# What is "white slavery"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 18, 2012, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323 "2012-05-18T15:13:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/1 "2012-05-18T15:13:24Z")
I have been seeing this term used on the board, what is the meaning? Literal reading would suggest white(race) slaves/slavery, but definitions are all over the place. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/2 "2012-05-18T15:25:19Z")
In general, it means forcing women to become prostitutes. ---
**Author:** ![Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d9b06d/32.png) [@Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boozahol_Squid_P.I)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/3 "2012-05-18T15:32:46Z")
‘White’ doesn’t refer to race in this case, but to the concept of ‘innocence’ which is being violated. Children of either gender, in addition to women, can also be involved in the white slave trade. ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/4 "2012-05-18T15:33:54Z")
AKA [trafficking](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking). ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/5 "2012-05-18T15:49:09Z")
> [@Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](#): > > ‘White’ doesn’t refer to race in this case, but to the concept of ‘innocence’ which is being violated. Children of either gender, in addition to women, can also be involved in the white slave trade. Thanks, I always have known it as sexual slavery. I had wondered if it was similar to a white lie because one of the definitions was forced labor such as of prisoners. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/6 "2012-05-18T16:13:22Z")
> [@Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](#): > > ‘White’ doesn’t refer to race in this case, but to the concept of ‘innocence’ which is being violated. Children of either gender, in addition to women, can also be involved in the white slave trade. So you are saying that if innocent black women are forced into prostitution, that counts as “white” slavery? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/7 "2012-05-18T16:48:59Z")
> [@Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](#): > > ‘White’ doesn’t refer to race in this case, but to the concept of ‘innocence’ which is being violated. Children of either gender, in addition to women, can also be involved in the white slave trade. It’s more both than one or the other. Yes, forced prostitution, as with any sex outside of marriage, certainly violated the presumed innocence of women. But there are several assumptions hidden in that statement. Slavers could legally have sex with their slaves: slaves had no presumption of innocence. And slavery as a term took on the almost exclusive meaning of black chattel slavery. Enslaving white men and women was of course known to all educated people, and “white slavery” was used in that sense throughout the 19th century, but the qualifier was necessary. “Slavery” really had only one meaning. White slavery in the sense of girls forced into prostitution seems to date from the early 20th century. The earliest cite I found is a book by Charles Byron Chrysler, _White Slavery_, from 1909. (The 1911 edition is the first known source of floozy. Apparently, some girls were not all that innocent.) I’ve seen references that place the hysteria over white slavery as starting in England, and the early cites make it seem like a problem that was endemic in Europe. Others warn “country girls” about the dangers of the big city. What they have in common is pushing the horror that “your” child might be in danger from traffickers, and the books and articles were always directed to middle-class whites. Black and immigrant girls might be affected, but they were beside the point (and for some they were inherently floozies). It could happen to white girls, and that was a skin color. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/8 "2012-05-18T16:56:07Z")
[Text of the 1910 White-Slave Traffic Act](http://www.pbs.org/unforgivableblackness/knockout/mannact_text.html), better known as the Mann Act. The text refers to “the white-slave traffic” but the language seems pretty clear that it applies to trafficking women of any race (or nationality, judging from the references to “alien women or girls” which I don’t think meant extraterrestrials, cool as that might be in a very deplorable way). But there seems little doubt that the term was originally race-specific, since it appears to have originated in an era where black slavery (for sexual trafficking as well as other purposes) was perfectly legal. (ETA: as **Exapo Mapcase** points out.) By the way, [the Master has addressed this](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1302/was-there-really-such-a-thing-as-white-slavery). ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/9 "2012-05-18T17:01:38Z")
There was a hysteria of the time (around the 1920’s/1930’s with movies and such, apparently it became a popular theme) that bad foreigners, especially menacing orientals, but possibly also Turks, Arabs, and East Indian rajah’s, were kidnapping innocent white girls to sell as sex slaves back home. This also played up the menacing oriental bad guy thing (Ming the Merciless?) as tensions were leading up to WWII, and the fact that oriental people and cultures seemed more mysterious and less understandable than the more familiar European cultures. Girls were warned they could be drugged and wake up on a ship to parts unknown to be ravaged by who-knows… ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/10 "2012-05-18T19:03:59Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > By the way, [the Master has addressed this](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1302/was-there-really-such-a-thing-as-white-slavery). [QUOTE=Cecil] A similar uproar arose in the United States in 1910, when the U.S. attorney in Chicago proclaimed that an international crime ring was abducting young girls in Europe and forcing them to work in Chicago brothels. [/QUOTE] I can’t confirm this without more of a search, but the Charles Byron Chrysler I cited published his book in Chicago in 1909, so that is likely the source of that uproar. ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/11 "2012-05-18T19:04:01Z")
Related (parody) movie: Thoroughly Modern Millie. (spoilers below…) The “ingenue” character gets kidnapped by a white slaver operating through a boarding house for young professional females. The kidnapper is careful to take only the residents who are supposedly orphans or estranged from their families. ---
