Prostitution, Race and Politics ― Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire

In addition to shouldering the blame for the increasing incidence of venereal disease among sailors and soldiers, prostitutes throughout the British Empire also bore the burden of the contagious diseases ordinances that the British government passed. By studying how British authorities enforced these laws in four colonial sites between the 1860s and the end of the First World War, Philippa Levine reveals how myths and prejudices about the sexual practices of colonized peoples not only had a direct and often punishing effect on how the laws operated, but how they also further justified the distinction between the colonizer and the colonized.

Philippa Levine is Professor of History at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She is the author of the forthcoming A Short History of the British Empire and a contributor to the Oxford History of the British Empire.