Chapter Two
“Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
Kempadoo (1998a:7) proposes that sex work is not universal or ahistorical, but rather
includes a variety of forms and actors and is subject to change (see also Manderson
1997:372). Arguing that sex work is, as she suggests, not universal or constant but
historically changing, in this chapter I connect the story of sex work in Cambodia to
larger transformations in the country’s modern history and demonstrate how its fate was
linked to the development of a modern public sphere and secular government.
Annuska Derks (2004a:127) suggests that the lack of documentation regarding
sex work in the early history of Cambodia makes it difficult to delineate any clear
picture. This is because written documentation was not a feature of pre-modern
Southeast Asia. The largely agrarian societies operated primarily on the basis of oral
cultures legitimised by kinship relations (see Watson Andaya 2000:231-6). Historical
sources from the Angkorian period (Khmer Empire), from the ninth to the fifteenth
centuries, are limited to an account produced by the Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan (Chou
Ta-Kuan), written some time after his year long stay in Cambodia (1296-1297); reliefs
at the Angkor Vat temple complex; and ancient stone inscriptions (see Zhou 1993). The
paucity of historical documentation is compounded during what historians consider
Cambodia’s “dark ages” or middle period (1432-1853), with very few Khmer texts or
stone inscriptions dating from this period (see Thompson 2000:47-9 and also Chandler
1992). Given the scarcity of historical sources, we are not in a position to know
definitively about cultural traditions surrounding prostitution before the colonial period.
52
Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
On the basis of documentary evidence in the French colonial archive, we can
however speculate that colonisation led to the introduction of new forms of stateregulated monetised sexual exchanges, a practice that may not have prevailed in
precolonial Cambodia. As a public sphere under modern secular governance developed,
colonial polices transformed various social arrangements, which had the effect of
constructing certain forms of sex work. Looking at the emergent tolerance of
prostitution in French Cambodia, I link the co-existence of regulation with the
complicity of the French colonial authorities.
In the first decades of colonisation, venereal disease in the colony saw
prostitution constructed as polluting, as a public health menace with specific
implications for male troops and security forces, and this discourse was used as a means
of control. However, given masculinist hegemony, the source of pollution was then, as
now, seen as female workers and not male clients. I look at the broad-reaching
consequences of notions of pollution that marked sex workers as a site of disease and
social decay, who were thus made to bear the blame for others. This chapter thus reveals
some of the effects of colonisation and in particular, how state-regulated prostitution
arose from the circumstances imposed by colonisation (see also Levine 2004:159).
Looking at the unfolding of attitudes towards women working in the industry
and attempts to regulate sexual commerce, I examine the emergence and growth of
regulated sex work in Phnom Penh and coastal Cambodia (Kampot) during the colonial
period. My account of the history of sex work in French Cambodia is not exhaustive as
this would be a thesis in itself. Rather, I offer historical context for the inconsistent
regulations and conflicted attitudes surrounding sex work in the Kingdom in the past
and continuing today. An analysis of sex work in Cambodia should consider the
historical, political, economic and cultural context in which it takes place (Derks
53
Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
2004a:127). Looking at the modern history of sex work in the Kingdom allows
examination of developing social attitudes, their origins and rationale. It also promotes
an historical understanding of earlier responses to prostitution as well as a
comprehension of the range of responses to the issue in Cambodia today (Weeks
1977:3-5).
The Emergence of State Regulated Prostitution in Phnom Penh and Kampot
The arrival of the French in Cambodia at the end of the 1850s occurred during a period
of political turbulence in the Indochinese region, wherein a weak Cambodia was
wedged under the dual vassalage of two powerful and expanding neighbouring states,
Viet Nam (Annam, Tonkin and Cochinchina) and Thailand (Siam).1 Established through
the Protectorate Treaty that King Norodom signed with France on the 5th June 1863, the
French Protectorate over Cambodia spanned from 1863 to 1953 and covers almost one
hundred years of the country’s modern history. However, I examine aspects of the
colonial government’s prostitution policies enacted specifically between the years 18801920, as this was the climax of French regulations, instrumental in shaping sex work
until the late twentieth century.2
Prior to colonisation, Phnom Penh briefly served as the nation’s capital from
1432 to 1505 when the city of Angkor was abandoned. While the royal capital was
relocated to Oudong in 1505, situated at the confluence of the Mekong, Bassac and
Tonle Sap and connected to the rapid expansion of Chinese maritime trade with
Southeast Asia, from the fifteenth century onward people and institutions migrated
southwards towards Phnom Penh (Chandler 1992:79). Over time, the area became a hub
1
For more on the arrival of the French and establishment of the Protectorate see Osborne 1997:3-56;
Tully 2002:1-22; Chandler 1992:99-116.
2
I would like to thank Greg Müller who assisted me in the early stages of researching the history of
prostitution during the Protectorate at the National Archives of Cambodia by providing basic translations
of some key documents. Without his help I would not have been able to commence research on French
Cambodia and for this I am truly grateful.
54
Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
of trade and commerce. In 1865, King Norodom abandoned the royal capital of Oudong.
He re-established Phnom Penh as the new capital of the Kingdom as well as the
permanent seat of government.
Construction commenced on the new Royal Palace in 1864 that was funded and
partially designed by the Protectorate (Edwards 1999:62). The new capital of Phnom
Penh quickly became the location of government and locus of power of French
Cambodia. Located, however, at the intersection of several axes of circulation (major
road and river routes from the interior of the country), it was also a popular and rapidly
growing city. Capitalising on Phnom Penh’s reputation as a mercantile centre, when
Norodom moved to the new capital he constructed a street of shop-houses in Phnom
Penh (Edwards 1999:76). Renting these shop-houses out to Chinese traders, he carried
on with a tradition first facilitated with the growth in foreign trade in the fifteenth
century, which saw most of Cambodia’s commerce in the hands of the Chinese
(Willmott 1967:94-8; Edwards 1999:76).
This helped Phnom Penh become a commercial and trading hub dominated by
Chinese traders. However, the presence of French troops stationed in army barracks in
Phnom Penh along with the new colonial administration staffed predominantly by
Vietnamese and French bureaucrats, also saw the arrival of a significant number of new
and differentiated immigrants to the city.3 Thus, shifts in the geographical centre of the
Kingdom opened Phnom Penh to ever increasing floating populations as well as more
stable and long-term settled migrants.
