by PETRA DE VRIES
In 1897, two American women issued a shocking report about the living conditions of prostitutes who served the soldiers of the British Army in India.[1] Some of the women were simply sold to military brothels by family members or otherwise forced into prostitution. All of them were confined in secluded areas and subjected to compulsory medical treatment for venereal disease. Other abuses occurred as well. Soon the report became known among European feminists. At a conference during the “Nationale Tentoonstelling van Vrouwenarbeid” (National Exhibition of Women’s Labour[2]) in the Netherlands in 1898, the audience was horrified to hear about the fate of the Indian prostitutes. According to a French brochure that appeared in the same period, things were not much better in “our” Dutch East Indies: directly opposite every garrison there was a brothel and many poor young women were infected and “deformed” by Dutch soldiers.[3] With their growing number of international contacts, it became increasingly clear to feminists that sexual exploitation of women in prostitution was an international phenomenon. Virtually all of them considered prostitution a terrible evil, an archetypical form of sexual subordination of the entire female sex. When the report about the British Army came out in a Dutch translation, its front page showed a picture of a submissive-looking Indian woman who was being kept in chains.[4]
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