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The operation of the British model of imperialism was never consistent, seldom coherent, and far from comprehensive. Purity campaigns, controversies about the age of consent, the regulation of prostitution and passage and repeal of contagious diseases laws, as well as a new legislative awareness of homosexuality, were all part of the sexual currency of the late Victorian age. Colonial governments, institutions and companies recognised that in many ways the effective operation of the Empire depended upon sexual arrangements. They devised elaborate systems of sexual governance, but also devoted disproportionate energy to marking and policing the sexual margins. This book not only investigates controversies surrounding prostitution, homosexuality and the age of consent in the British Empire, but also revolutionises people's notions about the importance of sex as a nexus of imperial power relations. The derivative hypothesis, which reads colonial sexuality politics as something England did or gave to its colonies, is illustrated and made explicit by the
the mother country the same year. I argue, however, that the colony did not simply follow England, nor could it have done so, for the successful passage of this legislation depended in both places on high levels of public interest and political momentum. South Australian legislation on social purity was not simply an imperial imposition or an action of colonial deference. When Kirby campaigned for an increase in the age of consent, he did so actively and with some autonomy. In 1885 the South Australian parliament passed
, South Australian Parliament-ary Paper, Report . . . on the Boy Migrant Scheme , 1924. 26 Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Papers, Migrants – Medical Examination in England , 2, 1923–24. 27 An early expression of such concerns may be
, reflecting upon these events a year later during the debates over women’s suffrage in the South Australian parliament, one Member argued that at Broken Hill the ‘women got much more excited and acted with more violence than the men did’. 85 In 1909 there is photographic evidence that women were also among the pickets. 86 And they sang. This is not an isolated