Buying Sex in the Age of Regulation: British Soldiers and Sex Markets in Colonial India, 1868-1899

Historical inquiries into prostitution in the Indian subcontinent have largely focused on the figure of the person selling sexual services, while remaining silent on the other side of this phenomenon, that is, its consumption. This paper attempts to confront this historical double-standard by reworking a category of sex buyers, namely British soldiers, into the wider history of sex markets in colonial India from the passing of the Indian Contagious Diseases Act in 1868 till the Brussels Conference of Social Hygiene in 1899. I consider the multitude of ways in which soldiers engaged with prostitutes and sex markets during a period that begins with the implementation of statewide regulatory practices to reduce venereal diseases among troops in India, and concludes at an international conference where representatives from Britain and across Europe debate the validity of regulating prostitution in comparative contexts. Within this framing, my study seeks to uncover behavioral patterns and norms around the consumption of sex by soldiers in India, while also showcasing the transnational backdrop against which the ‘social question’ of prostitution and sex-buying was being discussed. I will read colonial official documentation, civil society records and testimony from soldiers against one another in order to interrogate the act of buying sex in terms of sexual norms, market forces and state policy. By problematizing the consumption of sex, this paper considers how soldiers’ sexual behaviors were complicit in the failure of regulation in empire, and also provides a fresh perspective on the development of sex markets in colonial India.