Colliding Bodies: Prostitutes, Soldiers, and Venereal Diseases in Colonial Egypt

This article explores attempts to control outbreaks of venereal diseases among prostitutes and imperial soldiers in Cairo and Alexandria leading up to and through World War I. Seeking to move beyond the usual colonial framing of center-periphery, it considers two British imperial outposts-Egypt and Australia-in conversation. The war brought thousands of Australian soldiers to Egypt, leaving their mark on Egypt and becoming marked by their time there, sometimes in indelible and deadly ways, as bodies and bodily fluids collided, and microbes passed between colonial and imperial subjects. The article argues that the highly racialized and classed system for regulating foreign and local prostitution that British officials implemented in Egypt to protect soldiers exacerbated rather than contained the spread of venereal diseases.