3
By 1897 the population of Phnom Penh was close to 50,000 people. Of this it was estimated that 20,000
were Chinese, 16,000 were Khmer, 4,000 were Vietnamese and 400 were European (Phnom Penh
Municipality 2005). However, Edwards (1999:70, 72) states that in 1900 Phnom Penh’s European
population numbered 150, and grew to 250 in 1903, 530 by 1904 and in 1916 the total number of
European inhabitants had increased to 1,600. While Edwards’ figures, drawn from colonial records, are
probably more accurate, we can see that by the turn of the century Phnom Penh had not only a sizable but
also a highly differentiated population.
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
The demographic changes fostered by early urbanising efforts and ever
increasing levels of trade saw the emergence of less formal or domesticated sexual
relationships between women and men, a practice which attracted the attention of the
authorities in the first decade of the Protectorate:
Old women come to our large towns, collect the abandoned prostitutes and bring
them here, conjuring up in their mind a better future than in Cochinchina. Upon
arrival in Phnom Penh, they are forced to make expenditures for which they cannot
pay and are kept in slavery until reimbursement [of the debt], the day of which never
comes. Meanwhile, they are put at the disposal of the public; sometimes it is even the
parents themselves who leave their children as collateral, that is to say as slaves, for
money they borrowed (ANV2 SL File No. 1839 cited by Müller 2001:199).
In what may be the first official record of prostitution in French Cambodia,
Representative Moura’s observations indicate that by 1870 a market-place large enough
to support the development of women’s migration for prostitution existed as well as an
organisation which connected Phnom Penh to Cochinchina.4 Perhaps crucial to the
development of such practices was the stationing of French troops in Phnom Penh,
many of whom were young and lonely single men. Such men often form an important
client base for prostitutes and the presence of a permanent army barracks would have
seen Phnom Penh become a profitable site for the country’s fledgling sex trade (Enloe
1993:143-4). While later attitudes towards prostitution were marked by tolerance and
regulation, Moura’s compassionate conservatism, driven in part by his abhorrence of
slavery, led him to call for the prohibition of prostitution.
Moura’s moral repugnance at such “unfree” relations was important. Antislavery ideology was central to the justification of French colonial conquests in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Miers 2004:9; Delaye 2004:129). As John Tully
(2002:42) suggests, French naval officers at Saïgon saw the abolition of slavery as
4
In 1868 Jean Moura was appointed as the French Representative in Cambodia. Moura held the post until
1870 and was appointed for a second term from 1871 to 1879, after which he was replaced by Étienne
François Aymonier. In 1883 Jean Moura published a two volume work on the history of Cambodia while
Aymonier was renowned as the first archaeologist to survey the ruins at Angkor Vat. The French
Representative in Cambodia was called the Résident Supérieur (Resident General) from 1884 onward.
56
Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
central to their mission civilisatrice in Cambodia. However, “slavery” was prevalent not
only in prostitution but rather widespread in Cambodia: about one third of the
population was said to be in some form of slavery (Tully 2002:42-3). Three distinct
classes of slaves were a feature of Cambodian social organisation and debt-bondage was
a traditional and common form of indentured labour claimed by Moura to be “slavery”
(see Osborne 1997:7-9; Tully 2002:42-7; Delaye 2004:135-6).
Explaining some of the socio-economic factors behind his observation, Moura
suggests that, should a family be particularly pressed, daughters were mortgaged as
debt-slaves. This follows a common practice in Southeast Asia where daughters were
mortgaged by their families for work either as domestic servants who were expected
sometimes to be available for sex, or as prostitutes (Watson Andaya 1998:24).
However, seeing debt-bonded women as “slaves”, Moura does not make a distinction
between indenture and slavery, which Milton Osborne explains:
…of the three classes of slaves, two were a part of society and not outside it. These
were the debt slaves and the slaves of the state. The first were private persons who
engaged themselves to meet a debt by giving up their freedom and working for the
creditor. In theory, at least, their condition was subject to change once a debt had
been met or an agreed period had elapsed […] [S]laves of the state were frequently
prisoners of war or criminals [who …] filled menial positions within the royal court
[…] Only the third group of slaves, assembled from less civilized tribal groups, had
no hope of ultimate freedom. The position of these men and women, was indeed,
similar to the slave in western society (1997:8).
Moura describes a process of prostitutes migrating from Cochinchina to Phnom
Penh and thus entering into debt-bondage. This practice suggests a distinct model of
female labour migration and bonded labour for prostitution. Though a practice not
unique to Cambodia it was historically and geographically salient in the development of
institutionalised debt-bondage as a major structural feature of prostitution in Cambodia
(see Oxfam Hong Kong 1997:2-3; Watson Andaya 1998:24-5).
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
Referring to migrating Cochinchinese prostitutes as filles publiques (which
meant women for hire or prostitute), Moura did not consider filles publiques or other
Asiatic peoples as French citizens, yet, he was extremely critical of this practice.5
Loathing the enslavement of “French subjects of whatever race [who] can neither sell
themselves, nor be sold”, Moura repatriated “slaves” to Cochinchina and, in order to
show that such practices were not sanctioned or approved by the French authorities, he
punished both “buyers” and “sellers” (Moura cited by Müller 2001:199). However,
Moura’s attempts to end the practice of debt-bondage and eradicate the emerging sex
trade were largely ineffectual. In 1885 Dr E Maurel, a naval physician placed in charge
of constructing a new field hospital in Phnom Penh to attend to colonial troops deployed
in quelling a significant insurrection, described what he termed the “Service des Filles”
(the services of prostitutes).
Maurel expressed his concern over previous attempts to regulate prostitution,
which he judged as “exceptional measures”:
When it was public notoriety that a woman lived on prostitution or was diseased, she
was apprehended by the police, led to the doctor and, once her disease established,
sent immediately to the health centre in Saïgon. But, I repeat, this was only a rare
exception (ANC RSC 9614 1885:81).
Thus, while Maurel too, described the process of sending women back to Cochinchina
(more specifically to the hospital in Saïgon); his reasons dramatically differed from
Moura’s:
Supported by the Protectorate, I was able […] in the last months of my stay to send
to Saïgon nearly thirty diseased women. One sees from this figure the number of
[male] victims they could have made, especially when one thinks that each one of
them would have in turn propagated the disease (ANC RSC 9614 1885:82, emphasis
and insert mine).
In turn of the century French fille meant “whore” and referred to a “woman of easy virtue” with jeune
filles being used for “respectable girls” or “young women” (see Cassels French-English Dictionary
1946:281 and also translator’s note in Corbin 1990:xviii).
