Sex Work in French Mandate Lebanon and Syria: a History of Representations and Interventions (1920-1946)

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Sex Work in French Mandate Lebanon and Syria: a History of Representations and Interventions (1920-1946) Sex Work in French Mandate Lebanon and Syria: A History of Representations and Interventions (1920-1946) Pascale Nancy Graham Institute of Islamic Studies McGill University, Montréal August 2019 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy © Pascale Nancy Graham Table of Contents Abstract/Résumé iii Acknowledgements vii List of Abbreviations of Archives ix Chapter One: Introduction 1 Regulatory Structures of Sex Work through the Early Modern Ottoman Empire 8 From Ottoman Administration to the French System: Sex Work as Pathology 25 Implicating the League of Nations 39 Public Debates and the Creation of “Diametrically Opposed States of Existence” 46 Colonialism and Humanitarianism: Power and Exclusion 57 Primary Sources and Methodology 61 Thesis Overview 66 Chapter Two: The Power of Medicine: Sex Work, Containment, and the New Discourse of Public Health 71 The Insertion of Scientific Vocabulary into the State Apparatus: The “Truth” about Sex Work 75 Research on Sex Work in the Metropole: The “Indispensable Excremental Phenomenon” 78 The Transmission of Knowledge: The Pathologizing of Sex Work Comes to the Levant 85 The Commission of Medical Reports with the Same Old Message under the New Regime 95 Assessing the Risk of Social Contagion in a Rural Context 108 Conclusion 114 Chapter Three: The Paradox of Liminality: Medico-Administrative and Legal Discourses in Defense of Public Health 119 Those Existing Outside the Law: The Paradox of the French System in the Levant 124 Taxation: Discrimination Comes in Different Forms 134 Enforcement and “Porteuses de Ceinture Dorée”: The Complexity of Municipal Rule 143 Evading Criticism: Colonial Power and the Blame Game 155 The Sexual-Infrastructural Demands of World War II 164 Bringing Civilian and Military Authorities Together 171 Not in My Backyard: The Immobility of Sex Work 181 France’s Paternalism and Military Prowess 188 Conclusion 199 i Chapter Four: The Other Side of the Equation: The Rise of Humanitarian Discourses, the League of Nations, and the Armenian Question 205 The Rise of Humanitarianism in the Near East 206 The Armenian Genocide of 1915 and the New Face of White Slavery 212 The League of Nations, Armenian Refugees, and Humanitarian Interventions 227 Conclusion 246 Chapter Five: The Rescue Industry in the Levant: Whose “Needs” Were Being Served? 249 Migration and the “Desperate Victim” 250 Speaking Back to the Metropole: Abolitionism, France, and the Production of Sex Work Literature 255 Campaigns to End State-Sanctioned Sex Work in the Levant 268 The Rescue Industry: Philanthropic Aspirations and Creating “Need” 272 Forging Ties? Local, Regional, and International Alliances 284 Precarity among the Rescuers: The Bourj Mission and the “Beyhum Committee” 295 The League’s Travelling Committee Comes to the Levant 304 Alawites, Trafficking, and Servitude 310 Domestic Servants, Working-Class Women, and Moral Failures 313 Conclusion 318 Conclusion: Slipping Through the Fingers of Authority 328 Travelling Discourses: Sex Work Construction under the Mandate in Postcolonial Contexts 335 Continuity and Change 346 Bibliography 360 ii Abstract This thesis focuses on the representations of sex work in Syria and Lebanon in French and English discourses beginning in the nineteenth century until the end of World War II, with a particular focus on how these representations formulated interventions in the Levant during the French Mandate period (1920–1946). Employing archival sources including French diplomatic and military correspondence, official publications and reports of the League of Nations, contemporaneous newspaper and book publications, and correspondence produced by those working in the region, I reconstruct the history of sex work as it was articulated in these sources and the responses generated by a bourgeoning industry of local, regional, and international humanitarian cooperation attempting to rescue the “victims” of France’s colonial policies. What emerged were two predominant interpretations of what was cast as the “problem” of sex work: it was either a danger to public health or it was a means of enslaving and exploiting women. Both of these interpretations led to interventions on the ground. The resultant gendered and sexualized social order produced power dynamics that hinged on the control of a marginal, largely female, population, whether that control was in the form of incarcerating women suspected of practicing sex work clandestinely or in the form of “rescuing” them from their livelihood. By first tracing the origins of the “French system” back to the metropole, this thesis establishes the rationale behind, and