Regulation and the Nation: Comparative Perspectives on Prostitution and Public Policy

Abstract

These studies of prostitution in five different countries situate commercial sex and responses to it in the context of social, political, and economic changes. In the last two decades, historians of sexuality have made a persuasive case that scholarly investigations of such topics as prostitution, once considered details of history, contribute to the understanding of larger historical issues. Such is the case with these works, which together underscore how the history of prostitution illuminates the larger story of drives for progress and modern governance in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.