From Ottoman Modernity to French Beirut.

TRAFFICKING IN WOMEN 1924-1926 THE PAUL KINSIE REPORTS FOR THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS VOL. II H I S TO R I C A L S E R I E S N ° 2 JEAN-MICHEL CHAUMONT MAGALY RODRÍGUEZ GARCÍA PAUL SERVAIS (EDS) TRAFFICKING IN WOMEN 1924-1926 THE PAUL KINSIE REPORTS FOR THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS VOL. 1I H I S TO R I C A L S E R I E S N ° 2 JEAN-MICHEL CHAUMONT MAGALY RODRÍGUEZ GARCÍA PAUL SERVAIS (EDS) Geneva, 2017 United Nations Publications Sales Number: E.17.0.2 ISBN: 978-92-1-101502-7 eISBN: 978-92-1-060156-6 ISSN: 2519-1675 eISSN: 2519-4992 Copyright © United Nations, 2017 Table of Contents City Introductions Prostitution in Alexandria, Egypt Nefertiti Takla Manhattan College, New York . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Prostitution in Antwerp Margo De Koster Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam & Vrije Universiteit Brussel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Prostitution in Athens Pothiti Hantzaroula University of the Aegean, Greece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 From Ottoman Modernity to French Beirut Camila Pastor Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Ciudad de México . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Prostitution in Brussels Benoît Majerus University of Luxembourg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Prostitution in Budapest in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Markian Prokopovych University of Birmingham, UK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Prostitution in Buenos Aires and Montevideo Cristiana Schettini National University of San Martín & CONICET, Argentina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Prostitution in Cairo Francesca Biancani Bologna University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Prostitution in the Free City of Danzig and Warsaw Keely Stauter-Halsted University of Illinois at Chicago . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Prostitution in Berlin and Hamburg Victoria Harris University of London . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Havana’s Sex Trade Amalia L. Cabezas University of California, Riverside . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Prostitution in Istanbul Mark David Wyers Leiden University, the Netherlands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Prostitution in Genoa, Naples, Palermo and Rome Nicoletta Policek University of Cumbria, UK and Michela Turno Independent scholar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Prostitution in Haifa and Jaffa Deborah S. Bernstein University of Haifa, Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Kinsie Reports on Prostitution – Lisbon Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo University of Coimbra, Portugal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 London and Liverpool Julia Laite Birkbeck, University of London . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Colonial Regulationist Prostitution in the Maghreb and the Struggle for Abolition Christelle Taraud Columbia University in Paris and Paris I & IV. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Marseille Sylvain Pattieu Université Paris 8, Saint Denis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Prostitution in Mexico City Pamela J. Fuentes Pace University, New York and Fernanda Núñez Becerra Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Veracruz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Montreal Open City: Prostitution in the Metropolis in the 1920s Andrée Lévesque McGill University, Montreal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 Prostitution in the Netherlands: Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague Marion Pluskota Leiden University, the Netherlands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Prostitution in New York City Magaly Rodríguez García KU Leuven, Belgium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Sex Work on the Isthmus of Panama Jefrey W. Parker University of Texas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 Prostitution in Paris Susan P. Conner Albion College, Michigan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 Prostitution in Port Said Liat Kozma he Hebrew University, Jerusalem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 Prostitution in Prague in the Nineteenth and the Early Twentieth Century Markian Prokopovych University of Birmingham, UK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Prostitution in Riga City Ineta Lipša University of Latvia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Rio de Janeiro haddeus Blanchette Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Romania: Bucharest and Constanța Maria Bucur Indiana University, Bloomington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Prostitution in Spain in 1925 according to Reports by Paul Kinsie for the League of Nations Jean-Louis Guereña Université François-Rabelais, Tours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 Prostitution in Switzerland: Geneva, Lausanne and Bern Edith Siegenthaler Independent scholar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 Prostitution in Tunis Daniel Lee University of Sheield, UK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 Prostitution in Vienna in the Nineteenth Century Markian Prokopovych University of Birmingham, UK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232 CITY MAPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 ANNEX I Kinsie’s Code Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 ANNEX II Personal Descriptions by City as prepared by Kinsie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 ANNEX III List of Contents of Archival Inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310 ANNEX IV Kinsie’s Itineraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 ANNEX V Anna Gertler and the Cape Polonia Affair Jean-Michel Chaumont . