Interracial Transactional Sex, the White Slave Trade, and Colonial Rule in the French Imperial-Nation State (1910s-1940s)

In the interwar period, dozens of French women embarked on a journey from Bordeaux to Dakar, where they entered the few brothels staffed with white women and patronized by French men. Reading against the grain the police records from Bordeaux detailing individuals’ circulation across the empire, this presentation seeks to uncover 1. the ways in which French authorities sought to curtail what they perceived as instances of “white slavery” or traffic in women, and 2. the experiences and processes by which women became entangled in this phenomenon. Additionally, it investigates the connections that brothel owners established with the metropole to facilitate the influx of French women and respond to local sexual demands for white prostitutes. Several questions will guide this talk. Why did some French women turn to the colonies to sell sex? How did they—along with traffickers—circumvent national and international surveillance combating sex trafficking? How did notions of race inform this phenomenon? And, from a methodological point of view, what are the limitations of official records in shedding light onto the day-to-day organization and experiences of sex trafficking and brothel prostitution? In articulating the history of colonial prostitution to the white slave trade and showing the imbrications of race and transactional sex in structuring relations of power both at home and overseas, this paper contributes to the historical literature on the place of race in French discourse and sexual politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.