## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 01 Juni 2023

## 'THIS VILEST OF TRADES'

The League of Nations' Anti-trafficking Inquiry of 1927

By: Sebastian Vang Jensen History

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ABSTRACT: This article examines the League of Nations' official inquiry into the international question of trafficking, integral to their wider anti-trafficking campaign of the 1920's. Through this, it assesses the consequences  of  employing  external  experts  drafted  from  activist  non-governmental  organizations  to conduct  large-scale  international  research  projects.  In  doing  so  it  argues  that  the  League's  official standards of unbiased data collection and knowledge production was somewhat compromised and that the leaders of the external research group used this official inquiry as a form of trojan horse to challenge and undermine the legitimacy of the system of regulated prostitution. Furthermore, this article unfolds how the research constructed new systems of knowledge about the nature of prostitution, that in turn positioned the system as a global threat with the potential to degenerate the future of humanity.

KEYWORDS: League of Nations, anti-trafficking, regulated prostitution, knowledge production, the interwar period

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## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 01 Juni 2023

## Introduction

During the last decades, the understanding of the League of Nations has undergone a significant transformation within the historiography of international history. This revisionist turn within the scholarship  has  sought  to  distance  itself  from  earlier  post-war  accounts  of  the  League's  failed attempts at establishing lasting peace on the European continent (Pedersen 2007: 1091-92). In turn, this  heterogeneous  body  of  work  has  favoured  interpretations  that  emphasised  the  League  as  an autonomous institution with its own agency rather than a space in which nation states struggle to maximise their own interest (Gram-Skjoldager, Ikonomou og Kahlert 2020: 215). The heightened scholarly  focus  on  the  League's  agency  and  important  work  in  combating  the  numerous  social, economic and public health crises of the interwar period, was in many ways spearheaded by academic work focusing on the League's more specialised organs under the Secretariat. Taking my cue from this development within the research field I wish to focus on the League's specialised work with trafficking and prostitution, more specifically analysing the League's official transnational inquiry into the trafficking of women and children. The question of prostitution and trafficking featured prominently within interwar debates on women's rights, sexual morality, public health and race, and led to the strengthening of transnational cooperation between interest groups, founded on a wide range of ideologies such as feminism, social hygiene, Christianity, etc. These non-governmental interest  groups  problematised  prostitution  and  trafficking  on  completely  different  grounds  but sought the same solution; a complete abolition of state sanctioned, regulated prostitution (Pliley 2010: 105).

The state sanctioned system of regulated prostitution had its roots in nineteenth century health policies, a time before the existence of effective medical treatment of venereal disease. The system was a product of the period's optimism surrounding state regulation and was thought to protect the health of key societal sectors, such as the military and commercial navy. This legislation imposed strict regulations upon the women employed in the field of sex work, such as mandatory registration, medical checks, limited mobility, etc. (Levine 2003: 18-19). After the turn of the century the system came under increasing pressure from a wide range of non-governmental interest groups but were, however, still widespread throughout the world at the time of the League's campaign.

## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 01 Juni 2023

In this context, the newly formed League of Nations conducted an ambitious campaign aimed at rallying  their  member  states  around  shared  anti-trafficking  solutions.  Due  to  the  nature  of  the League as a transnational actor, this fight was approached on a global level focusing on the act of trafficking  rather  than  prostitution  itself.  One  of  the  League's  central  ideals  was  to  gather information and generate accurate knowledge that would contribute to creating a more rational foundation  for  the  international  debate  on  sensitive  questions (Cloet  2019:  iii).  The  Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children (CTW) proposed a far-reaching investigation into the international aspects of sex work. This investigation was carried out by the research group called The Special Body of Experts (SBE). The group worked on an official mandate from the League of Nations Council but their work was funded by the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA) and was conducted between 1924-1926 in more than a hundred cities throughout Europe and South America, culminating in the publication of two reports in 1927.