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344 ANNEX VI Reports’ City Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352 City Introductions T R A F F I C K I N G I N WO M E N 1 9 2 4 - 1 9 2 6 26 . T h e Pa u l K i n s i e R e p o r t s f o r t h e L e a g u e o f Na t i o n s ‒ V O L . I I From Ottoman Modernity to French Beirut Camila Pastor Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Ciudad de México he French mandate over Lebanon and Syria linked those former Ottoman Arab provinces to other territories under French tutelage, including North African colonies and protectorates in present day Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. As political boundaries were redeined, new circulations joined earlier migratory circuits and corridors, engendering debates, policy and surveillance over populations in movement. In the global context of women’s movements and women’s growing access to the public, the migration of women in particular became suspect, especially that which lacked the moral and economic supervision of women’s activity by a spouse, a government or another institution. Often identiied as “foreign” women by local populations, they increasingly found work in service positions in the Eastern Mediterranean. Yet women workers were suspect. hey were tolerated but resented by both the French authorities and former Ottoman oicials incorporated into mandate administration, who could all agree on casting women’s presence in public as a moral threat. Eastern Mediterranean ports, especially Alexandria and Beirut, which housed consulates and new municipal governments or shipped the products of new industries, had grown enormously since the 1860 civil war in the Lebanese Mountains. Others would grow in the mandate years, especially the oil duct terminus industrial ports, Haifa and Tripoli. his Mediterranean archipelago ofered unprecedented opportunities for consumption and diferentiation through spaces and sociabilities grounded in the urban modern. he process intensiied between 1919 and 1943, as the mandate brought troops, administrators and industries into the region. With its myriad mobilities, the mandate aforded a privileged window on the reorganization of social formations and the reconiguration of boundaries between categories of women workers. As Stoler (1997) has noted elsewhere, the mandate period begs attention to the centrality of state control over the availability of European women and the sorts of sexual access condoned, for the reproduction of European populations and privilege in colonial social geographies. While in metropolitan geographies, once women were branded as “prostitutes” they could be channelled into various institutional enclosures for the purposes of punishment, redemption or reform, the Eastern Mediterranean in the mandate period ofered a social landscape in which categories were destabilized by the colonial condition, by the colonial role of modernism — its enticements and discontents, and by the emergence of new social agents. Debates were informed by global concerns with vulnerable subjects — deined as women and children — and the mystique of the white slave traic. But it also had an Ottoman history and responded to the social transformations resulting from Ottoman modernity. In Beirut, debates centred on who should be labelled as a “prostitute”; whether such subjects could be diferentiated; and the administration of their residence, health and visibility by diferent instances of the state. he mandate authorities tried to replicate the Paris system through a series of decrees, relegating the question of prostitution to administrative custom. hat scandalized municipal City Introductions authorities and the police —former Ottoman subjects— who disputed sovereignty over women who could be classiied as prostitutes. In their perspective, the core debates were juridical questions: about who could claim foreign or artist status and who could be taxed. Ottoman prostitution he vocabulary of prostitution varied across the Egyptian and Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, but overlapped consistently with class distinction. In Cairo, prostitutes, al-nisa’ al fawahish or al-nisa’ al-mashhurat, had been recognized members of the lowly professions along with other entertainment specialists and had come under the iscal jurisdiction of a tax farm at least since the sixteenth century. In the nineteenth century, after being banned from entering Cairo on pain of death by Bonaparte’s military authorities, prostitutes were increasingly opposed — in popular, expert and elite discourse — to the free people, al nas al-ahrar, and were perceived as members of al nas alashrar — the evil or dangerous classes. In 1834 prostitutes and public dancers, ghawazi and ‘awalim, were banished from Cairo, large cities and military camps where they were perceived to be threats to discipline. he authorities and plaintifs consistently expressed concern that the places where those people exercised their trade — cofee shops, taverns and brothels — should not be too close to decent people’s homes and that they not walk promiscuously down the streets. he cofee house had introduced an alternative night-time sociability in the medieval Middle East when nightlife in the city had been limited to the tavern or the gambling den, where one risked soul, reputation or even life. he cabaret and the café chantant did as much in the nineteenth century; disreputable in the metropole, their novelty and association with foreigners and Western mores made them constantly suspect in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. he port area of Beirut was described by Nerval in 1851 as full of cafes and cabarets and infested with Greek and Maltese sailors. A few decades later, the new seaside cafes in the coastal area of Zaytouneh emerged as a respectable space of leisure in contrast to the notorious quarters east of Sahat al-Burj and the port. As spaces of