Contenu du sommaire : Prostitutions urbaines du XIVe au XXIe siècles

Beginning in the fourteenth century, prostitution was a source of concern for town authorities in the West in the Middle Ages. In the South of France, municipal consuls established municipal brothels, intended to contain this venal trade in an enclosed space. In 1525, the public brothel of Toulouse, the “Grande Abbaye”, had to be demolished: the town was reinforcing its walls, and this establishment was too close to the town walls. For two years, the capitouls (town councilors) debated a new, more appropriate location for their new establishment. Too close to a church or a convent, too near a school – there was a long list of proposed locations that the authorities deemed inadequate. During the municipal debates about establishing the new brother, “Château Vert”, the way the capitouls managed the urban space gradually became clear, notably with areas for honest activities and others for venal ones.

Formally prohibited in the late modern period, prostitution has long been studied as part of the field of female criminality. In the bustling town of the eighteenth century, where tensions and forms of solidarity took shape, prostitution also casts an impressive and revealing light on the relationship between urban dwellers and their daily environment. Grenoble was both a provincial capital and a garrison town, frequented on a daily basis by noblemen of the provincial Parlement, soldiers, craftsmen and day labourers. The spatial approach to prostitution highlights not only the town's purpose as a space for encounters and sexual relations, but also as a ground for police action. Thus, this paper relies on police, court and hospital archives, as well as private writings, to investigate prostitution's relation to space, along with the constant reshaping that it caused, between public and private, exterior and interior, formal and informal, normal and deviant.

In 1842, the Paris Police Prefecture extended the prostitution regulation system, which had previously been in force only in Paris, to the municipalities of the banlieue. This measure, aimed at tackling the considerable illegal prostitution flourishing outside the city limits, resulted in a certain number of guinguettes (drinking and dance halls) becoming official licensed brothels. However, the annexation of the banlieue in 1860 and the decline in Parisian brothels completely changed the geography of prostitution, with the brothels of Grenelle resisting more than elsewhere. The location of the nearby École Militaire and the large number of soldiers in this part of the fifteenth arrondissement partly explain this phenomenon. However, the persistence of brothels in the former municipality of Grenelle is connected to their history and location, as well as the actions of a handful of landlords speculating on excise taxes, guinguettes and the pleasure trade.

The spatial integration of prostitution in the city raises public order issues, because even if prostitution is tolerated, it must not be too visible. The aim is thus to control the space set aside for prostitution so that it does not submerge the entire city. In Hanoi, during the colonial period, the French authorities attempted to shut down, circumscribe and isolate prostitution areas, whereas the participants in the prostitution economy circulated, going beyond the boundaries imposed on them, and playing with these boundaries. Therefore, there was no “geography” of prostitution, but instead several spatial rationales that overlapped, intersected or even opposed one another. In contrast with the ideal of a closed, discreet and easily identifiable place, the reality was a scattered prostitution space, organised in a reticular pattern criss-crossing across the entire city.

The period of the interwar period was a turning point of prostitution policies in Romania: after seven decades of tolerated presence in the streets of the capital, the sex entrepreneurship saw its economic activities, spaces and professional careers condemned to extinction. This article seeks to understand how those modifications affected – or not – the prostitution geography of the city. What changes occurred in the districts of prostitution after the ban of brothels, and how did the boundaries of prostitution territory move by relating the actions of public authorities, citizens' mobilisations and the reaction of entrepreneurship sex confronted with the disintegration of its historic areas.

This paper investigates the handling of prostitution through the example of municipal management of prostitution in Luxembourg City, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, over the decade 1990-2000. After comparing street prostitution to other forms of for-pay sexuality, this paper highlights competition among different stakeholders to define the urban issue of prostitution and to handle it more effectively. However, while it is the municipal authorities' responsibility to provide good police services for the citizens, their action is pulled between two diverging intervention methods: should prostitution be contained within the city, in the place where it occurs? Or should it be removed from the city and established elsewhere? The solution ultimately adopted in Luxembourg City illustrates the central place held by a segregatory rationale in contemporary policies addressing prostitution.

Hemmed in with the Comtat Venaissin inside the Kingdom of France, the city of Avignon depicted a very singular situation during the eighteenth century, at the crossroads of French and Italian influences. In this respect, the city could be considered a welcome place for foreign people. A British dynasty – the Hill family – settled there in the late seventeenth century. This family of textile craftsmen gradually became involved in the daily life of the pontifical city over the generations. They did so by entering the music world via the papal companies staying in Avignon. Little by little, the Hills became essential musicians in the town. The social integration and the new identities of the family were hence anchored. In the end, the dynasty resolved to move again, leaving for Marseille when the French Revolution broke out. This article analyses the Hills' sojourn in Avignon in the eighteenth century, as well as the factors that favoured their urban social integration in the pontifical city – the latter mostly occurring thanks to their musical trade.