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STASZAK, J-F, 2015 , “Colonial tourism and prostitution: the visit to Bousbir in
Casablanca (1924-1955)”, Via@, 2015-2(8),
http://viatourismreview.com/en/2015/10/varia-art1/
Colonial tourism and prostitution: the visit to Bousbir in
Casablanca (1924-1955)
Jean-François Staszak
Professor of geography, University of Geneva
Abstract
This article is about touristic visits to Bousbir, Casablanca’s red-light district during
the French colonial period. Bousbir was a kind of erotic-exotic theme park, visited by
both the local population and travelers. It was an essential stop on any visit to
Casablanca, and hence to Morocco. The Bousbir touristic experience had elements, all
at once, of colonial travel, excursions to red-light districts, slumming, and visits to the
great works of the French Empire. The appeal of Bousbir was in making available –
at the same time morally scandalous and politically admirable - the indigenous female
body in an oriental setting. The history of Bousbir invites us to question the
connections between tourism and prostitution, and more specifically between
(neo)colonial tourism and sex tourism.
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Key words: colonization, prostitution, sex tourism, slumming, theme park
Introduction
At the beginning of the 1920s, colonial authorities in Casablanca decided to establish
an unprecedented solution to the “problem of prostitution” by building a vast
enclosed neighborhood dedicated to the sex trade on the outskirts of the city.
Bousbir, as it is called, was the red-light district of Casablanca from 1924 to 1955
(Bernard 1935, Mathieu et Maury 1951)1. It quickly became a “world-renowned
rendezvous [with a] setting so varied, so notable, it satisfies anyone seeking local
color” 2 (Hygiène 1937:78).
This article is about the touristic attraction that Bousbir became during the colonial
period, focusing essentially on its visitors. This bias clearly does not imply that we
The principal documentary sources for Bousbir are two reports, one written by a French
administrator in Tunis (Bernard 1931), the other by two French doctors in Morocco (Mathieu and
Maury 1951). Unless otherwise indicated, the factual information mentioned in this text comes from
the latter text.
2 All translations from French are ours unless otherwise noted.
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should ignore the violence suffered by the sex workers3 who worked there. The
phenomenon of Bousbir is not limited to the aspects brought up here, and invites
other lines of inquiry (Maghraoui 2008, Staszak 2014, Taraud 2003, 2006).
What part of visitors to Bousbir could be considered tourists? This seemingly trivial
question is the point of departure for this text. If it proves hard to answer, it is true
that sources may be lacking, but above all it is difficult to establish criteria by which
to determine if a given visitor to Bousbir was, or was not, a tourist. The person’s
provenance? Identity? Motives? Practices?, Touristic practices? And finally, what is the
sense and relevance in posing this question?
The concern here is not to enter the debate over the definition of tourism, but rather
to examine tourism at Bousbir in light of its unquestionably sexual and colonial
context. This article seeks to interrogate the relations between tourism, colonialism.
and sexuality. This conceptual triangle is approached from each of its sides: tourismcolonization, tourism-sexuality, colonization-sexuality (to cite but one significant
reference for each of these articulations, see Zytnicki et Kazdaghli 2009, Brennan
2004, McClintock 1995). Its configuration taken as a whole however has hardly been
explored: it constitutes the theoretical concern of the present text, which addresses
the question of the sexual dimension of colonial tourism, and the colonial dimension
of sexual tourism.
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The first part of this article briefly presents Bousbir. The second concerns tourist
visitation to the district, and the third focuses on the nature of tourist practices in
Bousbir. The last part draws out the lessons of colonial tourism in Bousbir so as to
examine, on a critical and theoretical level, the relationships between tourism and
prostitution.
Bousbir: prison and theme park
In Morocco as in many other parts of European empires, colonial prostitution was
seen as a “necessary evil” (Lauro 2005, Levine 2003, Taraud 2003). Considered the
only possible answer to the sexual “needs” of the male European population—but
also a source of venereal disease, moral contamination, and social ills—prostitution
was not to be eradicated, but rather controlled to limit its damages.
Casablanca was the showcase of the French empire and a site for urban
experimentation (Cohen and Eleb 1998). It was logical that there colonial authorities
would seek a modern and rational response to the question of prostitution
(Maghraoui 2008), and to be expected that they would formulate it in spatial terms.
Red-light districts existed in numerous cities of Europe and the colonies, but none
had been constructed specifically for this purpose as was Bousbir.
The district formed a rectangle 160 meters by 150 meters, encircled by a high,
windowless wall with a single public entrance (fig. 1). The closing off of Bousbir and
its placement at the edge of the built-up part of the city guaranteed good conditions
Scientific literature often prefers the expression “sex worker” to that of “prostitute”, judged—
particularly by sex workers—to be essentialist and stigmatizing. This term however poses a problem in
the case of Bousbir. The forms of coercion exercised over some of these “sex workers” leads one to
think that their autonomy and freedom of choice was very limited. They could be equally qualified as
sexual slaves.