sociability emerged, new Ottoman police laws, taxes on cofee houses and casinos and alcohol-vending regulations were issued in 1878. In 1888 an imperial decree regulated and taxed the storage of imported alcohol. According to Hanssen (2005), the irst to advise spatial coninement for prostitutes was a resident French doctor, Benoit Boyer, who conducted a sanitary enquiry in 1897 at the request of the Ottoman authorities. Many women engaged in the trade only arrived at their workplace after sunset. Boyer, accustomed to the Paris system of regulated prostitution, found it unbearable that the “creatures” infested salubrious “decent” citizens’ living quarters with hygienic and moral corruption. he fact that the Beirut municipality carried out compulsory monthly sanitary check-ups on the 200 to 220 known prostitutes, charging them up to the equivalent of over 8 francs, did little to alleviate Boyer’s disgust. He insisted that a designated zone of exclusion be implemented for the 40-odd scattered brothels, setting them apart from the urban fabric. he results of the enquiry were published, but the recommendation for segregation went unheeded. . 27 T R A F F I C K I N G I N WO M E N 1 9 2 4 - 1 9 2 6 28 . T h e Pa u l K i n s i e R e p o r t s f o r t h e L e a g u e o f Na t i o n s ‒ V O L . I I Ottoman modernity While much work is yet to be done on the cartography of Ottoman prostitution, by the late nineteenth century women employed away from watchful families and neighbours had incurred the moral disapproval of religious authorities like the Maronite clergy. Losing marriage prospects in their pursuit of wages to sustain decadent family economies, some of the girls and women working in the silk industry eventually moved to the outskirts of Beirut, feeding an urban imaginary that equated banat al-karhane, the girls from the silk-spinning mills or ‘amilat, working women, with prostitutes. he currency of karhane as a term referring to a brothel long outlived the silk industry in the mountains. In fact it seems to have travelled to Egypt by the 1870s, perhaps in the wake of the Egyptian campaign when Muhammad Ali’s men developed such a taste for the prostitutes of Syria that a syphilis epidemic ensued, paralyzing the Egyptian army and infuriating the Pasha and his son. Practices with checkered local histories alternating between toleration and persecution, such as public drinking and commercial sex, went through late Ottoman permutations in which they came to be associated with a European modernity that was to be emulated. he Protestant missionary, Henry Jessup, complained of that in Beirut: “Whereas before the Pasha of Beirut [had] closed the only grogshop … by the turn of the century there were 120 licensed saloons and Moslems of the two extremes of society, the Turkish civil and military oicers and the lowest class of boatmen and artisans, drink as much as the foreign Ionian Greeks, and the native so-called Christian sects”.1 he modernizing Ottoman civil service came to champion public drinking as a sign and symptom of a universal modern civilization. Drink in the Ottoman context, however, had been associated with the company of women “of little virtue”. Both were in ample supply in 1907, when 14-year-old Umar Salih, the son of a Palestinian rural notable was sent to Beirut for a year at the new sultaniye school. As can be learned from his memoirs: “he city was roaring with places of seduction, brothels and nightclubs for adolescents”, where Umar and his schoolmates spent “stealthy nights revelling, watching ilms or popular dances … or for sexual pleasures with a young girl or other such matters.”2 According to Hanssen, by 1911–1913, among the moral incentives to relocate one of the oldest and largest cemeteries in the city from its prime real estate location in central Beirut was the dispersal of illicit brothels that had recently erupted in the cemetery’s perimeter. A suq al-‘ummumiyya, a prostitute’s market, existed inside the city walls of Beirut around Khan al-Arwam before the urban expansion of the nineteenth century. In turn of the century Beirut the “common” class, tabaqa al-’amma, opposed in the public imagination to the tabaqa al-khassa of the government and the rich, included “the roughs and toughs” — the qabaday but also rijal al futuwwa wa abna’ al hawa. he enlargement of the port and the establishment of modern consumption quarters attracted brothels to the fringes of the newly fashionable areas. According to the head of the guild of porters, before it was moved to the quarter of Saii in 1913, the suq of women was in the suq al-khammamir (the wine sellers’ market) between the Petit Seray and the port east of the Muslim cemetery. When the French army arrived in 1920, the brothels moved to an area known 1 Cited in Hanssen, 2005, pp. 202–203. 2 Ibid., p. 180. City Introductions as wara’ al-bank or al-Manshiyya, behind the former Ottoman bank building east of Sahat al-Burj. An old Beiruti confessed that at the time, the number of public women (al-mumsat) was around 850 Arab women from Lebanon, Palestine and Syria, and there were no less than 400 foreign girls, French, Greek and Turkish. According to Al-Sayyid Sha’ban, the most famous prostitutes were considered great stars who ofered their services in public houses that were the property of respected local families. he majority of prostitutes, however, were social “outcasts” who had arrived from the outskirts of Beirut. The Mandate What happened in the Mashriq during the period of French colonial rule, and how does it relect the crossed histories of the colonial encounter? Who were those public women, how did they come to be marginalized, and what was their relationship with the colonial state? he administration of the mandates conferred by the League of Nations was subject to new criteria of legitimacy as well as to new reporting requirements. Territories under mandate administration and tutelary metropolises had to respond to calls for transparency