Global Sexual Encounters with Racialized ‘Others’ in War, Genocide, and Captivity, 1905–1945

This chapter uses three case studies of soldier-civilian sexual encounters in global conflicts to illustrate the ways ‘whiteness’ worked to facilitate violence, coercion, and consent. ‘The Soldiers Interfere with Our Women: Sexual Violence in German-Occupied Namibia, 1904–1908’ shows how the exigencies of colonial warfare, when coupled with the anti-Black racism of settler colonialism, resulted in a military structure that believed their enemies to be outside the laws of war. During the First World War, Australian servicemen were cautioned to avoid sexual encounters with women in brothel areas when they arrived in ‘Oriental’ Egypt. Such warnings often went unheeded. ‘Souvenirs from Wartime Egypt: Lieutenant Percy Deane’s Love Letters, 1914–1918’ uses first-person writings to consider the racialized differences between Deane’s relationships with an Egyptian woman in Cairo and a French woman in Port Said. In 1940s Canada, the confluence of racial and sexual hierarchies operated differently. The final case study, ‘Like the Boys from Town, But More Polite: Encounters Between Canadian Women and German POWs, 1940–1945’, examines how wartime ideals of ‘whiteness’ and sexualized masculinity led many civilians to treat prisoners, even those engaged in illegal sexual relationships with Canadian women, with hospitality and affection, despite the men’s status as ‘Nazi’ enemies.