Zouave Theaters: Transnational Military Fashion and Performance

In this compelling new study, Carol E. Harrison and Thomas J. Brown chart the rise and fall of the Zouave uniform, the nineteenth century’s most important military fashion fad for men and women on both sides of the Atlantic. Originating in French colonial Algeria, the uniform was characterized by an open, collarless jacket, baggy trousers, and a fez. As Harrison and Brown demonstrate, the Zouaves embraced ethnic, racial, and gender crossing, liberating themselves from the strictures of bourgeois society. Some served as soldiers in Papal Rome, the United States, the British West Indies, and Brazil, while others acted in theatrical performances that combined drag and drill. Zouave Theaters analyzes the interaction of the stage and the military, and reveals that the Zouave persona influenced visual artists from painters and photographers to illustrators and filmmakers.

Carol E. Harrison is professor of history at the University of South Carolina and the author of Romantic Catholics: France’s Postrevolutionary Generation in Search of a Modern Faith.

The author of Civil War Monuments and the Militarization of America, Thomas J. Brown is professor of history at the University of South Carolina.