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for control and a measure of discretion. Between 450 and 680 women, Moors or
Jews4, lived there and sold their sexual service to 1000 to 1,500 visitors per day
(Bernard 1935). Bousbir included a cinema, a sauna, cabarets, restaurants, cafés,
numerous boutiques, a police station and barracks, a prison, and a dispensary. The
district was organized like an autonomous town but clearly had a prison-like
character. The sex workers were allowed to leave the district only once a week, after
receiving a permit from the police and the doctor; 37% of them had been brought to
Bousbir after having been arrested for illicit prostitution on the streets of the city;
70% of Bousbir’s workers were heavily indebted to the “madam” who lodged them,
so much so that they couldn’t leave the district.
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Figure 1. Casablanca, aerial view of the red-light district known as Bousbir
Source: Photographed by Frandrin. Author's personal collection.
Bousbir could be described in Foucaldian terms as a hypermodern apparatus for the
exercise of biopower (Stazak 2014), yet its architecture was hardly modern. The
district was conceived in a neo-Moorish style suggesting the scenery of the Thousand
and One Nights. The architect, Edmond Brion, had chosen to design the buildings and
urban landscape according to the orientalist taste of the visitors to the district (fig. 2).
The visit to Bousbir wasn’t limited to sexual relations with the sex workers. One
could (also) stroll along the streets while watching the women solicit clients; stop at a
terrace to take in the animated scene and listen to oriental music; go to a belly dance,
a strip-tease or, for the more audacious, a pornographic show; taste the Moroccan
cuisine; admire the picturesque architecture; purchase handcrafts or postcards. “It is
a place for strolling where one can witness the most curious scenes, hear phonograph
records from the Arab world, marvel at the evocative dances of the chleuhs [Berbers]
or be stirred by the daughters of the Orient” (Privat 1934:176). Bousbir offered an
immersive, multi-sensorial experience5 of the exotic and erotic atmosphere of the
Orient. Of course, the site was artificial, and that didn’t escape the greater part of the
visitors, who nonetheless didn’t cease to extol the charms of the locale.
The number of European sex workers at Bousbir was at most 25 (Bernard 1935). During the 1950s,
the district no longer held any. The Jews represented no more than 5% of the sex workers. A few
transvestites could be found in the district as well.
5 All witnesses attest to the visual experience; many evoke the sounds, and some the tastes and
fragrances. Paradoxically, the tactile and sexual experience, strictly speaking, is raised less often.
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Figure 2. Casablanca, red-light district
Source: Photo Palace edition. Author's personal collection.
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If, from the point of view of the women who worked there, Bousbir functioned as a
more-or-less coercive work-camp, from the visitors’ perspective it came off as “a
Magic City or Luna Park specialized in the games of the popular Venus” (Mac Orlan
1934:44), or akin to “one of those artificial towns that one finds at some expositions”
(Beauvoir 1960:380). Bousbir “is something of a show and Coney Island combined”
(De Leuuw 1951:69).
At the end of the nineteenth century in the United States, red-light districts and
amusement parks in fact had remarkable functional, geographic and architectural
similarities (Keire 2010). The red-light district of Amsterdam, De Wallen, has been
equally described as a theme park, except that it was not conceived for that end, it
was opened within the city, and it can be entered for free (Aalbers and Sabat 2012,
Nijman 1999). Bousbir, on the contrary, was very much created for receiving its
visitors, and its enclosure heightened its similarity to a theme park.
Several visitors noted how the walls and the gate set the stage for the visit to the
district, in this way creating a world apart. “Crossing the entry gate, unique and
solemn [...] one feels as though one has taken an enormous leap in space and even
time” (Hygiène 1937:77-78). “An enormous gate, massive and powerful [...]
magnificently separates Bousbir from the rest of the city, and the city of love
becomes a forbidden city” (Grancher 1956:238). Another element attests to the
heterotopic character of its spaces: the names of the streets evoked the women of
Marrakech, Fez or Meknès (Marrakchia, Fessia, Meknassia), pointing to the supposed
places of origin of the workers who officiated there. The visitor to Bousbir in this
way traveled through a microcosm of the sharifian kingdom: moving through the
ensemble of the Protectorate, inspecting all its marvels.
In these ways, Bousbir for visitors was an erotic-exotic theme park giving them
access to the oriental charms of Morocco (Stazak 2014).
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Who were the tourists to Bousbir?
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“The red-light district of Casablanca, has often tempted the curiosity of tourists and
makes for an entertaining interlude that guides will insert into their programs to
break the monotony. It is in this way that buses bring waves of tourists, during
cruise-ship season, armed with Kodaks” (Afrique Illustrée 29/9/1934:11). Beyond the
numerous testimonies, the touristic nature of the district is attested to by inclusion in
four of the six tourist guides6 appearing between 1924 and 1955 that I have been
able to consult: Casablanca et sa région, the official guide booklet of the regional tourist
bureau (1934) (cf. fig. 7); the Guide du Maroc, of Editions Maroc-Presse (1936), the
Guide Michelin dedicated to Morocco (1939, 1950) (fig.3); and the bilingual guide
published by the Havas Marocaine bureau, Le Maroc / Morocco (1952). In parallel,
some one hundred different postcards, sold individually or in sets in Casablanca and
probably Bousbir, featured the district. Postcards of Bousbir were also included in
booklets dedicated to Casablanca, such as a booklet of “20 detachable views”, the
20th being a view of Bousbir. The district was a stop in the tourist tour, the last but
probably not the least.
