Geographies of Regulation
Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the Empire

This study of British authorities' attempts to regulate prostitution both at home and abroad challenges our understanding of colonial regulation.

Philip Howell (Author)

9780521853651, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 August 2009

312 pages, 7 b/w illus. 19 maps 7 tables
23.5 x 16 x 2 cm, 0.63 kg

'[Howell's] impressive body of work, culminating and enriched in this new monograph, will certainly have a significant and lasting impact on the way that historians and historical geographers discuss how prostitution was controlled in Britain and around the world.' Cultural and Social History

In the nineteenth century British authorities at home and abroad attempted to regulate prostitution in order to combat the spread of venereal diseases. Philip Howell examines in detail four sites of such regulated prostitution - Liverpool, Cambridge, Gibraltar and Hong Kong - and considers the similarities as well as the differences between colonial and metropolitan practices. Placing these sites within their local, regional and global contexts, the author argues that the British administration of commercial sexuality was deeper and more extensive than conventionally portrayed. The book challenges our understanding of what constitutes colonial regulation and also confronts imperial historiographies in which projects are simply translated from metropolis to periphery. By emphasizing both particular sites of regulated prostitution, and their place in the British imperial world, this book contributes not only to histories of gender and sexuality, but also to the revision of British imperial history.

1. Introduction: Britain and the historical geography of regulationism
2. Partial legislation and privileged places: the contagious diseases acts
3. Liverpool, localisation and the municipal regulation of prostitution in Britain
4. A private contagious diseases act: prostitution and the proctorial system in Victorian Oxbridge
5. Sexuality, sovereignty and space: colonial law and the making of prostitute subjects in Gibraltar and the British Mediterranean
6. Race and the regulation of prostitution in Hong Kong and the overseas empire
7. Conclusions: mapping the politics of regulation.

Subject Areas: Historical geography [HBTP], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], British & Irish history [HBJD1], General & world history [HBG]