustrate the elasticity of Zouaves as military exemplars. As the Zouave concept and look spread across the globe during the decades following the Crimean War, Great Britain introduced a Zouave uniform for its colonial troops, Polish nationalists rallied against Russia as the “Zouaves of Death,” and Pontifical Zouaves defended Papal territorial sovereignty. Most dramatic was the establishment of Zouave units in the United States where “the number of northerners and southerners who enlisted as Zouaves during the Civil War exceeded the number of Zouaves in the French army.”(92) At the same time, as in France, the renowned insouciance of the Zouave gained prominence in American theatre including in minstrel shows where a story of Frenchmen in North African dress was easily translated in blackface (98). The authors describe the remarkable history of the United States Zouave Cadets (USZC), militias modeled on French training and Zouave athleticism, who toured the country in stage shows performing military drills. They emblematized what newspapers called “Zouave mania.” During the Civil War Zouave units, though a small portion of the Union army, “exercised a disproportionate influence as an ideal type.”(125) Chapter four of the book focuses specifically on the role Zouaves played during that war—in black as well as white units—emphasizing the “spectacle regime of discipline in wartime” (163).

Looking at perhaps the strangest incarnation of Zouaverie, chapter five presents the Pontifical Zouaves, defenders of papal territory against the army of the newly unified Italian state and later, defenders of supranational Christendom. In France, the iconic stage for these very Catholic Zouaves would no longer be in boulevard theatres, but in the cathedral of Sacré Coeur, where the figure of a Zouave “occupies a key position in the decorative program of the basilica” (188).  Moving through the twentieth century, the story of international Zouaverie slowly comes to a close in the sixth and final chapter of the book: during the Great War, the poilu would ultimately displace the Zouave as the quintessential military type (227); in 1962 France’s Zouave units would be disbanded in the wake of decolonization and Algerian Independence; and in 1984, in a final public, pontifical appearance before disbanding for good, eighty-four uniformed Zouaves from the Catholic and once highly active Association de Zouaves du Québec welcomed Pope John Paul II to Québec City. 

For those of us for whom the Zouave conjures up primarily the sturdy fellow holding up the Pont de l’Alma in Paris, Zouave Theaters: Transnational Military Fashion and Performance has a great deal to teach about the historical translations of a French military and cultural phenomenon that informed masculine performance across the world and over a century. This engaging book is full of useful information, subtle insights, and fascinating nuggets, accessible to the general reader and comprehensive for the specialist. It is a treat to read and will be a treat to teach.