The League's anti-trafficking work has received some scholarly attention from historians working with the League. Generally, these accounts tend to stress the role of the international women's rights movement  of  the  period.  Some  of  these  works  have  focused  on  the  important  role  of  the international feminist organisations in shaping popular opinion and transnational anti-trafficking cooperation (Gorman 2008). Other works have focused on the debates within the League's CTW responsible for anti-trafficking work under the social section of the Secretariat. These works have tended to focus on the feminists working inside the League and analysed the competing discourses on sex work within the League's specialised organs (Garcia 2012; Pliley 2010).  There seems to be a lack of research, however, focusing on the League's data collection and knowledge production in this field, and on how the League as an authoritative voice on transnational issues, portrayed the international 'problem' of prostitution. These are the themes I want to address with this article. The official data collection and knowledge production of the League was conducted by the SBE, a group with strong financial and ideological ties to the American social hygiene movement. For all these reasons I want to assess what knowledge this body of work produced, and how the ideological tendencies of the group affected the knowledge produced in these reports. In doing so I wish to further understand the political nature of data collection as a discipline and nuance the understanding of

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the  League's  role  as  a  purveyor  of  unbiased,  objective  fact-based  knowledge  in  the  international political landscape of the interwar period.

## Health, ideology and science in the interwar period

By examining how notions around science, health and sexual morality shaped the League's work, I want to use the League of Nations archive (LONA) to create a cultural history and add to the field of  research  concerned  with  social  questions.  In  trying  to  understand  the  intimate  links  between scientific research, ideology and culture, I build on existing perspectives of knowledge production. These concepts illuminate how underlying norms and ideologies affect the production of knowledge, how scientific  research  never  operates  autonomously  from  the  historical  and  cultural  context  in which it is conducted (Foucault 2013: 203), and how these new scientific breakthroughs reinforce and strengthen categorisations and hierarchisation through the establishment of scientifically based ideas  of  normality  (Taylor  2014:  62).  I  am  interested  in  understanding  the  close  relationship between the research group, research field and findings. Hereby trying to illuminate the inseparable nature between the normative or cultural context in which the research was carried out, and the framing of the international 'problem' and conceptualisation of prostitution. With this strategy I deconstruct the report, searching for inconsistencies between the League's initial motivations and standards of official inquiries, and the ideologically motivated conclusions of the research.

The interwar period saw a stark increase in state-sponsored initiatives in the realms of public health and social medicine through the establishment of health ministries and public campaigns promoting family values. These developments led to a heightened focus on protecting the bodies of the nation from influences  deemed degenerating by the state,  exemplified  by  the  institutionalisation  of  the 'delinquent'  and  'promiscuous',  and  mass  sterilisation  programs  (Mazower  1998:  91).  I  am interested  in  understanding  the  links  between  science,  hygiene  and  sexual  morality  in  interwar discourse and research. In these fields, sexuality was politicised and made a public concern for the state, with health and sexuality becoming a benchmark of a strong societal foundation, and thus a potential threat to societal cohesion and order (Taylor 2014: 47). The state continued to counteract these perceived threats with a wide range of campaigns aimed at improving the overall morality in

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society (Foucault 1994: 151). These campaigns produced taxonomies and hierarchies, structured around the formulation of norms, by which it was possible to judge or divide the population into virtuous/sinful, normal/abnormal, healthy/degenerate (Davidson 1994: 292-4).

This contextual backdrop helps illuminate the broader developments in the realm of science, public health and morality central to Interwar health and social policies within the nation state. With this backdrop, we can investigate these developments on a transnational or international level through the leagues data collection and large-scale research within the realms of public health and sexology, and  showcase  how  the  League's  knowledge  production  produced  norms  around  sex  work  and sexuality  as  a  whole.  In  this  article  I  aim  to  showcase  how  the  League's  normative  knowledge production in this field made prostitution a degenerating force, not only within the nation states but as a global threat for the future of humanity, and how this to some degree was a product of a conscious strategy of the leading members of the research group.

The core of my analysis relies primarily on the Report of the Special Body of Experts on the Traffic in  Women  and  Children  published  by  the  League  in  1927.  This  body  of  work  presents  the international  trafficking  'problem',  the  most  significant  findings  and  conclusions  made  by  the researchers and gives us a vital insight into how the knowledge of this international 'problem' was constructed. Through the digitised archives of the League of Nations, held at the United Nations in  Geneva,  I  have  been  able  to  access  not  only  the  final  reports  but  also  the  drafts.  Due  to  the unpublished nature of the drafts, they allow us to gain insights into the more explicit ideological tendencies of the group's work. In comparing the two texts we can follow the editorial process and see what areas of the research were toned down or left out in the final report, showing us what was thought to be appropriate and worthy of being published. This being said, it is important to note that there are limitations to how much we can conclude about the editorial selection of the dataset from the reports alone, without crossing over into the realm of speculation. In overcoming some of these limitations I have chosen to include a group of sources that can shed light on the publication context.