Casablanca, on account of its important port, constituted the “gateway to Morocco”
(cf. fig. 7), and most visitors passed through it, having set sail from Bordeaux or
Marseille. The city had some 4000 hotel rooms in 1929, that is five times more than
Marrakech (Colliez 1930:480). In 1933, 36,600 tourists disembarked in Casablanca;
ninety-five percent of these arrived on cruise ships (De Mazières 1934). To the great
consternation of local authorities and businesses, they spent little time in Casablanca,
which offered few attractions. Before setting off on special trains for more coveted
destinations (Rabat, Marrakech) or returning to their ship, the tourists at best visited
the port, the old medina (judged of little interest), the European part of the city, the
new medina and, above all, Bousbir. Travel agents “regretted that they allowed
tourists just a couple of hours in Casablanca, taking them immediately to lunch in
Rabat and elsewhere, and that instead of having them visit the interesting sites of our
city, they are happy to take them on a short tour of Bousbir and then send them in
some other direction” (Annales africaines, 15/7/1933:263).
The tourists came to Bousbir in groups with a guide, in pairs, and rarely alone.
According to the testimony of one sex worker, “the tourists, rather numerous at
certain times of the year, almost never ‘go to bed’ but are content to drink mint tea
and watch belly dances” (Mathieu and Maury 1951:144). Tourists visited Bousbir as
spectators. They didn’t generally come to Morocco or particularly to Bousbir to take
advantage of prostitution, and they wouldn’t fall into the category of “sex tourists”,
classically defined as tourists who travel in order to buy sexual services. Yet it is
likely that some were situational sex-tourists, that is, travelers for whom the local
situation led them to take up offers of prostitution (O’Connell Davidson 1996). In
the realm of red-light districts, Bousbir in the past offered the same configuration as
Bousbir is not mentioned in the Guides bleus, nor in Le Maroc, published in 1928 by the Fédération des
Syndicat d’initiative et de tourisme du Maroc (Casablanca, Imprimerie française), nor in the Guide to Morocco,
published by the Moroccan Courier in Casablanca under the auspices of the Office Marocain du Tourisme in
1956 (after the closure of the district, it’s true). I’m not in a position to say why a given guide
mentioned or not Bousbir.
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Amsterdam’s red-light district does today, essentially visited by curious tourists or
voyeurs who want to enjoy the spectacle without necessarily going further.
Figure 3. Map of Casablanca
Source: Michelin Guide, 1949. Author's personal collection.
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From this, a visit to Bousbir was considered harmless and acceptable as such. “There
reigns an order and tranquility there that allowed [even] the visit of an eminent and
virtuous member of the Académie Française” (Le Maroc / Morocco 1952:87). Old
postcards of Bousbir that I have found had been sent to a wife, a mother, a colleague
or neighbor, without, in most cases it seems, causing problems, the text of the
sender not even referring to the image on the other side. The logic at work was made
explicit in one post card (“The Reception guard of the red-light district,” fig. 5)
where the sender explained that it was sent merely “for informative purposes”,
revealing a rare need for justification: “I wouldn’t want you to think that I pass my
days and nights there to fill my free time. It is a veritable city of 2,000 persons which
furthermore forms part of tourist routes and, as they say, to enter there isn’t to
commit to anything”. By distinguishing himself from the clients of the sex workers,
by appealing to the backing of the tourism operators, and by inscribing himself
among the community of visitors of the same kind (“they”), the sender claims his
status as a “mere” tourist, which excuses and even legitimizes his presence in
Bousbir, and his choice of the postcard.
One can distinguish four types of visitors to Bousbir in accord with their places of
origin, more or less distant. The Westerners, essentially French, English or
American, fresh off their cruise ships, are identified as tourists in testimonies from
the period, which evoke for example the cameras with which they were equipped. If
one calculates that most of the cruise passengers who disembarked in Casablanca as
well as some Europeans arriving by terrestrial routes ended up in Bousbir, we can
estimate that international tourists made up perhaps a tenth of the district’s
frequentation. Furthermore, some travelers, coming from the Maghreb Protectorate,
passed through Casablanca for pleasure or business and may have on such occasions
visited Bousbir as tourists, even if they were less easily recognized as such. At times
they would opt to rent a room in Bousbir rather than to stay in a hotel. Staying in
Casablanca for at least several days, at times alone, they were probably more inclined
to avail themselves of the offer of prostitution then the international tourists. But it
was the many sailors called to port in Casablanca (the fourth-ranking port of the
French Union in 1948) and above all military personnel—colonial infantry, Frenchorganized Berber regiments (zouaves), Moroccan and Senegalese foot soldiers,
indigenous cavalry (spahis), Foreign Legion, Moroccan soldiers of the French army
(goumiers), etc.—posted in Casablanca or there on leave, who formed the principal
clientele of the sex workers: it was precisely to satisfy their “needs,” linked to their
compulsory bachelorhood, that Bousbir was created. Finally, the nearby inhabitants
of Casablanca and the surrounding region, natives or not, regularly could visit
Bousibir and frequent its brothels.
