Fashioning Insurrection

From Imperial Resistance To American Orientalisms
✖ an archer dressed in Indian costume fighting British soldiers in red coats.

About the Exhibit

Americans have adapted uniforms into costumes since the masquerade balls of colonial days to today’s historical films and battle reenactments. The practice took an unexpected form in the first decades following the American Revolution when the early presses of the United States closely covered imperial insurrections that unfolded across Islamicate societies against the three towering empires of the era: the Greek War of Independence against the Ottomans (1821–29), the Ottoman Algerian resistance to the French (1830–48), and the Indian uprising against the British (1857). Alongside depictions of these struggles, American popular media paid careful attention to the “national” dress and military uniforms that could potentially unify a revolution or even aid in controlling insurrection. As the young nation navigated its connections to the Islamicate world, some reinterpreted visual and sartorial modes of imperial resistance. The reverberations of these events led to the emergence of orientalist costumes and dress that transformed regional revolutionary garb into American fashion statements of solidarity, fascination, and emulation.
Through these forms of cosmopolitan materialism, Americans announced their political stances on historic movements, sometimes also asserting their country’s imperial ambitions and legacies as it solidified its standing in the world. Such sartorial translations from uniforms to fashion informed America’s evolving relationship with its own revolutionary past. Each medium these costumes inhabited aided Americans in creatively redefining their country’s transforming identity on the international stage while facing resonant issues in their new nation, including foreign trade, slavery, and humanitarianism. Alongside contextualizing documents, the works here vividly illustrate how the U.S. wielded these movements of imperial insurrection to remold its own world image and don it with aplomb.

About the Exhibit

Navigating Characters and Costumes of the Greek War of Independence

When the first Greek insurrections against the Ottoman Empire broke out in 1814, their proponents did not aim to create the modern notion of a nation-state, but rather a revival of the Byzantine Empire. Travelers from western Europe had a significant role in projecting Hellenic ideals of the ancient past onto this movement. These travelers further used the art of costume studies and portraiture to isolate Greek and Turkish identities into neat taxonomies. The resulting works cast them as fundamentally opposed ethnicities despite their entangled histories in this diverse cultural landscape, which also included Jews, Albanians, and Armenian Christians–to name a few. This visual imagery circulated to further propel a more reductionist philhellenic movement and inspire patriotic costumes donned by supporters abroad.

A man in multicolored costume carrying a scimitar holds a flag triumphantly over a pile of dead soldiers in equally colorful costume. The flag is three horizontal stripes, black, white, and red, with a red cross in the center. The man's costume consists of a deep blue shirt and vest, with intricate gold trim. he has a well-groomed mustache, and is wearing a blue patterned head scarf. he's also carrying two flintlock pistols in a holster held within a sash around his midsection. Two men stand in long skirts and red caps with blue tassels. one has two flintlock pistols secured by a sash around his waist, carries a sword, and wears a green jacket. the other has no weapons, wears a blue jacket, and smokes a very long pipe, close to two thirds his height. Turkish cavalryman in decorative russet jacket and pantaloons, wearing scimitar with back to viewer 9 drawings of warriors and their horses. in each, a colorful figure or scene is illustrated on a colorless background outline. from top left: a man in greek blue costume stands with his foot on the chest of a fallen soldier whose broken sword lies nearby; his horse rears on its hind legs behind him. a man in greek costume fires a flintlock pistol while riding a horse at full gallop. two men astride horses fight with a spear and scimitar respectively. in an illustration almost identical to the above, a man fires a flintlock pistol while riding a horse at full gallop. a man wearing a tall black hat and carrying a spear sits astride a trotting horse. A man in a headscarf wearing pantaloons and a sheathed scimitar stands beside his horse holding the reins. a man wearing a bright red plumed cap and flowing red cape fights a lion with a spear; the lion has jumped onto the front of the horse, who is biting the lion, and wearing a red-spotted yellow cloth on its back. a man wearing a headscarf and ornate patterned clothes astride a horse holds a long pole with gold ornaments and red tassels hanging from a crossbar at the top. a man wearing a headscarf sits astride a rearing horse and draws back a spear as two outlined but uncolored soldiers flee in the background. Greek infantry in close combat with Ottomans, more Greeks attacking fortress in left background, boats with troops on river in right, mountains in distance.