In the history of paid sex in the Low Countries, tolerance alternates with repression. Where there is commercial activity, there is also commercial sex. With the flourishing of cities in the Southern and Northern Netherlands, a sex industry avant la lettre developed since the late Middle Ages.
Between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, tolerance alternated with repression in port cities such as Amsterdam, Antwerp and Bruges, trade centres such as Ghent, Leiden and Leuven and bastions of power such as Brussels and The Hague.
Napoleon Bonaparte brought about a significant change. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, he introduced a modern regulatory system to prevent the spread of venereal diseases. A detailed control system was intended to protect the entire population against unregulated prostitution. But not all European rulers were convinced. They paid particular attention to the garrison towns and colonial areas. London, for example, never implemented the system.
Amsterdam did, but in a very different way than with the rules and regulations that characterised Belgian cities. In theory, Belgian regulation was not only supposed to prevent diseases but also offer some degree of protection to registered prostitutes. In practice, the system exercised strict control over women who sold sex. Not only were they obligated to register, but they were also subjected to painful and humiliating medical examinations, made to work at maisons closes state-controlled legal brothels and had to stay away from churches and schools.
The Amsterdam authorities and the population in general were not keen on this harsh approach. Not because they already considered prostitution as a form of work, but because they acknowledged the inefficiency of the system. The idea that prostitution was the symbol of patriarchy also took shape and contributed to international criticism of the regulatory system. Starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, criticism became increasingly stronger.