5
58
Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
Raising the threat of biological contagion, Maurel’s comment shows that women
were susceptible to venereal diseases, but he considers filles publiques as purveyors of
disease and men only as their “victims”. Thus, he does not regard men as agents of
infection only its recipients. Maurel’s ambivalent acceptance of prostitution despite the
threat it presented led him to hold filles publiques as responsible for spreading disease
from themselves to their male clients: prostitution was a public health menace. Moura’s
earlier humanistic concern for debt-bonded women was surpassed by Maurel’s concerns
for the public health. The issue of prostitution and “slavery” did not return to the
colonial agenda until the late 1920s with the passing of major international treaties on
“white slavery” (see ANC RSC 10686 1922-27).6
Some of the factors explaining changing attitudes towards filles publiques were
connected to policies reforming colonial cohabitation, which saw a decline in
concubines (congaï) and an associated rise in prostitution.7 However, other factors were
directly connected to a set of reforms imposed on Norodom by Governor Thomson in
1884, which attempted to assert increasing political, military and economic dominance
and control over Cambodia. Resistance to the 1884 reforms tapped into popular
discontent against French rule and led to a country-wide revolt instigated by members
of the royalty. Many of them objected to the aims of the reforms designed to give the
French control over precolonial economic structures organised around the leasing of
concessions such as pork and opium to the King (see Osborne 1997:206-30; Chandler
1992:142-48; Tully 2002:83-99).
6
As France was a signatory to the International Convention for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic
(1910), this treaty was implemented in the colonies. While correspondence between the Résident
Supérieur and the police stated Cambodia had no establishments where women of the white race engaged
in prostitution, it was felt important that native prostitutes (filles publiques indigènes) had the same
protections as those granted to women of another race (ANC RSC 10686 1922-27).
7
For more on changes to colonial cohabitation and the role of the French administration see Edwards
1998, on sexual mores and white pauperism in the colony see Müller 2001:199-210 and for theoretical
considerations see Stoler 2002:41-78.
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
Attempting to quell the 1885 rebellion, the French formed the Cambodian militia
and stationed several hundred French and Vietnamese troops in Phnom Penh. According
to Gregor Müller (2001:203), by September 1885 the French occupation force was
comprised of 629 French soldiers, of whom 329 were permanently stationed in Phnom
Penh (equalling a 500% increase in the number of Europeans residing in the capital).
However, the force also included 420 Vietnamese riflemen (150 of which were
stationed in Phnom Penh), 370 Vietnamese militia, and 170 members of the recently
formed Cambodian militia (Müller 2001:203). Thus, Cambodian troops were a
minority, as Vietnamese troops comprised the bulk followed by the French. The
deployment of foreign troops saw a massive increase in the number of single and/or
transient men such as common soldiers, traders and low officials, who did not have the
means, desire or governmental support to set themselves up domestically (Watson
Andaya 1998:21; Enloe 1993:76; Manderson 1997:387). Many of the troops would
have been willing to enter into brief, cheap and uncomplicated sexual liaisons, and
hence there may have been some form of troop-organised, assisted migration for
prostitution.
Different sexual aesthetics meant that Khmer women, who dressed similarly to
men and wore a short cropped hairstyle from puberty, were considered androgynous
(see figure 2.1, Femmes Cambodigennes, over the page). Khmer women were not
usually seen as desirable to the Vietnamese and French troops who formed the majority
of the occupying force (see Pym 1960:19-20; Edwards 1998:116; Müller 2001:189-90).
In order to meet the increased demand for prostitution with the stationing of foreign
troops, many Vietnamese or Khmer Kraom women and girls may have followed the
troops to Cambodia.8 This was especially likely for Khmer Kraom women, not only as
8
In common usage the term Khmer Kraom denotes the Cambodian minority population of southern Viet
Nam.
60
Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
Figure 2.1: Femmes Cambodigennes.
the mixing of Khmer and Vietnamese was said to make colonised women “extremely
attractive” to colonists, but, as a Cambodian minority group in Cochinchina, many may
have had family or other networks that would have made such migration possible and
perhaps lucrative (Pym 1960:19). While some women may have returned home after the
61
Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
insurrection was quelled in 1886, other women may have decided to stay and work in
Phnom Penh’s brothels. This would explain the relatively high numbers of Annamite
brothels and Cochinchinese prostitutes in Phnom Penh mentioned in later colonial
records.
During the insurrection, however, the French occupation forces faced significant
losses and were in serious danger of losing their grip over Cambodia. While Dr. Maurel
catalogued losses due to malaria, dysentery and war injuries, venereal disease was
another common reason for hospitalisation:
As I explained before, in the months following my arrival, the venereal disease
increased so much (especially in the native troops,) that they made up a third of all
exemptions from duty. So, as soon as circumstances allowed me to, while Mr. Augier
was restarting the sanitary services for the troops, I organised the services of
prostitutes (ANC RSC 9614 1885:80).
Prostitution was thus medically and socially problematic as in the official view it led to
an increase in the number of diseased and non-productive soldiers, both native and
European (see Stoler 1995:49).
The timing of this discursive shift towards seeing prostitution as a public health
menace is crucial: in 1885 the French were in a perilous position in terms of retaining
their grip over Cambodia. Their real concern was not just men but fighting men. As
Edwards (1999:66) argues, hospitals established in Phnom Penh catered for Vietnamese,
Cambodian and French troops and had a specific focus on venereal diseases.
Accounting for a third of all exemptions from military duty during the insurrection,
uncontrolled prostitutes jeopardised France’s success in the long and bloody revolt.
Hence, prostitutes were viewed as a threat to the French Empire. Blaming prostitutes for
spreading the disease, venereal diseases among the troops meant that Maurel and the
authorities were increasingly less willing to allow the open and uncontrolled activities
of women in Phnom Penh’s streets and brothels.
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
Assisted by the local authorities Maurel attempted to “organise this service and
give it the regularity that alone could make it efficient”, and thus:
The women caught in the very act of prostitution, or, above all, denounced by the
contaminated men, were given a number, entered in a register and [medically]
examined every Thursday at the town hall health centre (ANC RSC 9614 1885:82).9
While his claim of “contaminated men” does seem to vilify male clients, it also evinces
the relative innocence of men in the eyes of the authorities: they were “contaminated”
by women. Women, being always the allegedly guilty party in transmission, had no
similar recourse to denouncing men who had “contaminated” them. Adopting a public
health model to control outbreaks of VD in the colonial troops, Maurel argued for only
regulating women in prostitution. His measures epitomised the regulationist approach to
the control of prostitution through medical supervision (see Davidson 1984:164;
Doezema 2000:27). Maurel’s actions, of forcibly registering and medically examining
filles publiques, were designed to provide the troops with access to colonised women
whilst ensuring that the soldiers were physically fit enough to carry out their military
duties for the Empire (see Enloe 1993:80-3).
