Between the 1870s and 1930s, American social reformers, working closely with the US government, transformed sexual vice into an international political and humanitarian concern. As these activists worked to eradicate prostitution and trafficking, they promoted sexual self-control for both men and women as a cornerstone of civilization and a basis of American exceptionalism. Empire of Purity traces the history of these efforts, showing how the policing and penalization of sexuality was used to justify American interventions around the world.
Eva Payne describes how American reformers successfully pushed for international anti-trafficking agreements that mirrored US laws, calling for states to criminalize prostitution and restrict migration, and harming the very women they claimed to protect. She argues that Americans鈥� ambitions to reshape global sexual morality and law advanced an ideology of racial hierarchy that viewed women of color, immigrants, and sexual minorities as dangerous vectors of disease. Payne tells the stories of the sex workers themselves, revealing how these women鈥檚 experiences defy the dichotomies that have shaped American cultural and legal conceptions of prostitution and trafficking, such as choice and coercion, free and unfree labor, and white sexual innocence and the assumed depravity of nonwhites.
Drawing on archives in Europe, the United States, and Latin America, Empire of Purity ties the war on sexual vice to American imperial ambitions and a politicization of sexuality that continues to govern both domestic and international policy today.
Awards and Recognition
- A New Yorker Best Book We've Read This Year
Eva Payne is assistant professor of history at the University of Mississippi. Her writing has appeared in publications, such as the Journal of Women’s History and Radical History Review.
"[Empire of Purity includes] many fascinating experiments in the regulation of prostitution. . . . Payne seeks to reveal the often conflicting ways in which cities, states, and the federal government attempted to control the sale of sex, both in domestic contexts and overseas, when it was determined that American interests were at stake."鈥擱ebecca Mead, New Yorker
"Impressive debut. . . . Rigorous and well articulated, this is an enlightening new perspective on U.S. imperial history."鈥�Publishers Weekly
“Among the various manifestations of Progressive Era Americans’ profound belief in their special place in the world was a global sexual reform project that Eva Payne follows across parts of Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The vast scale of this book does not preclude a deeply textured and at times intimate look at the reformers as well as those they sought to reform. This is transnational history at its best, as well as a book that changes how we think about sexuality and statecraft. A remarkable achievement.”—Margot Canaday, author of Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America
“A tour de force. Through an exhaustive examination of historical sources, Empire of Purity reveals in stark detail how American conservative sexual politics shaped American global policy and ultimately the international legal order. Payne’s engaging prose and keen analysis guide the reader as America transitioned from a fledgling nation that used its prohibitionist stance on prostitution to assert a uniquely moral national identity to a world superpower using the power of the purse to spread its sexual ideals. A must-read for anyone interested in American exceptionalism and sex exceptionalism.”—Aya Gruber, author of The Feminist War on Crime
“The United States has imposed many things on the world. One of them, Eva Payne shows in this sharp, revealing book, was its sexual morality. Empire of Purity tells the eye-opening story of how the United States tried to eradicate sex work—and turn large numbers of women into criminals—on a global scale.”—Daniel Immerwahr, author of How to Hide an Empire