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## The American connections

The CTW consisted of a wide range of non-governmental interest groups, who aided the League with everything from expertise to the funding of the League's research. This organizational structure was in no way extraordinary, but widespread within the social section of the Secretariat, and was in many ways the product of a lack of institutional support and underfunding (Pedersen 2007: 1111). It was within this committee that the idea of a large-scale inquiry into trafficking was conceived. During this time, the League reinforced their legal tools for combating and preventing international criminal activity (Garzia 2012: 98) and the anti-trafficking campaign supported them in establishing the right to carry out on-site investigations within the member states (Pedersen 2007: 1110).

The  USA  did  not  join  the  League  of  Nations  and  therefore  was  not  officially  involved  in  this international  cooperation;  however,  American  interest  groups  had  a  profound  influence  on  this inquiry.  The  chief  architect  behind  this  global  investigation  was  the  committee's  unofficial  US delegate, Grace Abbott. In a plea to the League Council, she proposed her visions and motivations for such a large-scale endeavour: '(…) an intelligent basis for a sound programme for international cooperation  for  the  suppression  of  the  traffic '. 1 In  order  to  reach  this  potential,  she  argues  for  the deployment of professional experts in obtaining the facts and refuting exaggerations and denials of this global problem 2 . The argument put forward by Abbott aligns with the League's use of experts. At  the  time  it  was  believed  that  the  League  could  avoid  partiality  and  nationalist  bias  by  using outside experts because these would secure the acquisition of impartial knowledge and thus aid the Council and the Assembly when deciding on sensitive matters (Cloet 2019: 1).

Abbott had close ties to the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA) and the inquiry was made possible  by  their  contributions.  ASHA  put  forward  75.000  USD  thereby  funding  the  whole operation 3 . Head of ASHA, Dr. William F. Snow, was appointed by the Council to oversee the SBE.

1 League of Nations Archive, Geneva, R636/12/27338/647, 21.03.1923, Memorandum recommending an investigation through the Secretariat of the League, in order to ascertain certain facts regarding this traffic , 1-2.

2 LONA, R636/12/27338/647, 21.03.1923, Memorandum recommending an investigation through the Secretariat of the League, in order to ascertain certain facts regarding this traffic , 1-2.

3 League of Nations, Report of the Special Body of Experts on Traffic in Women and Children - part 1 , (Geneva: Publications of the league of nations, 17.02.1927), 5.

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He in turn appointed his colleague, Bascom Johnson, a lawyer in charge of ASHA's legal affairs, to oversee  the  fieldwork  conducted  by  the  research  group  (Knepper  2016:  143).  This  shows  the symbiosis between official League inquiries and politically motivated interest groups. This wasn't a dim lit  conspiracy;  these  ties  were  well-established  and  written  into  the  official  report,  and  this practice characterised every aspect of the League's work (Pedersen 2007: 1092). This aside, it is hard to imagine that the ideological and activist nature of ASHA and its members did not affect the way this problem was framed and presented. In her plea, Abbott clearly states that this organisation is politically  motivated  ' in  the  abolition  of  prostitution ' 4 .  This  perspective  creates  a  foundation  for understanding the cultural and political background of the leading researchers, and the way they understood  this  international  'problem'  and  the  solutions  they  put  forward.  The  dynamic  of American  non-governmental  interest  groups  exerting  American  influence  and  interests  through 'non-political' and technical arenas such as anti-trafficking, can in many ways be understood in a wider  context  of  the  exercising  of  North  American  soft  power  during  the  time  of  political isolationism (Giannuli 1998: 48; Tournès 2022).

## The Report of the Special Body of Experts

At  the  time  of  the  research,  ideas  about  innocent,  young,  white  women  being  kidnapped  and trafficked into prostitution were widespread in popular culture (Knepper 2016: 139). The report clearly  states  that  it  wished  to  challenge  and  refute  these  prevalent  notions  about  the  nature  of trafficking:

The very publication of such rumours without any attempt to verify their accuracy tends to divert public attention from the real facts of the situation 5

The  research  landscape  is  divided  on  the  question  of  the  League's  anti-trafficking  efforts' eurocentrism. Some scholars have emphasized the League's efforts to distance themselves from the earlier so-called 'white slavery' campaigns by adopting the more inclusive term 'trafficking' as an

4 LONA, R636/12/27338/647, 1923, Memorandum recommending an investigation through the Secretariat of the League, in order to ascertain certain facts regarding this traffic, 2.

