White Slavery was a term used in English-speaking countries in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries to differentiate the slavery of European descendants from that of African descendents. The term was used regardless of the specific type or nature of the slavery enacted and could be applied to indentured servants, to criminals in penal colonies, or to those in debt bondage.

    By 1880, however, the term became linked to enforced prostitution, especially of young women of European descent. Agitation concerning traffic in women rose to such a pitch in Victorian England that white slavery became a target for crusading journalists and defenders of public morality. The subsequent outcry led to the passage of antislavery legislation in Parliament.

    In the early 20th century, a similar scare occurred in the United States when Chicagos U. S. Attorney declared that an international crime ring was abducting young girls in Europe, importing them, and forcing them to work in Chicago brothels.

    These claims, largely unsubstantiated, inflamed public opinion and led to the passage of the White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910. It also banned the interstate transport of females for immoral purposes. Its primary intent was to address prostitution and immorality. The act is better known as the Mann Act, after American lawmaker James Robert Mann.

    In 1972, author Stanley Cohen coined the term moral panic, which is defined as the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order.

    Moral panics are considered by some to include persecutions of individuals or groups such as witch-hunts of Renaissance Europe, anti-Semitic pogroms or the Stalinist purges. White Slavery has also been suggested as having had all the hallmarks of a moral panic.