One might think that there were, on the one hand, European tourists inclined
toward Bousbir’s exoticism but less to the temptation of prostitution, and on the
other, visitors who were more or less local and for whom exoticism was not a factor,
and who came to Bousbir only for the availability of prostitution. This might be
plausible if Bousbir resembled other districts of Casablanca or other red-light
districts. But there is nothing of it. Bousbir was a simulacrum (Baudrillard 1981); the
copy of something which did not exist. As an erotic-oriental theme park, the district
had no match. The city brothels where European sex workers officiated were open
only to clients, and did not present the same decor or ambiance as in Bousbir. The
streets of Casablanca where local sex workers operated illicitly were seedy and had
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nothing of the color of Bousbir. Even for inhabitants of the Protectorate, Bousbir
offered a special experience and its atmosphere could have considerable charm and
appeal, enough to justify a visit in full view of everyone. M. Flandrin, the
photographer and publisher of most of the postcards depicting Bousbir, took care to
have some of these labeled in French, English, as well as Arabic (fig. 4), judging that
the district constituted a spectacle and tourist attraction even for those not speaking
the colonial language].
Figure 4. Casablanca, a corner of the private ward
Source: Photographed by Frandrin. Author's personal collection.
Whether one visits Euro Disney coming from Paris, Berlin or New York doesn’t
have much bearing on the visit to the park. If tourism is defined as a displacement in
pursuit of leisure away from the places of everyday life, all visitors to Disney are
tourists, because the park is located absolutely elsewhere in an imaginary land. If one
can risk the comparison, the same was true for Bousbir. The district was an everyday
place only for those who worked there; for all the visitors, Bousbir was another
world. All visitors to Bousbir were more or less tourists in the sense that, crossing
the entrance gate to the district, they left Casablanca, Morocco, and their real world,
entering straight into an erotic, exotic, orientalist geographic imaginary, materialized
in Bousbir’s architecture and incarnated in the performances of the sex workers
(clothing, belly dances, etc.).
Furthermore, the pretext of tourism provided legitimacy for some visitors who,
without this justification (this cover?), would have felt less authorized to come to
Bousbir and to take advantage—to what extent?—of the site’s attractions.
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The visit to Bousbir
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Though Bousbir constituted a unique place, a visit to the district did not imply going
far off the beaten track, since it made sense within a broader context of tourism and
echoed well-established tourist practices (fig. 5).
Figure 5. Casablanca, Reception Guard of the red-light district
Source: L.M. editions. Author's personal collection.
The first was that of colonial tourism. Tourism to Morocco was in plain expansion
during the years 1920 to 1930, and the Protectorate appeared ahead in this regard
compared with other parts of the empire (Colliez 1930, De Mazières 1934, 1935,
Kahn 1921, Hillali 2007, Kazdaghli 2009, Llanes 2009, Stafford 1996). “Pacification”
of the territory and the strengthening of transportation infrastructure had, toward the
end of the 1910s, opened the territory to international tourists, which before did not
travel further than Tangier. It comprised, on the one hand, itinerant tourism which
brought westerners keen on orientalism to visit the imperial cities (Marrakech, Fez,
Meknès, Rabat), the Roman ruins (Volubilis), and natural features (deserts and oases,
shores and mountains), and on the other hand, the tourism of passing the summer
(Ifrane), or more commonly the winter (Marrakech), drawing wealthy Europeans,
English or French, to make extended stays at locales known for their climate or
landscape. Multiple actors were engaged in tourism development: colonial authorities
(highly involved in developing tourism at the general Residency - the seat of colonial
authority in Morocco - and in each of the corresponding cities), local business
associations, tourist bureaus, cruise-ship and railroad companies (which organized
tours and owned the principal hotels), associations such as the Touring Club de France
or the Moroccan Automobile Club, the publishers of guides (Hachette, Michelin) and
postcards (Flandrin in Casablanca), etc. The promotion of tourism in the colonies
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had economic aims, in terms of local development, but also an ideological purpose: a
visit to the Empire, just like to the colonial expositions which served as substitutes,
served as an “object lesson” (Furlough 2002) regarding the Empire and
colonization—a much needed lesson, given that the French were poorly informed
about the colonies and little inclined toward adventure. “Tourism is [...] the best
argument for the project of these forty years of French presence in Morocco”
(Quarante ans, 1953). In 1949, 150,000 tourists visited Morocco; in 1953 they
numbered 253,000 (Stafford 1996:35). Bousbir was among the most picturesque
stops of their journey to the Protectorate.
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The second touristic context was that of visits to red-light districts. Bousbir in fact
was not the only red-light district in North Africa to attract tourists. “Some [travel
agencies] didn’t hesitate to point out red-light districts in their programs as one of the
principal, specifically-Moroccan curiosities for any trip to the land of the Maghreb!”