5 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 9.

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important  step  in  deracializing  international  anti-trafficking  efforts  (Leppänen  2007:  531;  Legg 2012: 648). However, this body of research focuses on the works of the CTW and the League's antitrafficking efforts as a whole. When looking at this specific report and the make-up of the research group (SBE) it is clear that the majority of the researchers were drafted from Europe and North America and that the leading members of this group were affiliated with activist interest groups with strong  Anglo-Saxon  notions  on  sexual  morality  and  explicit  interests  in  the  abolition  of  statesanctioned prostitution. Even though the report covered the trafficking in both European and South American territories the group only had one representative native to South America, Dr. Paulina Luisi, who, as I'll show later, ended up discrediting the report's findings and conclusions.

The SBE clearly saw themselves in opposition to the aforementioned narratives and saw their factbased research as the antidote. By doing this they aligned themselves with the overall ethos of the League, where the role of expert knowledge would create an objective foundation for the debates on transnational problems. By utilising the gravitas of 'scientifically' based wording, they were able to create  new  systems  of  knowledge  about  the nature  of  prostitution  and establish  new  'truths'  or conceptions  of  this  field,  by  placing  themselves  in  opposition  to  these  popular  narratives  or ' rumours '.  The  ideological  bias  or  tendency  of  the  researchers  is  quite  explicit  and  appears  all throughout the source material and clearly influenced how the knowledge around the transnational aspects  of  prostitution  were  framed  and  conceptualised.  This  tendency  within  the  text  is  clearly showcased in what can only be described as a trigger warning:

The proper examination of a social evil of this description, which is naturally repellent to decent-minded people, must involve reference to many drab and sordid details and even to practices which are shocking in their depravity. 6

This warning to the readers shows us how the researchers engaged and negotiated with the sexual morality of the time, and their attitude towards sex workers. It is clear that there is no effort made to come across as objective, and no formal separation between the researchers' normative bias and the research field. The objective of uncovering the 'truth' is interwoven with a moralistic discourse,

6 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 6.

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here showcased in the normative wording. It is quite apparent that this strong bias affected the way in which the data was presented. When looking at the draft it becomes clear that details were left out of the final report. This could point to the fact that they were wary to cross into the realm of sensationalism, or that a report sanctioned by the League had to conform to certain standards 7 . Examples of this editing process can be seen in the omission of very explicit descriptions of the type of services provided within the field of sex work. These descriptions were changed from the specific, for example ' sodomy ' 8 , to more general wording such as ' various forms of perversion ' 9 .

## The scientific gaze

The scientific  methodology  and  terminology  used  in  the  production  of  this  body  of  knowledge allowed the authors to showcase how localised centres of 'vice' could have a corrupting influence on  the  global  community  as  a  whole  by  illustrating  how  these  complex  networks  enabled  the transnational movement of body and capital. In the draft, they described the work as sociological and scientific in nature 10 .  These terms do not appear in the final report but there is no doubt that the  investigation  was  influenced  by  ideas  from  the  fields  of  sociology  and  economics.  The  data collected is both qualitative and quantitative in nature, ranging from statistics to interviews, field observations and visual representations (maps of trafficking routes). The information in the reports was obtained through collaborations with governments, voluntary organisations and most notably representatives of the so-called underworld. As mentioned earlier, this was part of a wider campaign establishing the right of the League to interrogate governments and carry out on-site investigations. The most controversial method was the deployment of undercover agents infiltrating the criminal trafficking networks. They did this, in their own words, to uncover ' what was going on behind the scenes ' 11 , defending their methods by stressing the need to expose the factual reality of the problem, and refute any questioning of the validity of the information obtained through criminals 12 .

7 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 6.

8 League of Nations Archive, Geneva, S148-A-3A-1, 1927, Traffic in women and children - Special Body of Experts Draft, 25.

