Examining global, local, and personal histories of trafficking through microhistory

Antonio Carvelli, an Italian man living in New Zealand trafficked a young New Zealander, Lydia Harvey, to Buenos Aires and then to London, where he compelled her to sell sex.  In the spring of 1910, the metropolitan police discovered his activities, and he was  tried and sentenced to 6 months hard labour and deportation from Britain.  Lydia Harvey was repatriated to New Zealand in the autumn.  Histories of trafficking and prostitution often deploy brief anecdotes such as this one to relate the ‘human’ and complex side of these issues, to ‘rescue’ historical actors from past obscurity, and to ground political and cultural accounts in actual experience.  

Rather than deploying a series of anecdotes, my new project uses microhistory to intimately explore the lives and contexts of the people involved in this one fascinating case.  I argue that global microhistory is an excellent way to gain a clearer picture of the complexities and lived experience of trafficking in this period, and that by shrinking the lens to the level of individual experience, a single historian is able to explore the truly global, transitory, and multifactorial nature of the phenomenon.  But this approach has also thrown up several methodological, theoretical and ethical questions. Does this approach actually have the ability to contribute to a wider historiography?  Do these individuals—many of whom had traumatic and potentially shameful experiences--want to be illuminated?  This workshop paper will explore what a global microhistory of one specific case can contribute to the history of trafficking, prostitution, migration.