and imperatives to conform to the new international governance emerging in bodies like the League. Practices with multiple histories, logic and vocabulary — such as commercial sex — were subjected to the emerging new norms. Women were the subject of debate in various commissions and bodies of experts in consultation with social agents that had acquired new legitimacy at the turn of the century, like social science researchers and social purity campaigners. Conversations and consultations that acquired international currency and came to shape international law and the terms of its debate were often led by Anglophone civil society. Eventually championed by institutions of international governance as new universalist moral vocabularies, they were constructed through fact-inding missions that initially sought to map particular circuits and traic. In those debates, all women engaging in commercial sex — whether temporarily, seasonally or full time — came to be construed as unwilling victims of trade and mobilities that needed to be supervised by states, experts and international governance bodies, and stopped. In the French administration of Lebanon and Syria, a paradox emerged. hough France adhered to the League of Nations Convention on the Traic of Women and Children — being one of the very few countries to sign and ratify the Agreement of 1904 and the Conventions of 1910 and 1921 — the French administration devoted enormous energy to extending and expanding its system of regulated prostitution in the mandates conferred to its tutelage. he paradox has been explained by Chaumont (2009) in terms of the production of a new international order through expert debates; yet the colonial entanglements of this tension invite further work. Mediterranean debates on working women and prostitution in the mandate period can be read as crossed histories that acknowledge colonial spaces and their history of regulating sexuality as well as the new and scandalous public debates on women’s work, women’s bodies and women’s relation to the law which the colonial authorities dragged into their colonial administration. he state became a procuring state — importing experts and administrative arrangements developed in its North African territories, as architects for an enormous industry of prostitution destined to serve . 29 T R A F F I C K I N G I N WO M E N 1 9 2 4 - 1 9 2 6 30 . T h e Pa u l K i n s i e R e p o r t s f o r t h e L e a g u e o f Na t i o n s ‒ V O L . I I its troops in the Mashriq. he system replicated what they believed to be eicient measures, like the installation of reserved quarters and more lexible arrangements like the BMC — bordel militaire de campagne — a travelling brothel that followed campaigning troops. he system relied on the growing militarization of the commercial sex market. With the British and French military and administrative presence during the mandates, venues ofering “modern” pleasures with local histories multiplied further, and so did their purveyors and oicial attempts to curb and regulate them. As Znaien (2012) has calculated by crossing French and Lebanese sources, Beirut’s brothels jumped from a total of 46 early in the mandate in 1925 to 62 by 1930 and 76, nearly double the initial number in 1932. Whether as providers of Western crafts and commodities materializing in the urban modern Eastern Mediterranean or as prostitutes engaged in state-engineered servicing of troops stationed in military outposts, women circulated despite the hardening of restrictions on movement by the authorities, the League of Nations’ concerns over traicking in women, and local hostility on the part of conservative and religious sectors, who equated the French presence with moral depravity. Conclusion In conclusion, colonial prostitution in the Mashriq unfolded at the intersection of several debates. From the perspective of the mandate state, concerns initially centred on mobility and migration, contagion and circulation. Very quickly they included doubts about the legitimacy of colonial rule. he mandate was questioned through protests against French administrative practice and attempts on French “national honour” that led to debates on the integration of mandated territories into metropolitan politics and across imperial jurisdictions. French and local authorities found common ground on issues of gendered spaces and occupations. Imperial competition, including Franco-British tensions during wartime, but also the deinition of the French mandate’s policy regarding women in contrast to British policy, also played its part, as did the creation of international boundaries that resulted in certain movements being prohibited and their transgression labelled — as in “white slave trade” cases. From the perspective of the Mashriqi elite, prostitution and the visibility of foreign and local women in public sparked debates on changing spaces of sociability and on the ambivalent desirability of modernity. From the perspective of the suspects — women who engaged in activities classiied as prostitution, the debate hinged on employment opportunities, but also on the possibility of embodying desirability and modernity in the Mashriq. City Introductions Bibliography • Appleton, Paul. La traite des blanches. Paris: Rousseau, 1903. 300 p. • Bernheimer, Charles. Figures of Ill Repute: Representing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century France. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989. • Bernstein, Deborah. Gender, Nationalism and Colonial Policy: Prostitution in the Jewish Settlement of Mandate Palestine, 1918–1948. Women’s History Review, vol. 21 (2012), pp. 81–100. • Bland, Lucy. Banishing the Beast: Sexuality and the Early Feminists. New York: New Press, 1995. • Chaumont, Jean-Michel. Le mythe de la traite des blanches: enquête sur la fabrication d’un léau. Paris: La Découverte, 2009. • Clancy-Smith, J. A. and F. Gouda, eds. 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