9 Report of the Special Body of Experts,, part 1,14.

10 LONA, S148-A-3A-1, 1927, Traffic in women and children - Special Body of Experts - Draft, 131.

11 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 6.

12 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 6.

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The sociological influence on the conceptualization of this field is very clear. Most notably is the use  of  detailed  network  analysis  and  field  observations,  describing  the  inner  workings  of  the trafficking rings in play. They conclude that no evidence was found to support any ideas about a coherent international conspiracy behind the transnational trafficking in women, but state that these operations  were  carried  out  by  loosely  related  autonomous,  local  groups  or  ' clubs ' 13 .  The sociological influence is clear in the descriptions of specific clubs taken from the field notes of the investigators, in which detailed analysis depicts the different aspects of the trades and shows how logistics, capital, spaces, criminals and corrupt officials are working together in complex networks 14 .

Another important scientific influence in the knowledge produced, are key ideas from the field of economics. In this section I wish to illuminate how notions of a capitalist self-regulating economy influenced the way in which international traffic was understood and presented by the authors. They described international traffic as a business like any other, governed by the iron laws of supply and demand 15 . With the concept of a global, self-regulating economy, they were able to construct links between local surges in the market and the transnational 'problem'. A good example of this can be found in the report's description of so-called temporary markets. The report defines these temporary markets  as  an  artificial  surge  in  the  number  of  males  due  to  festivities,  sporting  events,  tourist attractions  or  military  presence 16 .  An  example  of  the  problematisation  of  these  markets  is  the description of the relationship between the USA and the Mexican town of Tia Juana.

The racing season is said to attract over a hundred thousand visitors a day, the majority of whom are American. By the side of legitimate attractions has grown up an organised centre of vice which panders to the worst sexual excesses (...) 17

The report concludes that these temporary and local markets have a direct effect on the stimulation of international traffic 18 . Economic ideas about a global market allows the authors to problematize

13 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 24.

14 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 24-25.

15 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 9.

16 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 43.

17 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 13-14.

18 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 43.

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local centres of 'vice'. With this logic, Tia Juana's 'immoral' industries cannot be isolated but feed into a worldwide system of the supply and demand of vice. During the research the USA was in the middle of the prohibition era, which is an important context. Using the example of Tia Juana, they are  able  to  argue  that  a  local  industry  can  have  a  corrupting  influence  on  an  international  level, stimulating the international trafficking of sex workers to this centre and thus giving Americans access to activities deemed immoral and illegal by their own government.

## Constructing villains and victims

The  report  produced  knowledge  regarding  the  power  relations  within  the  field  of  sex  work  by creating a strong binary between innocent sex workers and villainous traffickers. Furthermore, this construction  channelled  the  heavy  weight  of  this  global  problem  on  the  shoulders  of  immoral individuals, hardwired for delinquency. The report states that trafficking should be understood as a degenerating force on the societal foundation:

The traffic as it exists would not appear by any means to be only a traffic in prostitutes, but a traffic in prostitutes is an evil which on all grounds of health or morals and in the interest of the future of the race, must be uprooted. 19

This  shows  the  intersection  between  health,  morality  and  politics  in  the  report,  and  must  be understood through the broader scientific context of the time. The emergence of social medicine, with  its  essential  idea  that  public  health  could  be  significantly  improved,  not  through  medicine alone but through political reforms altering the social circumstances within society. This realization brought a better and more holistic understanding of public health, but it also led to the politicization of these international questions (Gorman 2017: 204). In the quote the authors express the belief that  prostitution  was  a  degenerating  force  with  the  potential  to  corrode  the  fabric  of  society. Through this lens, the problem of international prostitution is elevated to a question of protecting the purity of the global society on the grounds of morality and health. The weight of this 'evil' is cemented through the individuals partaking in this global trade.

19 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 19.

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In describing the power relations between the sex workers and the procurers, the report creates a strong binary of villains and victims, producing archetypal characters at each end of this construct. The traffickers play the part of procuring and transporting women into this global network and are described as:

(…) pests of society are real parasites who live on the body as well as on the soul of their host. 20

This group works autonomously with loose ties of camaraderie to other parts of the network. In the quotation we see again this metaphor of society as a collective entity and how these individuals' prey on  both  the  soul  (morality)  and  the  body  (health)  of  the  host  (society).  Again,  we  have  two intertwined  discourses;  a  descriptive  scientific  gaze  that  aims  to  understand  and  categorise  the different cogwheels of this international 'problem', and a moralistic one that produces knowledge about these actors as inherently immoral, degenerating parasites. Another central group of actors described in the report are the so-called souteneurs (French for pimp ). This group takes control of the business of prostitution after a woman has been trafficked to a new location.