The rationale for this centred on protection of the troops and was informed by
the notion that prostitution was a necessary sexual practice, itself the logical extension
of the prolonged celibacy required of the military life (see Walkowitz 1980:4-5; Enloe
1993:142-60). Hence, early attempts to regulate the “service des filles” drew heavily on
a set of moral and ideological assumptions as well as medical representations of filles
publiques as diseased.
On the hypocritical grounds of providing “clean” women for men of dubious VD
status (especially the colonial troops), Maurel condemned filles publiques as disorderly
and unclean women. Demanding that they be “clean”, he was instrumental in forcing
9
The word used by Maurel is delit indicating that he considered the charge of prostitution a
misdemeanour offence.
63
Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
prostitutes to register with the authorities and submit to weekly gynaecological
examinations. The administration’s anxieties about the spread of venereal diseases by
filles publiques (but seemingly not by their clients), and the threat they thus posed to
France’s success in battles were important factors in changing attitudes to prostitutes,
and provoked increasing levels of state intervention in Phnom Penh’s emerging
prostitution market place.
Several months after Maurel tried to forcibly register and test filles publiques in
Phnom Penh, a police law (arrêté de police) attempting to further regulate and control
Phnom Penh’s fledgling sex trade was passed by the colonial administration.10 It is
unfortunate that the police law of 29 December 1885 was never published in the Journal
Officiel and is missing from the historical records. We can, however, speculate about
police practices instigated under this law. In 1901 the Résident (local Governor General)
of Phnom Penh, Adhémard Leclère, wrote a lengthy critique of these laws, in which he
suggested that the laws were modelled on prostitution regulations originating in
nineteenth century Paris (see ANC RSC 12858 1901:1-2).
Developed from police and medical initiatives such as those described by
Maurel, this law ensured a high degree of control over sexual commerce by controlling
brothels. The central focus of the 1885 laws was the establishment of maisons de
tolérance or licensed brothels. Maisons de tolérance were brothels working inside of
official control. The police granted these brothels dispensation from the laws, so long as
the holder of the tolérance obeyed certain rules (see also Harsin 1985:39). This included
madams registering their staff with the police and making sure that they attended
weekly medical examinations. Yet, according to Leclère, the law did not contain
provisions for the registration of filles publiques. However, as registration was part of
The use of “arrêté de police” by colonial officials rather than “arrêté de surete” suggests that a special
branch of police, akin to the English Mores Police or Vice Squad regulated vice.
10
64
Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
the rules, by 1901 it progressed more or less by the arbitrary actions of the authorities.
Further, the 1885 laws imposed a new tax regime on brothels. Women and brothels that
were not officially tolerated were deemed by the authorities to be operating secretively
(prostitution clandestine) and faced heavy punishments.
The 1885 police laws permitted colonial authorities’ to conduct compulsory
medical examinations of filles publiques for the sake of allowing colonised women to
provide sexual services to the colonial troops without fear of venereal disease.
Therefore, the rebellion and subsequent troop mobilisation may have engineered these
laws. However, the resolution of the events of 1884 to 1885 led the French to initiate a
new phase of bureaucratic consolidation, allowing for the coordination of such
legislation in the state and colony (Pers. Comm. Penny Edwards, 30 May 2005). The
imposition of a new tax regime on brothels, enforced by the introduction of stiff
penalties for unlicensed or “clandestine” prostitution in late 1885, was also connected to
the broader French project of seizing fiscal control from the King. Seen as part of the
French battle for control over the economy and the crackdown on tax evasion, which
promised to increase colonial revenue, the dangers of “clandestine” prostitution for the
French were not just moral but sanitary, administrative and financial.
Apart from explaining some aspects of regulation, Leclère also revealed that a
compartmentalised and hierarchical industry was beginning to take shape under the
direct influence of the authorities. For example, all brothels were forced to pay taxes:
…paid according to a tariff established in Cochinchina […] these taxes are as
follows: 100 francs per year for Annamite brothels [and] 600 francs per year for
Chinese and Japanese brothels (ordinance of the 3rd March 1877); 3 francs per visit
for filles de maison [brothel prostitutes] and 3.5 francs per visit for filles isoleés
[prostitutes not dependent on a third party e.g. a madam] (ANS RSC 12858 1901:2).
Thus, the authorities categorised and taxed brothels on the basis of race in a hierarchical
regime. It is reasonable to speculate that differential tariffs indicate that the authorities
65
Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
considered Annamite brothels as establishments serving the lower end of the market,
and perhaps catered mainly to male labourers and men from lower socio-economic
groups. At the other end of the market, Chinese and Japanese brothels paid higher taxes,
were considered above the “baser” establishments and thus catered to a wealthier and
more exclusive clientele, or were more profitable businesses.
Although there is little evidence on the exact number of brothels in Phnom Penh
at this time, documents pertaining to the expulsion of sixteen Cochinchinese filles
publiques with incurable venereal disease from the Protectorate indicate that, in 1896
Phnom Penh had up to seven Annamite brothels alone and over eighty filles à numéro,
who were prostitutes with a number given to them as part of a brothel-keeper’s recordtaking system, which implies informal, in-house registration (see ANC RSC 26027
1896). There is thus strong evidence suggesting the emergence of a hierarchically
ordered trade, and a remarkable degree of sophistication and complexity to the ordering
and structure of multifaceted prostitution in Cambodia by the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century.
Women were not left out of this picture, as they too were hierarchically
configured and subject to differential payments based not just on race but situation.
Filles isoleés who worked in Phnom Penh’s bars, cafes, cabarets and on the streets were
financially penalised under this system, as they were forced to pay a higher amount for
the same “service” of health checks forced upon filles de maison. Thus, brothel
prostitutes were clearly financially privileged under this system; a practice that
conformed to the desires of the authorities. Edwards (1999:71) states that, according to
Charles Meyer, a crackdown on clandestine prostitution from 1900 to 1905 increased
this tax regime and imposed heavy penalties for unlicensed prostitution. Taxes for
Khmer and Annamite brothels were raised from 100 francs to 25 piastres or 250 francs,
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
and the tax for Chinese and Japanese brothels was lowered from 600 francs to 50
piastres or 500 francs. Penalties for operating a “clandestine” or unlicensed brothel
ranged from one to two months in prison and streetwalking carried an eight-day prison
sentence.
