ABSTRACT
Between 1750 and 1950, almost all regions of the world were drawn into increasing economic and political relationships. Economic change and imperialism inevitably had significant impact on sexual behaviors and values. Some genuine global trends can be identified, based particularly on the complex relationship between new disruptions and reactions to Western claims about sexual propriety. European sexual intrusion did not affect the bulk of the population either in India or in Africa—this was not the same case as in Latin America earlier, for the overall demographic disruption through disease was far less great. Major sexual developments in other parts of Asia and North Africa resembled imperial conditions in many ways, even for great empires, like that of the Ottomans, that remained technically independent. The white slavery crusade clearly reveals the extent to which Victorian sexual standards could take on global meaning, particularly through insulting judgments about sexual habits in other societies.