Once a foreign girl is  taken  to  a  distant  country  (...)  the  power  of  the  souteneur  is  proportionately increased and she is accordingly a better subject for intimidation than local girls. Herein lies the studied cruelty and slavery which inevitably follows international traffi c. 21

This  presents  the  unequal  and  exploitative  power  dynamic  between  the  sex  worker  and  the souteneur.  The  text  makes  use  of  the  concept  of  slavery  to  emphasize  this  dehumanizing  and asymmetrical dynamic. Another interesting aspect is the idea that these techniques for maintaining the exploitative power balance is a product of a well thought out methodology, a form of ' studied cruelty ',  adding  to  the  idea  that  the  intermediaries  of  sex  work  are  inherently  inhumane.  The souteneurs  are  also  described  as  being  ' low-down  rascals '  engaged  in  ' any  disreputable  line  of business ' 22 . I do not consider the categories produced in the report mere fabrications or complete constructions in a social constructivist sense. In the report there are countless examples of extreme cruelty that points to actual experiences and tragedies of the lives of sex workers. The point that I

20 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 9.

21 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1,15.

22 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 28.

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am attempting to make however, is that the language used signifies a deterministic understanding of  the  criminalized  intermediaries  of  sex  work.  There  is  little  to  no  desire  to  understand  the underlying causes of what led to these careers in crime, and through this the souteneurs, traffickers and madams are reduced to mere archetypal villains deprived of their humanity. They are described as deviants, judged not by their acts, but by their character (Taylor 2014: 44). Despite their initial motivation  to  challenge  existing  popular  narratives  surrounding  innocent,  young  women  being forced into prostitution, the report reproduced ideas about the exploitative power relations within the field of sex work and deprived the women involved in this line of work of any agency. Finally, the knowledge produced in this report can only be thought to have furthered the stigmatization of these  women through the excessive use of strong moralistic language, condemning the field and their acts as a whole (Garcia 2012: 128).

## Regulated prostitution

The system of regulated prostitution had its roots in 19th century health policies and was, at the time of the report, widespread throughout South America, Europe and its colonial territories. Even though Britain had abolished the system in the UK they still made use of this regulation in their colonies.    The  arguments  for  this  system's  legitimacy  were  manyfold,  ranging  from  military necessity, public decency to maintaining colonial hierarchies (Levine 2003: 20). I argue that the authors used an official inquiry on trafficking, as a form of trojan horse, to problematize prostitution itself. The report tied the stimulation of global trafficking to nations with relaxed attitudes towards prostitution. Throughout the report the authors challenge a range of state-held arguments in favour of regulated prostitution. These arguments range from the idea that prostitution is an inevitable force within societies and that regulation helps maintain the greatest amount of public order and decency 23 , to the most influential argument; that regulated prostitution was the best weapon in the fight against venereal diseases, in a time where effective treatments were limited 24 .

23 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 40.

24 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 40.

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The authors claim they didn't want to discuss the merits of this system 25 . This seems like nothing more than a thinly veiled rhetorical strategy, and in doing so they guard themselves against possible criticism from member states, practising regulated prostitution within their sovereign territories. When consulting the  draft  of  the  report  this  inherent  tendency  becomes  clear.  In  the  draft  the researchers clearly state that they hope that a scientific inquiry such as this will not only strengthen the collective international will to understand and combat the transnational traffic, but that the report  would challenge the idea of regulated prostitution altogether 26 .  One  could  argue  that  the above-mentioned agenda did not fit with the initial reasoning for the League-sanctioned inquiry, that being an investigation of the trafficking question and not a moralistic critique of prostitution itself.  Another  explanation  for  this  choice  is  that  the  report  could  be  interpreted  as  a  partisan contribution, aimed at converting member states to the Anglo-Saxon-inspired system of prohibition.

Even though the motivation was edited out of the official report, the knowledge produced is still inherently biased. The report ties together local regulated prostitution and the global problem of trafficking 27 . Throughout the report this point is stressed continuously and even concluded to be the primary reason for the stimulus in international trafficking, making this local regulation the primary cause of this global 'problem' 28 .