The taxation regime imposed on brothels did not just solidify racial hierarchies
but broadened colonial revenue. It was an economic practice enforced by constant
police crackdowns and heavy penalties for unlicensed prostitution. Thus, grappling for
control over the precolonial economy, the 1885 police laws were tied with more general
moves by the French to assert control over Cambodia as they attempted to make the
Protectorate the direct beneficiary of the new tax system. Privileging brothels (as
maisons de tolérance) and brothel prostitutes (filles de maison), at the core of the 1885
laws was the official toleration of prostitution. This saw the registration of all filles
publiques and control of the establishment of maisons de tolérance, which operated
under the strict control of the authorities. Predicated on the grounds of prostitution’s
alleged danger to public health, this system became the epitome of regulated
prostitution in the country well into the twentieth century.
Ranked in an 1890 commentary as the second largest town in French Cambodia,
parallel developments occurred in the seaport town of Kampot (Mogenet 2003:41).
Figure 2.2 over the page shows the old town site of Kampot, located on the coast of
Cambodia and the Gulf of Thailand.11 Routes through Cambodia’s interior connected
the provincial town of Kampot with the old and new capital and, as the country’s only
seaport, Kampot received not only foreign trade but also a substantial number of
migrants and travellers to the Kingdom.
11
Prior to the Protectorate King Ang Doung attempted to regularise trade with Singapore and promoted
the use of Kampot as a port from which state-financed junks could trade with the British colony (Osborne
1997:11). However, as part of French Indochina, Cambodian trade filtered through the Mekong River and
the port of Saïgon. As the country’s only seaport in the nineteenth century, Kampot can be viewed as a
forerunner to modern day Sihanoukville.
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
Figure 2.2: Carte Politique de L’Indo-Chine, October 1889.
Trade with neighbouring countries such as Singapore and Malaysia saw many
people from the countryside as well as overseas (including China, Viet Nam, Malaysia
and France) come to Kampot for work in shipping, rubber or pepper production, as
fishermen, traders, merchants, shopkeepers, or clerks in the colonial bureaucracy.
Further, Kampot was strategically important: the area was renowned for
producing high quality pepper and well suited for the cultivation of rubber trees, crucial
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
factors in the establishment of colonial plantations in this area. The town’s emerging
pepper and rubber industries attracted increasing numbers of itinerant labourers and new
settlers from both overseas and the countryside. Kampot was an area where, unlike
elsewhere in Cambodia, substantial numbers of Chinese contract labourers were brought
in to work in the pepper plantations (Willmott 1967:95). Kampot, like Phnom Penh, was
situated on a major transportation and trading axis. Demographic and social changes
fostered the development of the town as a major provincial urban centre, with a highly
differentiated population, many itinerants and an ethnically plural society. As in Phnom
Penh this led to an associated rise in prostitution and later, brothels.
Following practices implemented by the colonial administration in Phnom Penh,
in 1887 a local naval physician attempted to regulate prostitution in Kampot by
instituting a system of compulsory medical examinations for filles publiques working in
the town, but some women objected to this unsolicited service (Müller 2001:209). The
mayor, other village dignitaries and twenty women from a neighbouring village went to
the office of the provincial administrator, then Adhémard Leclère, to complain about the
French doctor, who, acting on his own accord, proclaimed that all filles publiques had to
undergo regular health checks at his house (Müller 2001:209). Their rejection seemed to
centre on the fact that the doctor in question was charging each woman a piaster for the
“service” while accepting half a piaster from women who wished to be exempted
(Müller 2001:209). This early venture into regulation was hushed up by the authorities,
and it was not until 1904 that they came to view unregulated sexual commerce in the
town as dangerous and out of control. Belatedly insisting upon a strict system of
control, Kampot’s Résident Castanier enacted “emergency” prostitution regulations
(réglementation) paralleling those enforced in metropolitan France (ANC RSC 33104
1904:1).
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
Castanier’s regulations attempted to establish the terms and set the conditions
under which filles publiques in Kampot operated: he restricted the location of brothels
to one district, and thus, instigated the first explicit efforts directed at controlling
prostitution by localisation (ANC RSC 33104 1904:2). In order to achieve this,
Castanier gave himself alone the right to designate the site where brothels were to be
located. His attempt to establish a zone of brothels solely under the control and
surveillance of the colonial authorities led him to introduce a brothel licensing system:
maisons de tolérance again became the basis of regulation of prostitution and the only
place in Kampot where prostitution could legitimately occur (ANC RSC 33104 1904:2).
Concerned to control the brothel, its management and its staff, Castanier set out
to dictate the gendering of the trade, the precedent for this established in metropolitan
France (see Corbin 1990:10-13). Under Castanier’s system, men were seen as
challenging the (masculine) authority of the police: they were forbidden to own a
maison de tolérance and were not permitted to play any role in the management of them
(ANC RSC 33104 1904:2). Further, the madams of tolerated brothels were forbidden to
employ women who had not registered with the authorities or filles soumises (ANC
RSC 33104 1904:2). Viewing prostitution as a public health menace, all filles publiques
were forced to undergo weekly medical examinations, and, concerned with the
maintenance of order and decency in the streets, brothels were forbidden to trade
“conspicuously” after midnight (ANC RSC 33104 1904:1-2). Unlicensed brothels were
prohibited and, deemed by the authorities as “clandestine”, they were subject to the full
force of the law (ANC RSC 33104 1904:2-3).
Early efforts to regulate prostitution were defended on the basis of colonial selfinterest and preservation as well as the protection of French troops. However, in the
years after the rebellion, the politics of prostitution in colonial cities and towns took on
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
a more civilian face. Efforts were taken to regulate prostitution in Phnom Penh and
Kampot, which were part of a more general effort towards greater regulation of urban
spaces occurring between 1900 and 1905 (see Edwards 1999:61-80). By the early
1900s, prostitution had come to be firmly viewed by the authorities as a public health
issue for the colony and unregulated filles publiques were marked as dangerous and in
need of French control. Working on the rationalisation earlier observed, that men were
“innocent victims” of depraved filles publiques, prostitutes were more often seen by the
French authorities as active agents of infection (see also Proschan 2002:613). With the
dangers purportedly spreading from filles publiques to men, women, and not men, were
viewed as a source of pollution or a “contaminating” threat in need of control. However,
after 1905 the French began to gear their efforts towards the consolidation of distinct
enclaves of prostitution, a move that saw the authorities become increasingly
preoccupied with filles soumises (registered prostitutes) and filles insoumises
(unregistered prostitutes).
