‘White Slaves’ in a Colonial Nation: the Dutch Campaign Against the Traffic in Women in the Early Twentieth Century
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663905049525 |
| Date | 01 March 2005 |
| Published date | 01 March 2005 |
| Author | Petra de Vries |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
‘WHITE SLAVES’ IN A
COLONIAL NATION: THE
DUTCH CAMPAIGN AGAINST
THE TRAFFIC IN WOMEN IN
THE EARLY TWENTIETH
CENTURY
PETRA DE VRIES
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
ABSTRACT
Between 1900 and World War I an international political campaign was conducted
against ‘white slave traffic’. This campaign ultimately resulted in two international
agreements to combat the procuring of women for ‘immoral purposes’ across
borders. This article analyzes the politics of the Dutch campaign and argues that it
gave rise to a powerful image of the white slave as a meaningful political concept.
Although forced prostitution is identified as one of the realities of female migration,
the ‘white slave’ is a historical construction. The first part of the article distinguishes
the social meaning of the ‘white slave’ from older notions about prostitution as
slavery. Using the lenses of race, gender and colonialism, the question is what the
‘whiteness’ of the white slave signified about women, sexual danger and the social
order. The second part discusses the political and legal aspects of the Dutch campaign,
for example, the rise of a gendered movement, the fight against the brothel and the
nature of certain legal changes.
KEY WORDS
gender; history; prostitution; race; sexual danger
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, www.sagepublications.com
0964 6639, Vol. 14(1), 39–60
DOI: 10.1177/0964663905049525
MARIE M. CAME from a respectable family in Budapest who provided
her with an excellent upbringing. However, as she was perceived as
a somewhat ‘loose’ girl, there were some tensions between her and
her family. One day, around 1902, she disappeared without a trace. Her story
was subsequently made known by a German journalist and published in the
periodicals of two Dutch organizations. It appeared that a certain Mr Rohiger
had hired her through an employment agency to become a governess in
Constantinople (currently Istanbul). When enquiries were made, it became
clear that Mr Rohiger and Marie had left eight days before in the company
of three other girls, two of them hired as a ‘servant’ and ‘housekeeper’ and
the other as a ‘chambermaid’. A detective, who was asked to trace them, trav-
elled to Constantinople and discovered a few telegraph messages between a
man named Salomonowski and another called Scharfmann, both ‘traffickers
in women’. Scharfmann owned a house where 40–50 girls were usually kept
‘in stock’ to prepare them for a life of prostitution. The girls were strictly
supervised, and if they did not willingly comply, they were beaten and denied
food, a treatment which soon made them apathetic. Following this, the
women were photographed and the ‘actual trading’ could begin. By posing
as a brothel owner in Alexandria, the detective could finally locate Marie and
the other three girls, all of whom were found in a deplorable condition.
Scharfmann was arrested by the Turkish police, however, he was seen again
outside the next day (Het Maanblad, 1902: 32–4).
Marie and her unfortunate companions were considered ‘white slaves’ by
her contemporaries. Her case was but one of many that were published in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which gave rise to an inter-
national campaign for the suppression of ‘the white slave traffic’. From about
1900 until World War I the campaign was at its height, although its influence
extended far beyond this period. The campaigners were quite successful in
bringing about major legal provisions against certain aspects of sex work.
This provided the basis for future national and international legislation on
prostitution and heralded a new era of sexual politics within and outside the
legislative arena. Even more importantly, the notion of young women traded
as ‘white slaves’ caught the imagination of many people for many years to
come. In 1940, three decades after the initial legal measures, a Dutch news-
paper observed that cheap novels and movies had ingrained a deep fear of the
white slave trader in everybody’s mind.1 In the 1950s, the white slave narra-
tive was updated with newspaper headings such as, ‘Heartless Villains Prey
On Your Daughter’.2In the 1960s, one author still referred to an almost
80-year-old sensational trafficking case as being at the roots of an ongoing
struggle against the ‘traffic in innocents’ (Terrot, 1961). Not surprisingly, in
the 1970s, some mothers, including my own, still tended to be terrified that
their daughters would end up somewhere as a white slave if they travelled to
exotic places. The ‘white slave’, in marking out a dangerous space for women,
became a symbol for sexual danger par excellence.
Relative to its remarkable historical impact, the historiography of national
and international white slave campaigns in Europe is not very extensive.
40 SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 14(1)
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