The report presents a range of counterarguments against local regulated prostitution. Firstly, an argument  is  made  solely  against  prostitution  with  no  relation  to  the  international  trafficking question. They argue that regulated prostitution does not only cater to the inevitable number of ' abnormal minds ' in a given populous, but that it is a corrupting factor in itself, leading healthy young men into depraved and immoral practices 29 . According to this logic these vice districts act as a kind of motor, spreading unwanted character traits to a wider and previously unsoiled audience, degenerating  the  potential  of  future  generations.  The  report  concludes  with  a  plea  to  the governments relying on regulated prostitution for the prevention of the spread of venereal diseases:

25 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 40.

26 LONA, S148-A-3A-1, 1927, Traffic in women and children - Special Body of Experts - Draft, 129-31.

27 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 40

28 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 14.

29 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 14.

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(…) to consider the possibility of abandoning a system which is fraught with such dangers from the point of view of international traffic. 30

This quote shows how the authors saw their potential influence in persuading governments to move away from this system. This indicates that this League-sanctioned inquiry was used to challenge the institution of prostitution itself through a form of activism disguised as an inquiry initiated to serve the collective interests of the international community.

## The aftermath

In this final section of this article, I wish to investigate both the internal and external criticism of the report's findings in the immediate aftermath of its publication. In doing so I wish to further the understanding of the consequences of the League's use of outside experts in delivering an unbiased, fact-based foundation for international debates. The report received widespread attention following its publication and broke the records for sales of any publications made by the League 31 .

There was a fight both at the external and internal level of the League to stamp out criticism of the report's conclusions and give an official sanctioning of its integrity. Internally, an official complaint made by the only South American member of the SBE, Dr. Paulina Luisi, directly to the SecretaryGeneral of the Secretariat, Sir Eric Drummond. I have not been able to locate this document within the archive, but I have come across several sources referencing this formal complaint, one of these being a letter from the Head of the SBE, Dr. William F. Snow, to Drummond, in which Snow tries to discredit Luisi's claims and argues that:

we  do  not  have  any  evidence  to  support  the  view  that  the  enquiry  has  been  either  insufficient  or superficial for the use we have made of our information. 32

30 Report of the Special Body of Experts, part 1, 48.

31 Rachel E. Crowdy, 'The Humanitarian Activities of the League of Nations' Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs , Vol. 6, No. 3 (May, 1927): 156.

32 LONA, R673/12/63426/28269, 05.12.1927 , Reply from the Chairman of the Special Body of Experts to the SecretaryGeneral , 2.

## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 01 Juni 2023

In an attempt to stop the circulation of the critical memorandum the Head of the Social Section under the League's Secretariat, Dame Rachel Crowdy, methodically discredits Dr. Luisi's claims and concludes the following:

I cannot help feeling that if the memorandum on her point of view is circulated to the South American Committee, it may give the impression that the Secretariat - which I imagine should take no part in such a matter - is trying to discredit a report which the Council has thought fit to accept and publish and which was prepared by Experts nominated by the Council 33

Crowdy clearly tried to avoid the potential crisis of the Secretariat coming across as divided, by using the force of the organisational hierarchy to sanction the validity of the report's conclusions. She  invokes  the  authority  of  the  Council  and  argues  that  the  report's  findings  were  not  only sanctioned but also the will of this leading organ. In doing so she also gives the highest institutional seal of approval to the body of research carried out by external experts. These two examples from internal affairs clearly illuminate how key actors involved in this inquiry, tried to protect the validity of the report in the eyes of their organisational superiors, but also how they sought to silence critical voices, hereby making the Secretariat appear undivided, by rallying up institutional support for the report's findings.

As mentioned earlier this battle was not only fought internally but also in the public sphere through external lines of communication. The New York Times published an article describing the South American delegates' claims that the report:

gave a rough whitewashing to the Anglo-Saxon countries while the Latins came in for a bitter and unjust criticism. 34

Another line of criticism came from the, at the time, famous and influential French investigative journalist Albert Londres. Through his work 'The Road to Buenos Ayres' (1928) he denounced the report as being riddled with false information. Londres did not believe that abolition was a proper tool  in  combating  the  problems  surrounding  prostitution,  because  this  approach  did  not

33 LONA, S513/20/7, 14.12.1927. Memo de Dame Rachel Crowdy, Dr. luisi et la Comité d'Experts, 3.

34 'White Slave Report Revisited for the League', New York Times , 27 December 1927, p. 27.

## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 01 Juni 2023

acknowledge and engage with the root causes of the problem, these being first and foremost poverty, according to him (Knepper 2016: 144) In an article written just after the first part of the report was published, Crowdy alludes to the extensive treatment of the report by the press. In this initial article she defends the integrity of the report categorically:

Their  conclusions  are  founded  on  fact.  What  the  experts  have  said  in  their  Report  they  have substantiated. 35

In a later article of hers regarding the report, she nuanced her categorical stance. In the text she alludes to some of the more ideological aspects of the research, claiming:

Even if one does not enter into the moral or hygienic side of the question, it is easy to realize how terrible this evil is. 36

Crowdy is not denouncing the factual basis of the report but acknowledges a moralistic and social hygienic layer in the text. Bringing in these sources, I am not trying to evaluate the factual integrity of the report's findings as this is neither possible nor within the scope and theme of this article. I've engaged with these sources because they, in relation to the overall examination of the report, give a nuanced perspective on the League's use of inquiries. Despite these critical voices, the scale of the inquiry was unprecedented and gave the League a 'scientific' basis for swaying nation states towards the abolition of state sanctioned prostitution. The findings and conclusions of the report aided the League  in  passing  influential  anti-trafficking  conventions  which  laid  the  groundwork  for  later international  anti-trafficking  efforts  led  by  the  UN  (Metzger  2007:  73-74).  As  I  have  described earlier, the ideal behind these official inquiries was to give an unbiased foundation on transnational questions  where  the  member  states  were  divided.  When  examining  this  specific  inquiry,  this idealised objective seems to have been somewhat compromised. This should serve as an important example of the symbiotic relationship between the League and non-governmental interest groups,

35 Crowdy, 'The Humanitarian Activities of the League of Nations', 157.

36 Dame Rachel Crowdy, 'The League of Nations: Its Social and Humanitarian Work' The American Journal of Nursing , Vol. 28, No. 4 (Apr., 1928): 351-352.

## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 01 Juni 2023

and the pragmatic compromise of conducting large-scale transnational research with limited funds and in areas that lay outside what was perceived as being the core objectives of the organisation.

## Conclusion

Researchers  always  operate  within  a  specific  historical  and  cultural  context.  The  leaders  of  this investigation and the majority of the investigators conducting the field work, were drafted from activist interest groups with very specific notions of the intersections between politics and morality. Their report constructed new systems of knowledge about the hierarchical power relations within the field of sex work and in doing so produced a strong reductionist categorisation of the different actors involved in this work, placing part of the blame for this international 'problem' in the hands of abnormal-minded criminals hardwired for delinquency.

Furthermore, it made prostitution into a corrupting force with the potential of degenerating the health of humanity. The analysis of their knowledge production shows how this worldview acted as a prism, through which this problem was interpreted, and solutions were proposed. It is not possible, within  the  scope  of  this  article,  to  make  categorical  conclusions  about  whether  this  process  was without a doubt intentional, but the source material indicates that this process was, to some degree, a product of a conscious strategy by the leaders of this investigation. Looking at the wide-ranging criticisms  it  becomes  clear  that  the  inherent  bias  of  the  research  group  clashed  with  continental European  (French)  and  South  American  notions  of  sexual  morality  and  understandings  of  the phenomenon  of  prostitution  within  society.  This  should  serve  as  an  example  of  the  inherent difficulty  of  the  Secretariat  in  embodying  their  formal  ideals  of  impartiality  of  their  research, working in the interests of the collective international community. By appointing outside experts with activist motivations and strong Anglo-Saxon notions of morality, the inquiry became limited in  its  understanding  of  the  wide-ranging  customs  and  cultural  attitudes  towards  sex  work  that characterized the international community.

## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 01 Juni 2023

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Women's studies

## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 01 Juni 2023

- League of Nations, Report of the Special Body of Experts on Traffic in Women and Children - part 1, Geneva: Publications of the League of Nations, 17.02.1927.
- 'White Slave Report Revisited for the League', New York Times . 27. December 1927.