Consolidation of French Attempts to Create a Distinct Prostitution “Milieu”
Castanier’s regulations in Kampot and the efforts of the Phnom Penh police to
manipulate the ways in which sex was sold show how piece-meal attempts to regulate
prostitution became increasingly complex and gradually led to the introduction of the
“French system” as the pre-eminent mode of regulating sex work in colonial Cambodia.
This had as its ultimate aim the creation of a prostitution milieu (environment), and
parallels more general social and cultural developments in Phnom Penh in the late
nineteenth century. In this Edwards (1999:64) suggests that the French authorities were
preoccupied with maintaining culturally segregated milieus, a concept that encompassed
climate, hygiene, diseases, criminality, class and sexuality.12
12
For more on the concept of milieus in colonial urban planning see Edwards 1999:64-67.
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
Edwards (1999:61) argues that during the first decades of colonial rule ad hoc
arrangements of space, race and sex characterised both the town of Phnom Penh and
native-European relations. However, by the early twentieth century, Phnom Penh had
grown to the extent that a permanent army barracks had been established as well as a
hospital, hotels, schools and prisons. Markets provided Phnom Penh’s growing
population with goods, a branch of the Bank of Indochina had opened for business
along with a printing house, treasury, pharmacy, customs house, and law courts. New
urban developments such as streets, housing and electric lighting, and places of
entertainment (e.g. opium and/or gambling dens, dance halls, cafes, bistros and a
cinema), along with the creation of distinct ethnic settlements transformed Phnom Penh
into a vibrant, highly segregated, intensely hierarchical city (Edwards 1999:72). As
Edwards (1999:75) suggests, growth in the capital’s population and services saw the
police and colonial administration turn their attention to creating and managing
appropriate social milieus, and the regulation of prostitution figured heavily in this
process.13
Attempting to enclose prostitution within the confines of official toleration,
regulations similar to but more far reaching than those enacted in Kampot in 1904 were
passed by the colonial authorities in Phnom Penh in 1906. According to Mayor Collard,
the 1906 regulations were prompted by “insufficiencies” in the 1885 police laws and
modelled on those enforced in Saïgon (ANC RSC 12857 Note 118 R.S. 1906).
However, inspiration for Saïgon’s laws was drawn from practices originating in
metropolitan France dating back to early nineteenth century Parisian town planning
efforts (see Corbin 1990). Divided into six separate chapters covering different aspects
13
By the turn of the twentieth century, French town planning efforts saw Phnom Penh segmented into
distinct French, Khmer, Chinese and Vietnamese districts. However, as Edwards (1999:75) and Chandler
(1992:87-9,100) argue, while the French were preoccupied with maintaining culturally segregated milieus
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, distinct ethnic settlements were a feature of Cambodian
social organisation for several hundred years prior to the Protectorate.
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
of controlling prostitution, the general layout of the decree reflects the underlying
desires as well as the instrumental policies of the authorities. It also revealed what they
set out to achieve in the creation of a prostitution milieu: categorisation, classification
and marginalisation.
Chapter one, “general dispositions”, encompassed the registration of individual
prostitutes, and covered in greater depth and detail the regulatory practices that were
fundamental to this process: filles publiques were broadly divided into two categories,
with precedent for this derived from metropolitan France (see Harsin 1985:18-23). In
policing prostitution, the authorities attempted to distinguish between all filles publiques
by dividing them into “category one” and “category two” prostitutes. “Category One”
prostitutes, or filles de maison, were women who worked in licensed brothels and,
according to the authorities, were “dependent” women, “under the authority of
madams” (maitresses de maison). “Category two” prostitutes, or filles isoleés, were
women who “had their own address” and thus were not under the control of or
dependent on a third-party (e.g. a madam but not necessarily a pimp, or souteneur)
(ANC RSC 12857 No. 6H 1906:1-2).
Filles publiques registered with the police were referred to as filles en carte, on
account of their registration cards issued by the authorities. Filles en carte were bound
to follow regulations devised by the local Vice Squad (police des mœurs/mœurs police).
This included mandatory health checks. Revealing how the objective of the regulations
was to keep filles publiques quite literally in their place, the regulations prohibited filles
publiques from leaving Phnom Penh without first having a health check (ANC RSC
12857 No. 6H 1906:3). Public solicitation was forbidden and filles publiques were
forbidden to go to cafes and cabarets (ANC RSC 12857 No. 6H 1906:3-4). Such
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
provisions on public solicitation would have made it virtually impossible for women not
working in brothels to find customers without facing arrest.
Under the new regulations, registration was either “voluntary” or forced by the
authorities. However, the procedures involved suggest that registration was not so much
voluntary as inevitable (see also Harsin 1985:19-20). Filles publiques caught soliciting
by the police were to be immediately arrested and detained in jail for questioning (ANC
RSC 12857 No. 6H 1906:9). However, before they were released, filles publiques were
forcibly registered and they then had little choice but to submit to the regulations (ANC
RSC 12857 No. 6H 1906:3, 9). Thus, the 1906 regulations cemented the creation of two
categories of filles publiques, filles soumises and filles insoumises, with one group
working under tight controls and heavy police supervision and the other, working in
unlicensed brothels or opium dens or on the streets, operated entirely outside the law,
being not only unregistered but uncompliant.
Chapter two, “sanitary measures”, advanced the reason for regulation, being
prostitution’s danger to public health, and thus imposed mandatory health checks for
filles publiques (ANC RSC 12857 No. 6H 1906:4-5). Chapter three, “maisons de
tolérance”, set out the brothel licensing system, and stipulated maisons de tolérance as
the only place where prostitution could legitimately occur (ANC RSC 12857 No. 6H
1906:5). Another troublesome question for the authorities was the location of
prostitution. Taking steps towards localising brothels, this chapter gave the police the
power to contain brothels by limiting them to neighbourhoods located in Phnom Penh’s
growing commercial zone in the Chinese quarter, as determined by the local authorities
(ANC RSC 12857 No. 6H 1906:5-6).