(Lépinay 1936:205). Along the same lines, in the film Pépe le Moko (J. Duvivier, 1937)
we follow two rich French couples venture into the casbah of Algiers to take in the
spectacle of exoticism and local prostitution, which indeed served as a first-rate asset
for tourism (Ferhati 2007, 2009). Beyond North Africa and the red-light districts of
Algiers or of Fez, the “rue des Ouled-Naïls” in Biskra and Bou-Saâda (Ferhati 2003,
2007), several large, world-famous red-light districts were major tourist attractions on
an international scale. Such was the case with Storyville, in New Orleans, between
1897 and 1917; Yoshiwara, in Tokyo, up until the abolition of prostitution in 1958;
and the red-light district of Marseille, before its destruction in 1943.
It was the combination of colonial touristic practices and visits to red-light districts,
and the articulation of matrices of race and gender domination that corresponded to
these, that made the bodies of indigenous women and Bousbir into tourist
attractions. Conforming to an intersectional logic, the visitors to Bousbir who
weren’t white males held a secondary status there. The Moroccan infantrymen or the
Senegalese could only visit the district on certain days and weren’t authorized to visit
the Jewish sex workers, nor the very few western sex workers. The western women
who visited the district did not arrive unaccompanied, could not engage the services
of the sex workers, and didn’t have the right to attend the more explicit shows. Their
presence in Bousbir was considered unwholesome by those who would have
preferred that tourism to Bousbir remained a homosocial activity: among the tourists,
“the women were the most relentless. Curiosity? Vice? Both.”(Grancher 1956:242).
The presence of male visitors in Bousbir was legitimate because there they satisfied
sexual “needs”; the presence of women visitors was suspect because it reflected
either an unacceptable voyeurism, for its gratuitousness, or a scandalous erotic
interest, for being lesbian7. The guide Casablanca et sa région (1934:10) judged the visit
to Bousbir “not recommended for children or girls”.
The matrix of class domination was also at work in Bousbir, to the extent that the
women who worked there constituted an urban sub-proletariat compared to their
(much) better-off clients. The element of misery points to a third interpretation of
tourism at Bousbir. Just across the way from Bousbir was one of Casablanca’s large
slums: Ben M’Sik, home to over 50,000 people in 1954. It was portrayed in multiple
Bertrand (1931), in his plan for a red-light district in Tunis, went further, recommending that “access
to the district be strictly forbidden to minors of both sexes, and to all women other than the
prostitutes”.
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postcards (fig. 6) and constituted a tourist attraction. “Within its walls, Casablanca
has so many hidden treasures eagerly sought by tourists [...] There is also, very close
to Casablanca, a fairy-tale city: Bidonville [shanty town]. Nowhere else can a visitor to
take in such an agglomeration. Thousands and thousands of shacks made out of
metal sheets coming from old cans. With regard to Bousbir, decency doesn’t allow it
to be described. It is an immense temple, an entire neighborhood, where the
priestesses to the god Eros are packed in” (Afrique illustrée, 17/2/1934:32-33). P. Mac
Orlan (1934:44), visiting Bousbir, began by mentioning the panorama of Bidonville,
“that capital of the ‘penniless’”. “A naked black woman, with an orange and gold
head scarf, as I spotted on one of the sordid back streets of this nightmare of a town,
is a rather rare spectacle that one doesn’t forget”. P. Wyndham Lewis (1932:71), a
British writer and painter, compared the two neighborhoods, even suggesting
renaming Bousbir Strumpetville. In fact, Biodonville was also a site of prostitution, but
it didn’t lend itself as easily as Bousbir to visits by tourists. Some visitors even came
to confuse the two districts, claiming that Bidonville was “the true name of Bousbir”
(Flash, 7/12/1959).
Figure 6. Casablanca, indigenous district, shantytown,
Source: Alsacienne des Arts Photomécaniques. Author's personal collection.
Bidonville and Bousbir were considered tourist attractions along the same lines, and
it was suggested to pass from one to the other, since the two neighborhoods
presented spectacles of a similar nature. Slumming was a tourist practice that arose at
the end of the nineteenth century, and for the wealthy residents of London or New
York consisted of visiting the neighborhoods of the most impoverished classes of
the city, ethnic and sexual minorities, so as to be scandalized while enjoying the
spectacle of their alterity and deviance, which evidently reassured the visitors in their
sense of their proper identity and the value of their norms of decency (Heap 2009,
Koven 2004). This practice constitutes the third touristic context underlying visits to
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Bousbir: it was precisely in this vein that that the guide Casablanca et sa région (1934:10)
and the Michelin guide (1950:103), in beautiful unanimity, recommended it to
“amateur tourist”, or the “curious”, in “studies of habits and customs”. The visit to
Bousbir played upon logics of attraction/repulsion, identity construction, and alterity
proper to slumming. In large western cities, this practice reassured the moral and
political order (in its racial, social, and sexual configurations); in Casablanca, it also
justified the colonial order.
