| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Stephen A. Toth. Beyond Papillon: The French Overseas Penal Colonies, 1854–1952. (France Overseas: Studies in Empire and Decolonization.) Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 2006. Pp. xvii, 212. $35.00.

The writing of modern European colonial histories has always dealt, explicitly or implicitly, with the expansionist, coercive nature of the imperial state. The specific institutions that brought coercive force to bear overseas, however, have only recently begun to receive scholarly attention. Stephen A. Toth adds to the growing literature on colonial police forces and prisons with this sophisticated, archivally grounded history of French penal colonies in French Guiana and New Caledonia from their creation in 1854 to their final closure in 1952. Moving from the European mainland to the tropics and back, Toth succeeds admirably in placing a familiar metropolitan narrative on prison reform in a new perspective while shedding new light on the contradictory nature of France's imperial project.

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