To browse Academia. Skip to main content. You're using an out-of-date version of Internet Explorer. Log In Sign Up. Christina Firpo. The family appealed to the authorities, which eventually freed her. All rights reserved. Prostitution was legal but regulated in colonial Vietnam. The French-regulated prostitution system had emerged in the metropole in the early nineteenth century and was promulgated throughout most of the French empire by the late nineteenth century.
The regulatory system was designed to control the spread of venereal disease, keep prostitution out of the public view, and raise revenue for the French state.
Yet, the regulatory system also burdened sex workers with its taxes, limitations on solicitation, and medical exam requirements. As a result, a thriving black market for clandestine prostitution developed. This association of sex and song in the colonial era would taint the reputation of the singers and, ultimately, the art form itself.
Some of those women who migrated to the cities looking for work, or a more glamorous life, eventually turned to clandestine prostitution to support themselves. One of the challenges of studying clandestine prostitution is that the sex workers and their managers deliberately tried to keep their activities secret. As a result, it is difficult to find sources written by the sex workers them- selves.
For this study, I have had to rely almost exclusively on works pub- lished by men, some of whom interviewed sex workers extensively or, as doctors, treated them for venereal disease. I draw from French colonial archives, including police and public health records, as well as four epidemiology studies on venereal disease in Tonkin.
