Sex and empire

Abstract

The empire offered many sexual opportunities for Europeans, for some a license to enjoy pleasures condemned in Europe, for others a chance to combat perceived vice and spread European precepts of morality. Venereal disease, prostitution and concubinage, and the birth of mixed‐race children preoccupied colonial authorities, while tropes of exotic and seductive women and men, and visions of depravity, became the stock‐in‐trade of writing and art. Colonial experiences challenged European sexual norms, and sex became a key arena for affirming or contesting standards of masculinity and femininity, racial exclusivity, and respectability. Colonialism left a legacy of new social and medical categorizations of sexuality, introduced different technologies of birth control and treatment of disease, and established law codes that regulated sexual behavior and sometimes survived decolonization.