**Author:** ![purple\_cow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b487fb/32.png) [@purple\_cow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purple_cow)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/12 "2012-05-18T19:40:09Z")
Just thought i’d point out, apropos of **md2000** ’s post, that in fact white people in Europe were quite commonly kidnapped and sold into slavery by Arabs/Turks/Muslims for many hundreds of years, probably until at least 1900. They controlled large parts of the Mediterranean and eastern Europe and had no problem taking slaves when they wanted to. ---
**Author:** ![Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d9b06d/32.png) [@Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boozahol_Squid_P.I)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/13 "2012-05-19T02:55:03Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > So you are saying that if innocent black women are forced into prostitution, that counts as “white” slavery? :dubious: Yes, I am. In fact, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the majority of victims of white slavery are Asian, not European in descent. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/14 "2012-05-19T03:12:17Z")
> [@Lasciel](#): > > Related (parody) movie: Thoroughly Modern Millie. > … Thanks, I was trying to remember where I saw that. IIRC, that was a 1967 and the theme was camp already by then. > [@purple\_cow](#): > > Just thought i’d point out, apropos of **md2000** ’s post, that in fact white people in Europe were quite commonly kidnapped and sold into slavery by Arabs/Turks/Muslims for many hundreds of years, probably until at least 1900. They controlled large parts of the Mediterranean and eastern Europe and had no problem taking slaves when they wanted to. Usually that was piracy. Turks and north Africans would raid ships and take their crew and passengers prisoner. Those that could pay, became hostages. Those that could not, became slaves. Neal Stephenson in the Baroque Cycle has an episode of this. It appears in a number of other works. I don’t recall anything about raids on land or surreptitious kidnappings in European ports, but I’m sure they happened from time to time. ---
**Author:** ![Rampant\_Coypu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/439d5e/32.png) [@Rampant\_Coypu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rampant_Coypu)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/15 "2012-05-19T03:38:15Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > There was a hysteria of the time (around the 1920’s/1930’s with movies and such, apparently it became a popular theme) that bad foreigners, especially menacing orientals, but possibly also Turks, Arabs, and East Indian rajah’s, were kidnapping innocent white girls to sell as sex slaves back home. My grandmother was a bit crazy and worried about all sorts of things. Local legend (believed by very few) was that blue eyed girls with lighter colored hair would be kidnapped and transported to Mexico. She was dismayed when one of her granddaughters had blue eyes. What’s odd is that she believed all this when her best friend was a Mexican immigrant who had an adult _pachuco_ son who called her _cara tia_. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/16 "2012-05-19T03:47:38Z")
It wasn’t just high seas piracy, Barbary pirates and the like frequently raiding European coasts and took slaves for labor or harems. Several villages in Ireland were nearly depopulated by repeated raids. It was a huge slaving operation, probably over 1m persons were taken as slaves that way. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/17 "2012-05-19T08:37:43Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > I don’t recall anything about raids on land or surreptitious kidnappings in European ports, but I’m sure they happened from time to time. Certainly they did. [Sack of Baltimore - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Baltimore) “Oh Blessed God! The Algerine is lord of Baltimore.” And this one: > **[Turkish Abductions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turkish_abductions)** > > The Turkish Abductions (Icelandic: Tyrkjaránið \[ˈtʰɪr̥caˌrauːnɪθ\]) were a series of slave raids by pirates from Algier and Salé that took place in Iceland in the summer of 1627. > The adjectival label "Turkish" (Icelandic: Tyrkja) does not refer to ethnic Turks, country of Turkey or Turkic peoples in general; at the time it was a general term for all Muslims of the Mediterranean since the majority were from or subjects of the Ottoman Empire. > The pirates came from the cities of Algiers and Salé. ... ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2012, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/18 "2012-05-20T06:06:29Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > It wasn’t just high seas piracy, Barbary pirates and the like frequently raiding European coasts and took slaves for labor or harems. Several villages in Ireland were nearly depopulated by repeated raids. It was a huge slaving operation, probably over 1m persons were taken as slaves that way. What? Are you saying 40% of the females in Ireland were taken as white slaves? Gonna need a cite before I believe that one. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2012, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/19 "2012-05-20T07:12:57Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > What? Are you saying 40% of the females in Ireland were taken as white slaves? > > Gonna need a cite before I believe that one. The Barbary corsairs didn’t take only women. They had a huge galley fleet and oar slaves don’t last long. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2012, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323/20 "2012-05-20T07:20:38Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > What? Are you saying 40% of the females in Ireland were taken as white slaves? > > Gonna need a cite before I believe that one. No no no, the “one million” figure refers to Barbary corsair raids along the whole European coastline from the 16th to the 19th centuries, not to Ireland alone. Heck, even the entire number of people **emigrating** from Ireland (including moving to Britain) from 1700 to the present is something under ten million; the total number of Irish ever enslaved by Barbary corsairs is a tiny fraction of that number, not on the order of ten percent of it. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-white-slavery/622323.md?page=2)