Liat Kozma’s Global Women, Colonial Ports reconstructs a densely connected Braudelian Mediterranean in which southern and eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East are linked during the interwar period through prostitution. This meticulously researched study is an innovative contribution to recent trends in global and transnational history. By focusing on key nodes and interactions in the Mediterranean basin, Kozma shows how wide-ranging horizontal networks reached outward as far as Calcutta and Buenos Aires. This approach also enables her to vertically link microlevel interactions of individual prostitutes, brothel owners, procurers, and colonial officials to emerging developments at the international level, in particular the emerging humanitarian concern with trafficking, public health, and women’s and children’s rights.
The book centers on the 1920s and 1930s, when colonial officials, voluntary associations, and commissions formed by the League of Nations focused increasingly on “regulated prostitution.” The history of the regulation or nonregulation of prostitution...
