2025/05/01 by Marie‐Paule Ha · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis #Race, History, and American Society #Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
paper · doi:10.1215/15476715-11609781
openalex publication_date 2025/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
Black Market Business is a well-documented study of the clandestine sex industry in Tonkin in late colonial Vietnam during the interwar years, an era that witnessed momentous social, cultural, and economic changes. The book delineates in great detail the complex and multifaceted social, legal, economic, and political infrastructure of this illicit trade, laying out the causes of its quick expansion, the typology of sex workers, the link of prostitution to human trafficking, and the spread and control of sexually transmitted diseases. One of the key factors underlying the exponential increase of underground prostitution was the widespread dire poverty of the Tonkin countryside, which drove a large number of destitute rural women to the urban areas, where a growing Indigenous middle class and the large presence of the colonial army created a surging demand for commercial sexual service.Given the informal character of clandestine prostitution, one major challenge in researching the book has been the dearth of official archival documents on the subject, a difficulty further compounded by the absence of written documentation left behind by the prostitutes themselves, most of whom were illiterate. However, Firpo succeeded in making up for this shortfall by combing through Vietnamese-language newspapers. From their reportage articles, particularly those that focused on dispossessed and marginalized segments of the population, she retrieved an abundance of data on the illegal sex trade. In addition to the local press, she also drew on transcripts of colonial court cases, vice squad reports on forced sex work, and medical files from venereal clinics.Building on this wide range of sources, Firpo reconstitutes the social and economic circumstances that brought women to prostitution; many of them were victims of human trafficking and debt-bondage arrangements. Firpo then explores the highly intricate workings of different types of sexual services ranging from underage sex workers recruited among orphaned and abandoned juveniles from the countryside to sex work in the more traditional ả đào singing houses, and, finally, taxi dancers in Western-style dance halls. Records from court cases and clinics provide extensive documentation on the stringent regulatory regimes of the colonial government to contain the spread of venereal diseases by controlling infected sex workers. A notable mechanism set up to curb the transmission of venereal diseases consisted in submitting prostitutes to gynecological exams and administering treatment to those found to be infected. What transpires from the reportage narratives of the women in the brothels is the horrendous plight of the Vietnamese female underclass, whose structural social and economic vulnerability left them no other possibility of making a decent living besides selling their bodies.In tandem with endemic rural poverty, the advent of modernization and Westernization among the French educated urban middle class constituted the other major driving force in the spread of underground prostitution. In the sex industry, this cultural change manifested itself in the emergence of the modern dance hall trend referred to as “the child of Europeanization” (164). The taxi dancers, who serviced dance halls, took on the look of the stylish “modern girl” of the 1930s, recognizable notably by their glamorous Western-style clothing and free-spirited demeanor. While embracing an ostentatious, urban, sophisticated, and carefree lifestyle, most of the taxi dancers were in fact peasant girls who, driven by hardship, had migrated to the city in search of a better life. It was through a reappropriation of the modern girl’s aura that the clandestine sex industry succeeded in marketing its sexual services to a new Westernized urban clientele.One distinctive feature of this study is its fine attention to the larger cultural context in which illicit prostitution evolved in colonial Vietnam. Firpo shows how the sex industry exploited debt bondage, a long-standing and widespread practice in Vietnamese society, to trick young women into selling their bodies. These debt arrangements were commonly found in many sectors of the local economy, providing people with a means to find temporary relief of their financial needs. The chapter on the ả đào singers likewise provides related historical background on this traditional entertainment once greatly appreciated by scholar gentry, which had fallen into disrepute with the decline of the mandarin class under French domination.Despite the limitations of archival sources on the subject and the unavailability of firsthand testimonies from the clandestine prostitutes themselves, Firpo has done a splendid job of reconstructing many of the important facets of the black market prostitution in late colonial Tonkin. The book offers a comprehensive account of the different forms of the illicit sex trade with abundant details on the complex relationships between sex workers, brothel madams, and clients, as well as the colonial administration’s attempts to intervene and regulate these activities, albeit without great success. The one aspect of the study of prostitution that could have been developed more fully is the view of women’s press on the subject. Besides the phóng sự journalists’ writings, the selling of women’s bodies was also reported in women’s periodicals such as the widely read Phụ Nũ’ Tân Văn (Ladies Journal), which featured articles on the hardship of the underclass, such as female miners, laborers, and prostitutes. How did the female contributors and readers of these women’s journals, who were mostly from the middle class, respond to the plight of their less fortunate sisters?Black Market Business is a significant addition to gender and social history in the field of Vietnamese studies. This meticulously researched study of the sex industry in colonial Vietnam has the great merit of bringing traces of one of the most marginalized groups of women back into the historical record. The book is of particular relevance to students and scholars interested in gender politics, public health issues, and questions of sexuality.