Showing how, as Corbin (1990:11) suggests, regulated prostitution existed in a
society of women intended to satisfy male sexual needs, under the direct supervision of
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
the (male) public administration, the Phnom Penh authorities attempted to gender the
trade. Seen again as challenging the masculine authority of the police, men were not
permitted to play any role in the management of licensed brothels. Men were also
forbidden to own and/or operate maisons de tolérance (ANC RSC 12857 No. 6H
1906:6). Drawing on precedents established in metropolitan France, French officials
forbade the cohabitation of lovers and partners in brothels (see Corbin 1990:10-13).
However, differing from regulations in the metropole, the husbands of madams from
“legitimate” marriages or marriages recognised by the state were permitted to reside in
brothels (ANC RSC 12857 No. 6H 1906:6). Such cohabitation was permitted only if
husbands could prove that they were not financially dependent on their wives. It was
also based on the proviso that husbands met the explicit condition of not interfering in
the running of brothels or in the relationship that their wives had with filles living in the
house, with the public or the authorities (ANC RSC 12857 No. 6H 1906:6). In
gendering the trade the French may have feared that the presence of men who were not
clients or members of the Vice Squad threatened to not only cause a confusion of roles
in the system but also challenged the authority of the police (Corbin 1990:11).
Chapter four on filles isoleés contained just one article allowing the authorities
to place recalcitrant women who caused a scandal, or a “recidivist” who failed to
undergo health checks, in a brothel and under the authority of a madam as a disciplinary
measure (ANC RSC 12857 No. 6H 1906:8). Further, chapter five, “clandestine
prostitution”, gave the authorities’ discretionary power in determining who was and was
not acting illicitly. Chapter six, “punishments”, enforced even harsher penalties for
unlicensed prostitution in line with the French penal code. This allowed the
incarceration of filles publiques for a maximum of one year or the expulsion of them
from the cities (if not native born) (ANC RSC 12857 No. 6H 1906:9-10).
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
The 1906 regulations were part of a serious attempt to enclose prostitution
entirely within colonial control after 1905. This attempt to confine prostitution to
maisons de tolérance, informed by the idea of prostitution as a “necessary evil”, drew
heavily on medical representations of prostitutes as purveyors of disease, which reduced
filles publiques to a pool of infection. The regulations employed a public health
approach to prostitution control as they sought to prevent venereal disease through
surveillance and control of people’s behaviour. The logic behind toleration stemmed
from the inevitability and undesirability of prostitution. Given this, it was best if the
“evil” was confined and kept under surveillance by the police. However, another major
attempt to bring all prostitution into tolerated areas was made in 1911.
Deliberations on the urban development of Phnom Penh from 1911 and 1912
indicate that, irrespective of the highly sophisticated legislation from 1906, the
authorities’ efforts were largely inadequate. Their control over brothels, especially over
the women working in them, as well as their physical location, was never complete (see
ANC RSC 24125 1911-12). As they sought to sanitise and urbanise the capital, French
authorities became increasingly preoccupied with methods to “remedy the problem of
the scattering of brothels” in Phnom Penh, which, according to them, were “taking over
little by little the Chinese district in which a number of Europeans are presently living”
(ANC RSC 24125 1911-12, Note 35, Extrait du Registre des Deliberations 24 Octobre
[hereafter Note 35] 1911:1-2). However, rather than devising new methods of regulating
prostitution, in 1912 the authorities re-instated the 1906 regulations, including all of
article eighteen, which conveniently located brothels right next to the prison (ANC RSC
24125 Note 35 1911-12:2 see also Arrête No. 100 in File No. 24125). Figure 2.3 over
the page shows the area where brothels were to be contained in Phnom Penh.
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
Figure 2.3: 1911-12 cadastral map of urban lots in Phnom Penh showing the location of maisons closes
on urban lots numbered 215 to 233 adjacent to the prison.
Embarking upon an ambitious plan to limit brothels to this area and create a
quartier réservé, the municipal authority decided to construct a set of brothels in the
demarcated area, and in 1911 Mayor Collard put the process out to public tender (ANC
RSC 24125 Avis d’appel d’offres 1911-12). The contract for construction of maisons
closes within the city’s first quartier réservé was awarded to M. Bourcier, a member of
77
Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
the local council (ANC RSC 24125 Contrat de cession entre M. Collard, M. Bourcier
1911-12).14
Focusing on what they deemed the “public nuisance” aspects of prostitution,
namely the “visibility” of it, a prostitution “cité” (estate) comprised of plain apartments
hidden from public view was built by the authorities: wholly utilitarian constructions
designed to cloak and to sanitise prostitution (ANC RSC 24125 Note 35 1911-12; see
figures 2.4 to 2.7 below and over the page). Re-instigating the old regulations made sure
that police efforts were geared towards maintaining structures that were their own past
creations.
Figure 2.4: Rue De La Porte (now Street 15) circa 1900s.
14
Maisons closes were plain compartment brothels. The term refers to establishments located in the
quartier réservé, and, as they were widely known as sex businesses the authorities suggested that they
have no need to open their doors, or for women to sit outside and tout passers-by for custom, acts which
increased the visibility of prostitution to the general public and were viewed as a “public nuisance”.
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
Figure 2.5: Lots 216, 217 and 220 on Rue de la Glacière (Street 154).
Figure 2.6: Close-up of a window of lot 219 on Rue de Fésigny (Street 148). Filles publiques would have
called out to customers walking down the street from this window.
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
Figure 2.7: Remains of maisons closes built by the authorities in 1912 on lot 214 on Rue de Fésigny
(Street 148) looking down to Rue de la Glacière (Street 154).
Spatial limitation was not only a means through which the police could
concentrate and thus more effectively control prostitution, it was also a means through
which the authorities could purge the “respectable” streets and provide the general
public, who “complained” to the municipality “on a daily basis”, with the appearance
that the police were cracking down on sexual commerce (ANC RSC 24125 Note 35
1911-12:3 see also Corbin 1990:23-6; Frances 1994:38-40). Viewing prostitution as
necessary, French authorities accepted it as an inevitable sexual practice, which opened
up a peculiar tolerance for prostitution (see Perkins 1991:18-22). Thus, venal sex was
not necessarily seen as a problem, rather, at issue was the visibility of it. Prostitution
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
was a matter related to the maintenance of order and decency in the streets and public
places. To this extent, the authorities directed their attention towards supervising filles
publiques and enclosing prostitution within the confines of official toleration. However,
fearful of cultural degeneration and the subsequent decline in French prestige, race was
also an issue in the creation of a prostitution “cité”.
