Repressed Memories: Historical Perspectives on Trafficking and Anti-Trafficking

Modern international trafficking in forced labor took hold during the 1850s, and crossed into the twentieth century as a seemingly intractable global phenomenon. Contemporaries described this worldwide enterprise as the “white slave trade.” As shorthand for sex-trafficking, “the white slave trade” has a very long pedigree. The first cross-national, public-private coalition against trafficking in women and children was forged in the late nineteenth century by the London-based National Vigilance Association. This coalition generated the foundational treaties and directional momentum for international anti-trafficking projects across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.