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The spectacle of prostitution was not only exotic and erotic, it was also moral and
political. One saw at work in Bousbir a transgression of norms, if not of the law.
That the sex workers there were essentially non-Europeans allowed that their “error”
not be imputed to human nature (which the visitors, both men and women, would
have in common with the sex workers) but rather to vice supposedly inherent to
“inferior races”. Europeans (women as well as men?) who visited Bousbir could leave
there not only unsoiled but also edified: reassured in their racist and sexist prejudices,
their colonial ideology, and the certainty of their inherent superiority. A visit to
Bousbir formed part in this way in the object lesson of colonial tourism and justified
colonization in its civilizing mission—despite the fact that it was the colonial
authority that had orchestrated the red-light district.
In parallel, multiple testimonies attest to the fascination visitors felt for the urban
creation that was Bousbir: “that capital of prostitution, which is said to be unique in
the world for its scope and organization” (Afrique illustrée, 29/9/1934:11), “a red-light
district unlike any other... one of the largest in the world, to begin” (Grancher
1956:12), “the biggest sex and sin prison on the face of the earth” (True Adventure,
Nov. 1957). “Bousbir is a truly unusual site, since one won’t find in Morocco, nor
without doubt anywhere else in North Africa, a red-light district as sharply defined
and utterly separated from the rest of the world” (Afrique illustrée, 4/10/1930).
“Bousbir! The red-light masterpiece!” (Qui? Détective, 6/11/1947:73). The
achievement of the district evoked admiration: “nothing seemed to have been
overlooked by these French experts in their zeal and desire to metamorphose the
erstwhile mess into a modern town” (De Leeuw 1951:69).
A postcard by Flandrin (cf. fig. 1) illustrates the nature of this fascination: it shows an
aerial view of the district, making it possible to appreciate its scale, surrounding wall,
layout, and insertion in the urban milieu. Moreover, it was a card of this kind that
served for introducing Bousbir by a passing journalist writing a book about L’Afrique
galante: “Bousbir [...] is now a veritable modern town [...] You will be filled with
wonder as you visit it with me. At the gate of Bousbir, there is a garage [...] They’ve
even created a dedicated bus line [...] Here, take a look, these postcards were
published by the great Casablanca photographer, M. Flandrin. He’s a specialist in
aerial photography. He has captured Bousbir from up high from an airplane. You can
see it is immense” (Salardenne 1932:32-33). The modernity of the district, illustrated
by its organized transportation and size, was the first attribute put forward to
promote interest and visits, by the journalist who indeed strongly appreciated this
“delicious city, so pretty and charming that all the young Arab girls of Casablanca
already dream of going there to live” (idem:35). Bousbir “doesn’t have the messiness
of other Mediterranean red-light districts” (Michelin guide 1950:103): it’s an Orient
made clean and orderly.
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Other postcards depict the district in various stages of construction The majority of
the postcards don’t show prostitutes identifiable as such, but rather urban or
architectural views. These images show an achievement of urban planning, from
which one perceives the style, uniqueness, audacity, scope, order and modernity of
Bousbir—in short, its success. Bousbir counts among the extraordinary
achievements of French colonization, following in the example of bridges, dams,
ports, hospitals and schools, which, as manifest proof of the benefits of the French
presence, participated in other ways in the colonial object lesson (fig. 7). Such a visit
was especially welcome in Casablanca, “one of the most beautiful examples of
French colonization” (Guide bleu 1919:63): “The economic capital of Morocco with
its magnificent rows of stylish buildings, its avenues buzzing with activity, its port
constructed where, not long ago, there extended only arid desert soil and the open
ocean roared—doesn’t it embody the genius of modern civilization and France as
colonizer?” (Annuaire de l’Automobile et du tourisme au Maroc 1937: 34). The excursion to
Bousbir thus was inscribed in a fourth tourist context: that of visits to the works of
colonization. It was, furthermore, due to colonial planning and control that the trip
to Bousbir could be made under good conditions of comfort and security. “Bousbir
is a peaceful and refined red-light district”, a “model medina” (Mac Orlan 1934: 49,
44, 47).
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Figure 7. Cover of the tourist guide Casablanca and its region, 1934.
Source: Author's personal collection.
The Bousbir touristic experience thus concerns, all at once and not without
contradictions, colonial travel, excursions to red-light districts, slumming, and visits
to the great works of the French Empire. Fundamentally, the appeal of Bousbir was
in making available—both morally scandalous and politically admirable—the
indigenous female body. Tourism to Bousbir was essentially and inextricably colonial
and sexual. The eroticization of the Empire inherent to the colonial geographic
imaginary and the power imbalances which transformed indigenous women into
potential prostitutes had turned the Empire, in the eyes of Westerners, into a giant
brothel. As such, the visit to Bousbir was not exceptional or deviant within colonial
tourist practices: it is one of the purest examples. To evoke colonial tourism when
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talking of Bousbir is not simply to refer its context. It is rather to emphasize that
colonial ideology and colonial relations of power formed the foundation for the
touristic and prostitution-related activities that took place in the district, and that the
visit, in turn, served as an object lesson justifying and reproducing the colonial order.
