Figure 1.--This glass magic lantern slide helps to date it to anout the turn-of-the-20th century, probably the 1900s. It looks to be taken atvsome kind of farm or orchard with mostly French children and some what older Arab youth. We are not sure what brought the group together, but it is shows off a variety of clothing styles worn at the time. Note the Arabs are wearing traditional dress including headwear. I am not sure the headwear would be called turbans. Hopefully readers might know. The French boys wear large berets. Some wear smocks. I am not sure if the photograph was taken after school or they commonly wore socks all of the time. At the left theur seems to a young Arab woman wearing a burqa. In the middle of the group there looks to be an Arab girl who has pulled back her head covering. Noticeshe is carrying a baby. We can only speculate about much of this. All we know for sure is that the photograph was taken in northern Algeria. The location is near Chiffa in Wilaya de Blida south of Algiers.

The colonization of Algeria was the first step after the Napoleonic Wars in restablishing a French empire. It was also after the American Barbary Wars, the next step in supressing the Barbary Pirates. French colonial rule beginning in the 1830s had considerable influence on Algerian fashions, especially men and boy's fashions. This was especially true in the more urban areas. HBC has little information on French colonial fashions in the 19th century, but believes that they were probably quite similar to fashions in metropolitan France, especially southern France. Available images on Algeria during the 20th century show boys wearing the same fashions that they would have in France, although the warmer Algerian climate may have made for some minor differences. The Arab-Bedouine fashions we see seem little changed during the colonial era, although our archive is limited. We see some Arabs wearing Western dress, at least in the cities by the 20th century. School photography shows this with Arab countries wearing Western clothes to school. Many Arab children, however, did not attend school.

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Created: 9:02 PM 1/19/2017
Last updated: 9:02 PM 1/19/2017