Since his death in 1881, Benjamin Disraeli has inspired great interest among historians of Victorian Britain. His most recent biographers, Ian Machin and Paul Smith, both provide clearly written, concise, and insightful studies of this most memorable British politician.

    Ian Machin's political biography emphasizes the reasons why so many of his peers in parliament -- on both sides of the aisle -- viewed him as an unscrupulously ambitious charlatan. Machin, indeed, appears to agree with this interpretation to a large extent. In his estimation, Disraeli had no consistent purpose save a determination to make a name for himself. Nor did he, according to Machin, possess any firm political principles. Disraeli lived for "political expediency," was "completely without any ideological preconceptions," and "never took up and pursued a policy which might not aid his political interest." He helped depose his own Prime Minister in 1846 -- and thus facilitated his rise to the leadership of the Conservative Party -- because Robert Peel had refused to offer him a cabinet post five years earlier. While a staunch supporter of Empire, parliamentary and social reform in a general sense, he did not himself advocate "systematic" imperial expansion, democracy, or specific pieces of social legislation. The colonial wars which punctuated Disraeli's final years in office resulted from the ambitions of his administrators in South Africa and Afghanistan, not from a love of conquest at Whitehall. Following the passage of the Second Reform Act in 1867, Disraeli appears to have lost interest in parliamentary reform. Finally, his own Home Secretary, Robert A. Cross, commented in 1874 that he "had quite expected that [Disraeli's] mind was full of legislative schemes, but such did not prove the case." The impressive array of social legislation passed between 1874 and 1878 dealing with public health, housing, factory conditions, and labor was largely the work of his cabinet colleagues. This said, is it so shocking to learn that Disraeli, a man who defined "sound Conservative Government" as "Tory men and Whig measures," governed as a Peelite Liberal? Not for Machin. In his view, the oft-cited "conflict between Disraeli and [William] Gladstone was notably the product of their radically different personalities and styles rather than of any profound dichotomy over policy." Disraeli, while perhaps hastening the birth of both the modern Conservative and Liberal Parties, contributed much more to the poetry than to the prose of Victorian politics.

    Paul Smith provides a more rounded and less judgmental portrait of Disraeli by showing how his romanticism, his Jewishness, his ties with intellectual movements on the continent, and his novels both reflected and shaped his personality. Smith interprets Disraeli as a dreamer who constantly remade himself, an artist who utilized parliament as his canvas, a gambler who saw politics as a game, and an individual who always lived life to the fullest. If Disraeli was rakish, ambitious, and egotistical, he was also audacious, determined, and, often, brilliant. He reveled in satirizing Victorian society and in the witty bon mot, especially when ridiculing his parliamentary opponents. Disraeli also exhibited great political intuition on many occasions -- during the passage of the Second Reform Act in 1867 for instance -- and possessed a keen sense of the drama, color, and style of modern politics. In brief, Disraeli lived his life as a romantic epic. The "adventure he made of his life, by consciously living it as an adventure" is for Smith, indeed, the "root of Disraeli's appeal." This fact was recognized by at least a few of his contemporaries. One of Disraeli's Liberal opponents, William Harcourt, told him in 1876 that to "the imagination of the younger generation your life will always have a special fascination." And, of course, it does.

    On the issue of his importance, however, Smith argues that "Disraeli made little immediate difference to the Conservative party or to British politics." For Smith, Robert Peel brought about his own downfall; William Gladstone's "overbearing arrogance" did much to prevent the Peelites from rejoining the Conservative Party after 1846; and Disraeli became Prime Minister in 1874 as a result of declining Liberal fortunes, not because of his own political acumen. According to Smith, "any [Tory] leader would have lost the elections of 1847 to 1865, [and] it is arguable that almost any would have won that of 1874." Furthermore, Disraeli's core principles -- faith in the Conservative Party, the Crown, the Church, the territorial aristocracy, and the British Empire -- did not induce him to advocate bold measures once he had, as he said. "reached the top of the greasy pole." Disraeli's fundamental belief was that the establishment of a national consensus and the alleviation of class tensions would come not as a result of legislation, but through the power of rhetoric, image-making, popular manipulation, and political flexibility. Herein lies the reason for much of his popularity among twentieth century conservatives from Richard Nixon to Harold MacMillan to Enoch Powell. His career both provides the "aegis of a colourable tradition" and bequeaths "a fund of insights and watchwords on which . . . [conservatives] could draw productively in the future."