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Colonial tourism however can not be reduced to the issues of exoticism and
eroticism. In the French empire, also manifest were a variety of forms of the inverse
model of identity tourism based on self-segregation and the reproduction of
European models of the thermal spa (Jennings 2006) or mountain resort (Jennings
2011), for which Dalat, in the high plateaus of the Annamite range in Vietnam, or
Ifrane, in the mid-Atlas mountains of Morocco (established in 1929) (fig.8) are
perfect examples. On an axis situating the attractiveness of a tourist site either in
terms of identity or alterity, Ifrane and Bousbir would stand at each extreme,
between which stood more composite examples in Morocco.
Figure 8. Ifrane, general view of the city center covered in snow, CAP
Source: Author's personal collection.
Tourism, prostitution and sexual tourism: the lessons of Bousbir
Bidonville and Bousbir were toponyms designating specific districts in Casablanca:
after the 1930s, and with greater success and permanence for the first, these place
names acquired generic meaning, designating marginal or illegal zones of occupation
and spaces of prostitutions elsewhere in the francophone world. Urban planning may
have arisen in Casablanca; that Bousbir and Bidonville would be its only memorable
achievements attests to the failure of the urban project undertaken there.
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Bousbir was abundantly criticized for its inefficacy toward the fight against venereal
disease, its inability to hold more than 15% of the sex workers of Casablanca (Adam
1968:666), and the moral and political scandal that the red-light district represented
among some sectors (religious, feminist, socialist and anticolonialist), so much so that
the colonial authorities closed it down in April, 1955, one year prior to the
independence of Morocco. The presence of tourists in Bousbir is mentioned in so
many accounts that one can suppose that it was deemed shocking, yet it was never
truly denounced. Without sources, it is difficult to know what the sex workers
themselves thought of them, but it is likely that the tourists, rather wealthy,
constituted a significant complementary source of income for them, especially
through the erotic-exotic shows. The touristic success of Bousbir doesn’t seem to
have embarrassed the colonial administration. In the 1930s, when they considered
establishing red-light districts similar to Bousbir elsewhere, the notion caused some
concern. “It is feared [...] that a project conceived [...] only in the interest of material
and moral hygiene, in the end would only lead to the creation of a pleasure town
where Marrakech gains a few features attractive to tourists, but also an unsavory
reputation”, worried higher-ups in Paris8. In Tunis, “the prostitution district ought
not be [...] spectacular—because it would be inappropriate to make it into an
amusement”, warned an administrator who had just been in Bousbir (Bernard 1935).
The French administration had conceived of Bousbir as an answer to a public-health
problem. Just as with prostitution itself, the district was a “necessary evil”, for which
they would have preferred avoiding any publicity. The touristic success of Bousbir
was an inconvenient surprise: tourists spread the word about the district, and their
presence belied that it wasn’t just a “model center for the prevention of venereal
diseases”9. The colonial administration risked nothing less than being in the
prostitution business, with the red-light district “give[ing] to hostile propaganda a
formidable pretext for denouncing [its] civilizing works”10. Paradoxically, for the
French authorities, it wasn’t the presence of the prostitutes but that of the tourists
that made Bousbir indecent.
It wasn’t until the 1980s and the denunciation of sex tourism, for touristic visits to
red-light districts, particularly in the third world, to come under general opprobrium.
The scandal of joining tourism to prostitution however had however been evoked
some years before, but as a figure in the rhetoric of third-world activism. In the
1970s, “some protestors maintained that ‘tourism is prostitution’, in the metaphoric
sense that poor countries are forced to sell themselves to the rich in order to survive”
Graburn 1983:441). Graburn suggested taking this idea seriously and to “pursue the
analogy, in the light of the ‘patriarchy/imperialism’ analysis”. Conversely, some have
pointed to the common elements between the motivations of clients of sex workers
(Ryan and Kinder 1996), or the practices of the clients of strip-tease clubs (Franck
2002), and those of tourists.
Within the framework of colonial tourism generally, and particularly the visit to
Bousbir, tourism and prostitution present more than just similarities. The exoticism
inherent in tourism and the exoticism inherent in prostitution are in fact inseparable
Letter from the president of the Council, Minister of Foreign Affairs Philippe Berthelot to the
Resident General Lucien Saint, November 12, 1932. Diplomatic Archives of Nantes.
8
9
Response of Lucien Saint to the letter cited in note 8
Idem.
10
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in the imaginary, motivations, and practices of clients/visitors (which explains why it
would be difficult to distinguish tourists among these) as well as in the performances
of the sex workers of Bousbir, such as the belly dance (Staszak 2008). Prostitution
that has been made “ethnic” or “folkloric” (Ferhati 2007:33) establishes indigenous
women as touristic resources by transforming their bodies into an exotic landscape.