The concerns expressed by the authorities about Europeans living in Phnom
Penh’s Quartier Chinois may have resulted from similar residential arrangements in the
Cholon district of Saïgon. Here officials both feared and condemned the spread of
“poor-whites”, and claimed that French residents living in Cholon were easily led into
imitating the Chinese (Proschan 2002:620-1; see also Edwards 1998:113-4). French
officials did not see such cross-cultural residential living arrangements as a means of
elevating the colony. This was because, according to Frank Proschan, Chinese
immigrant populations were stereotyped by the French as being “the ambassadors of
sodomy and the sources of prostitution, opium and crime” (2002:620). Perceiving
colonising Europeans as exiled, alienated victims of climatic vicissitudes and the
degeneracy of the local population, officials feared that the “moral sense” of
Frenchmen, weakened in tropical climates and distant lands, threatened to impact upon
the reputation of the French in the colony and undermine their mission civilisatrice
(Proschan 2002:626, see also Stoler 2002:66-7; Edwards 1998:110-6 and also ANC
RSC 1885 File No 9614; ANC RSC 1899 File No 14354). However, with the arrival of
more white, colonising and “respectable” women in Phnom Penh, their decency was
also at issue (see Müller 2001: 199-210).
Thus, in controlling the “public nuisance” and “public health” aspects of
prostitution, the authorities attempted to restrict and concentrate prostitution, and
implemented policies designed to facilitate this process (such as the creation of a
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
quartier réservé), the inspiration for which was drawn again from Parisian city
planning. Even as problems surfaced with its implementation in Phnom Penh, on the
order of Résident Supérieur Ernest Outrey, in 1913 core components of the 1906 Phnom
Penh regulations came into nationwide effect (ANC RSC 34130 1913). Moreover, these
regulations stayed in place throughout the remainder of the Protectorate (see League of
Nations 1933:229-231). However, the fiasco of French regulation climaxed at a meeting
of the Phnom Penh municipal commission in 1915.
Revealing the futility of French regulations, Monsieur Gravelle, who was
arguably one of the municipal authority’s most ardent supporters of the quartier
réservé, stated that by 1915 the prostitution “cité” no longer corresponded with the
precise results they desired when creating it: “more efficient localisation and
surveillance” (ANC RSC 5959 II. – Filles Publiques 1915:1). He attributed this failure
to a “mobile brigade” of “emancipated” women who, contrary to the intentions of the
authorities, created “disloyal and deplorable” competition by soliciting customers out
the front of “stable brothels” located in the quartier réservé (ANC RSC 5959 II. – Filles
Publiques 1915:1).
Suggesting that “we should suppress these mobile brigades in the interest of
morality as well as public health”, M. Gravelle considers filles publiques as polluting, as
a public health menace and as a source of moral contamination or corruption (ANC
RSC 5959 II. – Filles Publiques 1915:1-2). However, contradicting his claim that the
“mobile brigades” were a threat to public health, Gravelle states that they were filles en
carte or women already registered with the police (ANC RSC 5959 II. – Filles
Publiques 1915:1). Hence, the authorities faced a dilemma over what steps could be
taken: the “mobile brigades” accommodated the police proscriptions and worked within
official toleration. This granted them immunity from prosecution.
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
Gravelle’s “mobile brigades” reveal how, as filles en carte, some women
accommodated official polices and practices. However, their “emancipation” and the
continual presence of filles insoumises and “clandestine” brothels who dogged the
authorities, also shows how they evaded or resisted the most intrusive and pernicious
controls. The supposedly unsanctioned presence of “mobile brigades” of filles publiques
out the front of “stable brothels” sanctioned by the authorities shows how their control
over women was never complete. Registered with the authorities, which thus offered
filles publiques immunity from arrest, they were unable to take any action against the
women. While plans were made for the creation of a further two quartier réservés in
Phnom Penh in 1911, this was subject to the success of the first scheme. With the failure
of the first one, it seems highly unlikely that these plans ever came to fruition (see ANC
RSC 24125 Note 35 1911-12; ANC RSC 5959 II. – Filles Publiques 1915:2).
Conclusion
While many claim that Cambodia’s prostitution industry is a creation of the past few
decades, in this chapter I have shown that this is not the case. Rather, I have argued that
the growth of a prostitution industry can be traced back to the increased French presence
in Cambodia, especially to the increased military presence, and the radical social and
demographic changes ushered in by colonisation. By licensing brothels (as maisons de
tolérance) and registering women, regulations from the French Protectorate privileged
brothel-based prostitution and led to the creation of a compartmentalised and hierarchal
industry which took shape under the direct influence of the authorities. The changes
produced by colonial rule had profound consequences on the shape of prostitution,
changing its course from a relatively laissez-faire trade to highly structured brothel
enterprises in which women were controlled by bosses or madams (Perkins 1991:81; see
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
also Allen 1990:89-96). This had major implications for women’s choices and
experiences, as they were then compelled to work under conditions imposed by others.
The prevalent French approach to prostitution, both in the metropole and in the
colonies, was regulation (réglementation). This was informed by the underlying
ideology that only a well-designed and applied system of regulation was capable of
controlling prostitution and its menace to public health (Proschan 2002:615). In the
policing of sexual relationships of the colonial era, the colonial administration used
policies and laws as a means of creating a distinct prostitution milieu in French
Cambodia. Through this they attempted to concentrate brothels in distinct enclaves in
Phnom Penh and Kampot because, they said, this was hygienically and socially
necessary.
The most important effect of the colonial period was the inclusion of the state in
the management of prostitution. French efforts to control the prostitution industry led to
the stratification of it into two major spheres: “tolerated” and “clandestine”. This
separation cemented racial and occupational stratification and segregation and directly
influenced the structure of prostitution in the country. Colonial laws provided the
occasion for organising prostitution into a more professionalised, less visible and
therefore less controversial form and, backed by provisions on soliciting, prostitution
was driven “indoors” (Allen 1990:93). Hence, this period was marked by a greater
geographic centralisation of prostitution, and as it occurred in a more structured way, it
was also rendered less visible. These laws gave the police enormous power over
prostitution. However, as witnessed by Gravelle’s “mobile brigades” and the failure of
the quartier réservé, while the police had such powers, they never fully controlled
prostitution. In the following chapter on regulating prostitution during Cambodia’s fifty
years of independence I examine how, apart from periodic crackdowns, core aspects of
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Chapter Two: “Filles Malades”: Prostitution in French Cambodia, 1863-1953
these “sanitary” regulations remained intact long after the Protectorate, surviving well
into late twentieth century Cambodia.
85