The military, prostitution, and colonial peoples: India and the Philippines, 1885-1917.

Abstract

British moral reformers, under the leadership of Josephine Butler, Henry J. Wilson and James Stansfeld, successfully campaigned for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. These Acts had introduced a military system of regulated prostitution into England modeled on state regulated prostitution utilized on the Continent from 1864 to 1869. These initial antiprostitution agitations later took the form of a social purification movement. Repeal in 1886 left the British Army in India in noncompliance with Parliamentary efforts at abolition. In 1891 American members of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union undertook a sociological investigation of Indian military cantonments-the Abolitionist cause had been extended to the United States and the Continent. Based on these reports, reformers at home were able to extract admissions from the military and government that the system continued in existence. Nevertheless, the British Army reorganized its program, according to subsequent investigations, into neoregulationism. During World War I, the British Army in India finally abandoned its neoregulationist policy. Symbolic reform was another matter. British reformers met with successes in introducing social purity into Indian social reform. Future campaigns against temple prostitution and Indian social progress grew from these efforts. The American experience with the Philippines was a logical extension of reform policy toward India. Failures paralleled those of British and Indian reformers. As in the case of British reform, there was a redirection of efforts to antiopium and antigambling reforms. Generally, anti-vice reforms were instrumentalities contributing to early efforts at "modernization."