Hawking Cossacks, Selling Tsarinas: Russia in French Advertisement, 1856–1894.

This article examines a set of marques de fabrique or trademarks pertaining to Russia registered at the Tribunal de commerce de la Seine between 1857 and 1894, and aims to define the evolution in the types of representations of Russia or Russians from after the Crimean War and before the official Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894. This time span marked a critical transition in Franco-Russian relations, as well as changes in French national identities as France passed from the Second Empire to the Third Republic. The study argues that the visual representations found in the marques de fabrique in fact broaden our understanding of the Alliance and stances that France was compelled to cultivate in the face of a Bismarckian Germany and within the context of a colonial empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]