| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Europe: Early Modern and Modern

William A. Peniston. Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris. (Haworth Gay and Lesbian Studies.) New York: Haworth Press. 2004. Pp. xi, 258. Cloth $49.95, paper $24.95.

For many years, historians of gay and lesbian life have mined the rich cultural sources of the twentieth-century, or they have concentrated on a handful of well-known court cases. This book is welcome, therefore, as it brings fresh evidence to bear on the social life of urban Paris following the failed 1870 Commune and the fall of Louis Napoleon. William A. Peniston's careful examination of Paris police ledgers and court records during the 1870s has uncovered detailed information about working-class men who sought same-sex sexual pleasure during a time of social and political instability. He argues that, as part of a concerted attack on potential troublemakers, the police systematically harassed pederasts or sodomites, as they were then called. Thanks to their detailed reports, Peniston convincingly demonstrates the ways in which they linked minor sexual offenses to theft, blackmail, assault, and even murder. He concludes that in spite of being the first European country to abolish its laws against sodomy, throughout the 1870s the French police treated men who had sex with men as criminals. This book demonstrates the benefits of a fine-grained study covering a limited period.

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