Displacement

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book shows the spaces of regulated prostitution in 19th century Hong Kong and India were read variously as sites of legalized immorality or social necessity by reforming and regulatory groups within the hegemonic colonial class, but also as sites of racially transgressive caste (mis)behaviour by indigenous Indians. The colonialist presence was arguably less pervasive, or at least, intrusive in different ways, compared to the specifically settler presence in the ‘white dominions’. The book explores account of Queen Victoria’s visit to Dublin in 1900 provides a case in point: the fluid spaces of imperial/colonial celebration in the city were also spaces of resistance. The notion of ambivalence is a particularly powerful one in the context of racialized transcultural contacts, but also finds echoes in Proudfoot’s account of Presbyterian discourse in colonial Australia.