The picturesque quality of the indigenous body/landscape is attested to by its
depiction in so many postcards (Alloula 1981) (fig 9 and 10) which disrobe the
Moorish woman while adorning her with elements deemed oriental. In a reverse
movement, the exotic landscape, particularly that of the red-light districts, was
transformed into an erotic body, desirable in itself, and of which the native women
were nothing more than outgrowths or substitutes, as this description by Lucienne
Favre (1937:162) attests: “The Rue-aux-filles [Street-of-the Girls] of the casbah of
Algiers! More seductive, certainly, than the girls themselves [...] We end up
spellbound as much by the scenery as by that which overflows and amplifies it... So
much so, that the flesh offered by the women seems offered as a necessary
complement, an atmospheric prop [...] We want these insipid sluts, because we can’t
shape that great wall, enter into that perfume, break into that nuance, be satisfied
with that basin made of marble!”. The eroticism of the body extends into [the
surroundings just as the exoticism of the surroundings extends to the body. It was
exactly to play upon these processes by which exoticism and eroticism feed oneanother that the red-light district of Casablanca was made to look like a casbah. It is
by the same movement that the body and the landscape, on the one hand, and
tourism and prostitution, on the other, end up converging.
The client who engaged prostitutes in Bousbir, regardless of where he came from,
was very much a (situational) sex tourist; what is relevant is that the business of
prostitution and the business of tourism were indistinguishable. As for those who
visited Bousbir “only” as spectators, one cannot claim that they didn’t engage
prostitutes, since it was these, made into a tourist spectacle, who were precisely the
goal of his or her visit. To go to a belly dance, strip-tease, or a pornographic show,
one had to pay: the performances of those who made the spectacles possible were
very much a kind of sex work. In this way it seems reasonable to qualify all visitors to
Bousbir not only as tourists but further as sex tourists. Bousbir furthermore perfectly
fulfills the defining criteria for sexscapes, a term coined to describe the major
destinations for international sex tourism (Brennan 2005).
Concerning, or in light of Bousbir, what is the usefulness of such comparisons
between tourism and prostitution, and what is the relevance of using the category
“sex tourism”?
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Figure 9. Casablanca, Bousbir main square and movie theater
Source: La Cigogne editions. Author's personal collection.
Figure 10. Typical scenes and people. Tea in the red-light district
Source: La Cicogne editions. Author's personal collection.
The expression “sex tourism”, which spread in the 1980s to designate and denounce
a practice which had been established in earlier decades, poses several theoretical
problems (Oppermann 1999, Roux 2011). To speak of sex tourism with regard to
Bousbir is certainly relevant, but it doesn’t contribute much to our understanding of
the site, not because the label would be anachronistic, but rather because the
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conceptual weaknesses of the category make it not very workable. On the other
hand, to inscribe sexual tourism in a longer history of which Bousbir is one instance
has heuristic value: beyond challenging the established timeline, it demonstrates that
sex tourism perpetuates and reproduces an imaginary and relations of power which
arose with colonization (Staszak, 2013). To say that Bousbir anticipated sexual
tourism is less useful than to interrogate, in light of the district, the degree to which
current sex tourism presents aspects which are (neo)colonial.
Similarly, to consider tourism a form of prostitution doesn’t necessarily help us better
understand the phenomenon of tourism. On the other hand, interpreting prostitution
as a form of tourism is heuristically. To show how all visitors to Bousbir appealed to
the offer of prostitution is less interesting than to analyze, by way of the case of the
district, how a visit to a sex worker presents a touristic dimension. In most European
countries, the majority of sex workers are immigrants. Why talk about sex tourism
when it is the client who travels, but not when it is the sex worker (Oppermann
1990). The erotic appeal of the sex workers could pertain to their exoticism in Paris
just as in Bousbir, for reasons which are similar and inherent to (neo)colonial
ideology and relations of power. The difference is only that, in the first case, it is the
sex worker who has paid the economic, symbolic, and social costs of displacement.
Conclusion
Finally, what does Bousbir teach us about colonial tourism?
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First, the district confirms that colonial prostitution served as a tourist attraction. It
shows that sex tourism was one form of colonial tourism, and illustrates processes of
exoticization and eroticization which made certain colonies into touristic resources.
Second, the district invites us to define colonial tourism less in terms of the source of
visitors, the site itself, or the context of the visit, but rather in terms of the relations
of power which structure it. The relations of power inherent to the colonial situation
rest on matrices of race as well as class and gender domination. Their asymmetry
constitutes both the condition and the object of the visit to Bousbir, which in turn
contributes to their reproduction.
Third, Bousbir brings to view the similarities between colonial tourism and certain
current forms of prostitution and sex tourism. There we can see continuities which
attest to the neocolonial impregnation of the sex trade, particularly in touristic
contexts, and invite us to reconsider the chronology of sex tourism, which would
prove older than is commonly recognized.
The touristic success of Bousbir resulted from the enthusiasm of visitors for a
district that so perfectly embodied their orientalist dream, through the neo-Moorish
scenery constructed by E. Brion and the exotic and erotic performances of the sex
workers who officiated there. It isn’t without utility at this stage to underline that, for
many of these, the reality of Bousbir was probably more of a nightmare.
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Translation French > English:
Jean-François Staszak
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