The Devil's Chain: Prostitution and Social Control in Partitioned Poland

In the half-century before Poland's long-awaited political independence in 1918, anxiety surrounding the country's burgeoning sex industry fueled nearly constant public debate. The Devil's Chain is the first book to examine the world of commercial sex throughout the partitioned Polish territories, uncovering a previously hidden conversation about sexuality, gender propriety, and social class. Keely Stauter-Halsted situates the preoccupation with prostitution in the context of Poland's struggle for political independence and its difficult transition to modernity. She traces the Poles' growing anxiety about white slavery, venereal disease, and eugenics by examining the regulation of the female body, the rise of medical authority, and the role of social reformers in addressing the problem of paid sex. Stauter-Halsted argues that the sale of sex was positioned at the juncture of mass and elite cultures, affecting nearly every aspect of urban life and bringing together sharply divergent social classes in what had long been a radically stratified society. She captures the experiences of the impoverished women who turned to the streets and draws a vivid picture of the social milieu that shaped their choices. The Devil's Chain demonstrates that discussions of prostitution and its attendant disorders—sexual deviancy, alcoholism, child abuse, vagrancy, and other related problems—reflected differing visions for the future of the Polish nation.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Reforming the National Body1. Out of the Shadows2. On the Abyss: The Turn to Paid Sex3. Sex and the Bourgeois Family4. Narratives of Entrapment5. Sex Trafficking and Human Migration6. The Devil's Chain7. Female Activism and the Shadow State8. The Physician and the Fallen Woman9. Purity and Danger: Prostitution Reform and the Birth of Polish Eugenics10. Sex in the New RepublicConclusion: Prostitution and the Shaping of the National Community

About the Author :
Keely Stauter-Halsted is Professor of History and Stefan & Lucy Hejna Family Chair in the History of Poland at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of The Nation in the Village: The Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland, 1848–1914, also from Cornell.

Review :
Stauter-Halsted's careful attention to the complexities of this relationship, along with her sophisticated analysis of reactions to home-grown prostitution in the Polish lands before and after independence constitutes a tour de force The Devil's Chain is essential reading for students and scholars of Poland, the late Habsburg empire, migration, women's studies, human trafficking, and urbanization. - Nathaniel Wood (University of Kansas, Austrian History Yearbook 48) Keely Stauter-Halsted's new book makes a convincing case for moving prostitution to the center of our analysis of the long nineteenth century of Polish history.... The Devil's Chain is an impressive achievement, not only the best and most comprehensive English-language account available on prostitution in the Polish lands in the nineteenth century but also a thought-provoking reexamination of how Polish society as a whole was scrutinized, reimagined, and reshaped during this era. It will thus be required reading not only for students of the history of sexuality but for a wide range of scholars of Poland, Eastern Europe, and Europe as a whole. - James Bjork, King's College London (Journal of Modern History) Analyzing an extensive array of archival and published sources, [Stauter-Halsted] brings to light the voices and experiences of the prostitutes themselves while simultaneously assessing the perceptions and anxieties surrounding prostitution that emanated from professionals and the upper classes.... She convincingly integrates the Polish issues into the broader literature on prostitution, class, urbanization, migration, and professionalization. The unique aspects of the Polish experience, for instance the complex regulation system and the Polish application of class-based eugenics, make this an important contribution to our understanding of the modernization process. This volume will be of interest to scholars of partitioned Poland, but also to those exploring issues of migration, gender, and national identity. - Sharon A. Kowalsky, Texas A&M University-Commerce (Slavic Review) Impressive analysis reveals how discourse on the prostitute and her mileau evolved in response to a variety of factors.... Carefully researched and eloquently articulated, The Devil's Chain is an exemplary study on the complex relationship between the prostitute and the many intermediaries who studied her. Given its breadth and depth of the subject matter, The Devil's Chain will be of interest to a wide range of scholars of the history of sexuality, gender relations, and medicine. (SLAVIC & EAST EUROPEAN JOURNAL) The Devil's Chain is a superlative reminder of the capaciousness of gender as an ideological language that infused (and infuses) widespread understandings of state, empire and nation in the modern era. It should be required reading for scholars of gender, sexuality, migration, labour and nationalism in Poland, East-Central Europe and beyond. (SLAVONIC AND EAST EUROPEAN REVIEW) The Devil's Chain achieves a great deal, bringing together a wealth of material and themes into a compelling, persuasive, and novel account of Poland's development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book should stand as a model for studies of other national contexts. It deserves a wide readership, both among experts in European history and among scholars of prostitution, migration, and sex trafficking. (H-Net)