Black Market Business

Elizabeth Firpo Christina

Description

Black Market Business is a grassroots social history of the clandestine market for sex in colonial Tonkin. Lively and well told, it explores the ways in which sex workers, managers, and clients evaded the colonial regulation system in the turbulent economy of the interwar years. Christina Elizabeth Firpo argues that the confluence of economic, demographic, and cultural changes sweeping late colonial Tonkin created spaces of tension in which the interwar black market sex industry thrived. The clandestine sex industry flourished in sites of legal inconsistency, cultural changes, economic disparity, rural-urban division, and demographic shifts. As a nexus of the many tensions besetting late colonial Tonkin, the black market sex industry serves as a useful lens through which to examine these tensions and the ways they affected marginalized populations. More specifically, an investigation of this black market shows how a particular population of impoverished women-a group regrettably understudied by historians-experienced the tensions.Drawing on an astonishingly diverse and multilingual source base, Black Market Business includes detailed cases of juvenile prostitution, human trafficking, and debt bondage arrangements in sex work, as well as cases in Tonkin's bars, hotels, singing houses, and dance clubs. Using GIS technology and big data sets to track individual actors in history, it serves as a model for teaching new methodological approaches to conducting social histories of women and marginalized people.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Southeast Asia
• History of Asia

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501752674
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 7 Mo

Extrait

BLACKMARKETBUSINESS

StudiesoftheWeatherheadEastAsianInstitute,ColumbiaUniversity

TheStudiesoftheWeatherheadEastAsianInstituteofColumbiaUni- versity were inaugurated in 1962 to bring to a wider public the results of significant new research on modern and contemporary East Asia.

BLACKMARKET BUSINESS

Se l l i ng Se x i n Nor t he r n Vi e t na m, 1920– 1945

C h r i s t i n a E l i z a b e t h F i r p o

CORNELLUNIVERSITYPRESS Ithacaand London

Copyright © 2020 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

First published 2020 by Cornell University Press

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Firpo, Christina Elizabeth, author. Title:Blackmarketbusiness:sellingsexinNorthern Vietnam, 1920–1945 /by Christina Elizabeth Firpo. Description: Ithaca [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2020. | Series:Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University |Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020011449 (print) | LCCN 2020011450 (ebook) | ISBN9781501752650 (cloth) | ISBN 9781501752667 (epub) | ISBN 9781501752674(pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Prostitution—Vietnam, Northern— 20th century. |Prostitution—Law and legislation— Vietnam, Northern—20th century. |Human trafficking—Vietnam, Northern—20th century. | Women—Vietnam,Northern—Social conditions— 20th century. | Vietnam, Northern—Colonial influence. Classification: LCC HQ242.5 .F57 2020 (print) | LCC HQ242.5 (ebook) | DDC306.7609597/3—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020011449 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ 2020011450

Cover image: “Saigon--Une horizontale Annamite,” postcard of a sex worker postmarked 1914. From author’s personal collection (purchased through Delcampe).

To my loves: Mike, Chiara, and Ezra

Contents

Acknowledgments ix

A Note on Terms and Translations xiii

Introduction: Late Colonial Vietnam and the Development of the Black Market

1. The Geography of Vice: Spatial Dimensions of Clandestine Sex Work

2. Venereal Diseases: Policing the Sources of Infection

3. Unfree Labor: Debt Bondage and Human Trafficking

4. Adolescent Sex Work: Poverty and Its Effects on Children

5. Ὂ Đào Singers: New Ways to Police Female Performance Art

6. Taxi Dancers: Western Culture and the Urban-Rural Divide

Conclusion:PatternsofClandestine Sex Industries into the Postcolonial Era

Notes 195 Bibliography 235 Index 249

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A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

Fromthebottomofmyheart,Iwouldlike to thank countless individuals and institutions for helping this book come to print. The research forBlack Market Businesswas made possible by grants from the American Philosophical Society and the Dutch Royal Society for Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) as well as numerous grants from my home institution, California Polytechnic State Univer- sity. At Cornell University Press, I would like to express my deep appreci- ation to Emily Andrew, Alexis Siemon, Karen Hwa, Don McKeon, and the faculty board for all the hard work that they put into this manuscript. I am especially grateful for the thoughtful feedback from the two exter- nal readers, Charles Keith and Micheline Lessard. This book would not be what it is today without the help of the readers and the Cornell staff. CalPolyUniversityinSanLuisObispo,California,hasproventobe a warm home while I worked on this book. My students, the staff, and my fellow faculty, have enriched my work significantly. In particular, I am grateful to the history department chair and my close friend Kate Murphy, as well as the administrative assistant, Sherry Miller, Dean Philip Williams, College of Liberal Arts librarian Brett Bodemer, library data specialist Russ White, the staff of the interlibrary loan office, the wom- en’s and gender studies department, and my colleagues in the history department. The hard work of my research assistants, Solange Khielbach, Sophie Rosales, Kim Adams, Katie Romero, James Cecil, Darby Leahy, and Hoa Thi Nguyen, has been indispensable and must be heartfully acknowledged. While working on this book, I regularly taught a class on the history of prostitution in Asia, which was often the brightest part of my workday. Not only were the students a delight, they were engaged and asked critical questions that forced me to think about this topic in new ways. Ihavethegreatfortuneofbeingpartofavibrantgroupofscholars and archivists. In my countless research trips to Vietnam, I have received tremendous help from the archivists at the National Archives, especially

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