Lecture by François Bost, specialized in the study of simulated magic in the 18th and 19th centuries
The mission entrusted in 1856 to the magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin constitutes an unprecedented episode in the colonization of Algeria through its psychological and geopolitical avant-garde action on the populations, then under the influence of the marabouts. We will reexamine this matter in the light of archives never before used, unpublished documents, and new hypotheses to offer another interpretation, undoubtedly much closer to reality.