Global Anti-Vice Activism, 1890–1950 : Fighting Drinks, Drugs, and 'Immorality'

Vice was one of the primary shared interests of the global community at the turn of the twentieth century. Anti-vice activists worked to combat noxious substances such as alcohol, drugs and cigarettes, and 'immoral' sexual activities such as prostitution. Nearly all of these activists approached the issue of vice by expressing worries about the body, its physical health, and functionality. By situating anti-vice politics in their broader historical contexts, Global Anti-Vice Activism, 1890-1950 sheds fresh light on the initiatives of various actors, organizations and institutions which have previously been treated primarily within national and regional boundaries. Looking at anti-vice policy from both social and cultural historical perspectives, it illuminates the centrality of regulating vice in imperial and national modernization projects. The contributors argue that vice and vice regulation constitute an ideal topic for global history, because they bridge the gap between discourse and practice, and state and civil society. Cover 1 Half-title 3 Title page 5 Copyright information 6 Table of contents 7 List of figures 9 List of tables 10 Notes on contributors 11 Acknowledgments 17 1 Introduction 19 Toward a “vicious turn”? Vices’ archeology of knowledge 30 Notes 38 Part I Health and the body 49 2 Modernity, vice, and the problem of nakedness 51 Notes 66 3 “Godless Edens” 71 Cranks, marginals, and marginals in memory 74 Ideal communities and anti-vice activism 75 Hostility to land communes 77 Religion, mysticism, and land communes 81 Moral opposition to land communes 83 Conclusion 84 Notes 85 4 Physical culture as “natural healing” 92 Life reform and the dangers of being labeled a “crank” 92 “No teetotal crank”: Sandow and the temperance movement 95 Naturalness as virtue 96 “A craving for drugs”: patent medicines and pharmaceutical drugs as vices 99 “Curing illness without medicine”: taking on doctors and the pharmaceutical industry 104 Conclusion and epilogue 109 Notes 110 Part II Drinks and drugs 119 5 The specter of degeneration 121 Race and the liquor traffic controversy 121 The Liquor Trade Committee 124 Alcohol, fecundity, and degeneration 129 The geography of drink and difference 133 Notes 138 6 A question of social medicine or racial hygiene? 142 Temperance and the tapestry of social hygiene 145 Eugenics, “racial poisons,” and temperance: a global discourse 150 Echoes of the racial degeneration discourse in the Balkans 153 Race and racial hygiene in the 1930s 156 Conclusion 161 Notes 162 7 Threats to empire 170 American evangelicals and the Anglo-Saxon moral reform movement, 1880s–1920s 171 Temperance, liquor legislation and the rise of illicit distillation in West Africa 177 Besieged within and without: illicit distillers, prostitutes, and internal disorder in British West Africa during World War II 180 The age of akpeteshie (illicit gin) 180 A diseased fighting force: VDs and British troops 183 Conclusion 190 Notes 191 8 Medical and criminological constructions of drug addiction in late Imperial and early Soviet Russia 197 Scientific perceptions of drug addiction in late Imperial Russia 199 Radical changes after World War I 201 Constructing the social problem: drug addiction in medical and legal texts of the early Soviet period 203 Conclusion 212 Notes 213 9 Cigarette smoking in modern Buenos Aires 221 Notes 234 Part III Prostitution and sex trafficking 237 10 The FBI’s White Slave Division 239 The white slavery crisis 242 The White Slave Division 246 Implications 251 Conclusion 255 Notes 256 11 Anti-vice lives 264 “Calcutta Vice: The Dragon of Calcutta Lust” 267 Geneva’s distant intimacies 273 Fictional facts and anti-vice lives 282 Notes 283 12 China’s prostitution regulation system in an international context, 1900–1937 288 The diffusion of regulated prostitution to China 289 Application of the regulatory model in China 292 The Chinese style of prostitution regulation 294 Domestic transmission of prostitution regulation 296 New meanings and consequences of regulation in China 297 Structural divergences from the European and Japanese models 297 Implications for women’s autonomy 299 Motivations for choosing a regulatory strategy 300 Notes 303 13 “Hey, GI, want pretty flower girl?” 308 Occupations and prostitution: Japan and Korea in the early Cold War 310 Moralizing the soldier’s body: education, VD prevention and hygienic regulations 313 Prophylaxis and surveillance: pro stations and VD contact tracing 317 Recovery and research: Venereal Disease Rehabilitation Center and VD lab 321 Conclusion 323 Notes 325 14 Global anti-vice activism: a postmortem 331 Notes 341 Index 343 This book sheds fresh light on the anti-vice initiatives of various actors, organizations and institutions which have previously been treated primarily within national and regional boundaries. Looking at anti-vice policy from global social and cultural historical perspectives, it illuminates the centrality of regulating vice in imperial and national modernization projects.