Caricatured Algerian, Zudi-Budshu, from the series Coins of All Nations (N72, variation 1) for Duke brand cigarettes 1889

This is a chromolithograph trade card produced around the turn of the century by W. Duke, Sons & Co. as part of a series promoting their Duke brand cigarettes. The card depicts a caricatured Algerian figure identified as “Zudi-Budshu.” The “Coins of All Nations” series was clearly conceived to promote an idea of global reach, but its visual language is rooted in a colonial perspective. The caricatured representation and exoticization of the Algerian man, along with the textual reference to the coin's value in cents, reduces a person and a culture to a commercial transaction. This imagery would have been very much at home in an era when European powers were expanding their empires across Africa and Asia. The card presents Algeria as a site ripe for economic exploitation. To understand this card fully, we would need to research the Duke company's marketing strategies, the history of French colonialism in Algeria, and the broader visual culture of imperialism. Only then can we begin to grasp the complex web of power relations that this seemingly innocuous image represents.