Conclusion

This chapter concludes that Tonkin's flourishing black market for sex during the interwar years owed its success in large part to French colonial rule. Colonial rule gave rise to sites of tension — economic disparity, an urban–rural divide, an uneven distribution of colonial law, and cultural shifts — and it was within them that the black market thrived. The colonial state's blind spots allowed this market to flourish. For one thing, colonial officials miscalculated the unintended effects of their strictly regulated “tolerance” system. In marginalizing certain colonized populations — in this case impoverished Vietnamese women — the French colonial state lost much of its ability to monitor and control them. Despite numerous regulations and ordinances, as well as exhaustive policing efforts, sex workers easily sidestepped the reach of the government and found ways to make money in an informal economy. The chapter also states that the stories of the women and girls in this book reveal a close relationship between choice and coercion. Taken individually, it is tempting to reduce these people's experiences to a binary of either agency or victimhood. But placing their stories within the context of larger historical trends such as mass poverty, migration, and cultural change reveals that this binary is misleading.

Unfree Labor

This chapter examines two forms of unfree labor — debt-bondage and human trafficking — in which sex workers were not recompensed for their labor and, for a variety of reasons, remained stuck in their place of employment. Women involved in debt-bondage arrangements exchanged work for room, board, and a cash loan. Under debt-bondage agreements, the indebted paid off a monetary debt through labor for a definitive period of time. The chapter discusses how unscrupulous managers used debt-bondage to exploit sex workers. It also talks about trafficked women and how they were typically tricked or abducted and sold against their will to brothels in Tonkin or China, linking the sex industries of both countries. The chapter discusses how the prevalence of trafficking became a thorn in the side of the colonial government as France had already completely abolished slavery and slave trade in its terriroties since 1848. Finally, it discusses the colonial efforts to stop abuses of unfree labor.

Venereal Diseases

This chapter discusses how the treatment of venereal diseases guided the colonial policing of sex work. Colonial policies designed to slow the spread of venereal diseases by policing ended up backfiring — inadvertently driving women underground to sell sex on the black market, where infection spread all the more easily. In the late 1930s, venereal disease prevention became a useful tool for policing unregistered sex work in ways that were not permitted under the 1921 law. The chapter talks about the making of the 1921 law, patterns of venereal disease transmission in Tonkin, the fight against venereal diseases, the collaborative efforts they mad to reduce transmission in the countryside, and the informal reform of the regulation system.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the black market sex industry in late colonial Vietnam. It argues that the interwar black market sex industry thrived in spaces of tension, which were created by the confluence of economic, demographic, and cultural changes sweeping late colonial Tonkin. Tension developed in sites of legal inconsistency, cultural changes, economic disparity, rural–urban division, and demographic shifts, brought about by colonial policies. An investigation of this black market shows how a particular population of impoverished women — a group regrettably understudied by historians — experienced the tensions. Marginalized by the colonial economy and swayed by new cultural trends, these women came to participate in black market sex work by choice, by force, or, more often, by some combination of the two.

Adolescent Sex Work

This chapter delves into the dark market for juvenile sex work, which to a large extent was a function of Tonkin's extreme poverty. It discusses the multiple social safety nets of Vietnamese society and how despite the availability of such programs, children fall back on sex work for survival. It discusses how colonial authorities tried to regulate juvenile sex work through age restrictions. The chapter explores the operations of the market for adolescent sex workers, including the various ways that girls were recruited to sex work, who their managers were, how these managers kept their operations secret, and which industries served, in part, as fronts for juvenile sex work.

The Geography of Vice

This chapter is a spatial analysis of Tonkin's black market sex industry. It investigates how the area's physical, administrative, economic, and political geography shaped the ways that unregistered sex was sold in Tonkin. Some of the areas discussed here include the Red River Delta, Hanoi, Hanoi's suburbs, Hai Phong City, the military bases, the border towns, and the coast of Tonkin. The chapter discusses how the geographic and political landscape of Tonkin enabled traffickers and clandestine sex workers to evade colonial police. It talks about how colonial land policies, the tax system, and the government's neglect of the suburbs further impoverished peasants, leading women to seek alternative income through sex work.

Taxi Dancers

This chapter explores the clandestine sex work that occurred in dance halls which were also referred to as “the child of Europeanization.” Whereas sex work in ả Đào singing houses was marketed to men who sought comfort in traditional culture, the sex work that occurred in dance halls appealed to men excited — even titillated — by modernization and Western culture. As their success derived from both an image of urban sophistication and a mostly peasant workforce, dance halls exemplified the urban–rural divide in colonial Tonkin. The growing economic disparity and cultural differences between urban and rural areas in the late colonial period gave rise to the all the elements necessary for selling unregistered sex work in dance halls.

Ả Đào Singers

This chapter is a study of the sale of sex in ả Đào singing houses, a form of female performance art dating back to the fourteenth century. In its twentieth-century iteration, sex work in ả Đào singing houses appealed to those with a taste for traditional culture in an era of dynamic cultural change. The success of clandestine sex work in ả Đào venues lay in the ability of sex workers and their managers to capitalize on both the sensuality inherent to this genre of female performance art and the legitimacy associated with a revered traditional art form. The result was that ả Đào venues operated as ambiguous spaces that blurred the traditional lines separating art, sex, and commerce.