discusses the enforcement of, the medico-administrative and legal frameworks implemented in the Levant after World War I. While the Ottoman state had certainly tried to control sex work, the regulation of sex work expanded greatly under French bureaucratic and military ascendency. The French colonial state presented its attempts to maintain medical and administrative control over sex workers in Lebanon and Syria as stemming from concerns about the health and safety of the public at large. However, in reality, these regulatory efforts were an integral part of maintaining French military dominance in the region. iii Before long, France’s public health discourses produced counterdiscourses that espoused the cause of “humanitarianism,” which were largely concerned with the trafficking and enslavement of vulnerable populations. These counterdiscourses, which had their origins in the aftermath of Armenian Genocide and which proliferated after the formation of the League of Nations, reached their zenith in the 1930s. Sex workers in the Levant therefore not only faced interventions from colonial and local bureaucrats, local police officers, and physicians, who wanted to control them, but also from moralists, missionaries, and feminists, who wanted to rescue them. These efforts of regulationists and abolitionists cannot only be thought of as responses to sex work but as constitutive of what made sex work what it was during the French Mandate period. iv Résumé Cette thèse porte sur les représentations du travail du sexe au Liban et en Syrie au cours de la période allant du début du 19e siècle jusqu’à la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, en s’attardant particulièrement au mandat français au Levant (1920-1946). La thèse traite de la représentation du travail du sexe dans des discours tant en Français qu'en Anglais, et explore les liens entre ces représentations et les interventions sur le terrain. Elle présente une reconstruction historique du travail du sexe à travers les archives diplomatiques et militaires françaises, les publications officielles et les rapports de la Société des Nations, les publications d’articles de presse et d’ouvrages contemporains, la correspondance des travailleurs de la région, ainsi que les réponses à ces écrits par l’industrie de la coopération humanitaire locale, régionale et internationale vouée au sauvetage des « victimes » des politiques coloniales françaises. L’analyse révèle deux visions dominantes de ce qui était considéré, à l’époque, comme le « problème » du travail du sexe. Selon la première, le travail du sexe constituait une menace pour la santé publique. En vertu de la seconde, il représentait un moyen d’asservir et d’exploiter les femmes. L’analyse démontre que chacune de ces visions prescrivait des interventions différentes sur le terrain, mais qu’elles contribuaient toutes deux à produire des rapports de pouvoir affectant un pan marginal, mais néanmoins significatif, d’une population principalement composée de femmes, que ce soit par le biais de l’incarcération de celles soupçonnées de s’adonner clandestinement au travail du sexe, ou en les « sauvant » de leur condition. En retraçant d’abord les origines du « système français » au cœur de la métropole, cette thèse reconstruit la logique qui oriente les cadres médicaux, administratifs et légaux, appliqués au Levant après la Première Guerre mondiale. L’État ottoman avait à l’évidence déjà tenté de contrôler le travail et le commerce du sexe, or la règlementation et la régulation de ces activités v se sont intensifiées sous l'ascendance bureaucratique et militaire française. L’État français colonial justifiait son intention d’exercer un contrôle administratif et médical des travailleuses du sexe au Liban et en Syrie par les risques que ces activités présentaient pour la santé et la sécurité publiques. En réalité, ces efforts de réglementation et de régulation devaient contribuer à maintenir la domination militaire française dans la région. Les discours sur la santé publique en vigueur en France alimentèrent toutefois des contre-discours « humanitaires » portant sur les questions du trafic et de l’asservissement des personnes les plus vulnérables. Ces contre- discours, qui émergèrent dans les années suivant le Génocide arménien, foisonnèrent ensuite dans la foulée de la formation de la Société des Nations, et atteignirent leur paroxysme dans les années 1930. Les travailleuses du sexe du Levant étaient donc confrontées non seulement aux interventions des bureaucrates coloniaux et locaux, des forces de police locales, et du corps médical qui, tous, souhaitaient contrôler ou réguler leurs activités; mais aussi aux actions des moralistes, missionnaires, et féministes, tous soucieux de les secourir. Ces actions de la part des régulationnistes et des abolitionnistes ne sont pas de simples réponses au
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