    In sum, we are left to face the dilemma Disraeli poses each of us: are we to chastise him as an unprincipled, self-serving adventurer, a "politician" par excellence? Or should we delight in his wit and verve; respect his self-confidence and determination to succeed; applaud his political pragmatism; and appreciate his realization that in politics, image, often, is everything?

    In Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence, Michael Rocke re-weaves the story of the social fabric of Florence during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries to include the role of sexual relationships among men. David Herlihy and Richard Trexler have previously noted the significance of homosexual behavior in this city-republic. However, Rocke, who teaches history at Syracuse University in Florence, is the first to investigate its pattern thoroughly and to evaluate its significance.

    Rocke's work is based on the trial records of the Office of the Night, which the Republic of Florence established in 1432 to prosecute sodomy. Although sodomy was legally defined as any sexual act that would not result in procreation, Rocke argues that the Florentines were particularly concerned about sodomy between men. Combining this trial evidence with records from the Eight of the Watch (Florence's central office for handling criminal activity), the catasto or fiscal census of 1480, and family memoirs, he is able to add new details to the picture of the Florentine Renaissance man. His findings support one of the main points Michel Foucault made in his Histoire de la sexualité: the concept of "homosexual" as an identity emerged only in the late nineteenth century. In medieval and early modern Italy a male's sexual identity was linked to his role as the aggressor in a relationship. As long as he was the active partner, it did not matter if his sexual partner was male or female.

    To some extent, Rocke's findings fit a pattern suggested in the seventies by Herlihy: homosexual behavior usually involved men in their twenties (active partners) and adolescents under eighteen years of age (passive partners). Echoing Herlihy, Rocke proposes that one reason Florentine men in their twenties had relationships with teenage boys was that, until their early thirties, they did not have enough money to marry and set up households. He complicates this picture, however, by adducing numerous examples of older men who also coupled with young boys. Rocke proposes that, because these men in their fifties and sixties violated the accepted pattern of male sexual relations, they were the most harshly punished sodomites.

    Rocke builds one of his central arguments on shaky foundations. He insists that the majority of local males were probably officially incriminated during the later fifteenth century. During the seventy years in which the Office of the Night operated, in a city of only 40,000 inhabitants, he concludes that 17,000 individuals were incriminated at least once for sodomy, and close to 3,000 were convicted. However, he only has data for the number of individuals incriminated for the last seventeen years of the Office's existence (1478-1502). He takes the ratio of incriminated to convicted from these years and extrapolates for the previous fifty years. We have no reason to think that the ratio of incriminations to convictions would remain constant over half a century, making Rocke's figures dubious. Furthermore, he neglects to address fully why the conviction rate itself was under eight percent.

    Rocke is on more solid ground when he writes about periods for which he has the data. By using the trial records to trace the prosecution of sodomy, Rocke rebuts the claim of such nineteenth-and twentieth-century historians as Pasquale Villari and Roberto Ridolfi that the reign of Lorenzo the Magnificent was sexually free and tolerant and the Savonarolan government conducted an effective crackdown on licentious behavior. The beginning of Lorenzo's rule, Rocke shows, actually signaled a peak in convictions for sodomy: 535 men between 1469 and 1474 were convicted; during Savonarola's regime (1494-1498) less than a quarter of this number were convicted. While Rocke provides some insightful analysis of these data, he stretches the limits of plausibility when he characterizes the regulation of sodomy as a "measure of the city's pulse" (197). The trial data fluctuate too irregularly to fit into the regular pattern into which he would like to force it.

    Although he makes a convincing case that homosexuality was an important part of Florentine male sociability, Rocke overstates the political significance of male sexual relationships. He asserts, for example, that when a band of young aristocrats helped Lorenzo the Magnificent's son Guiliano de'Medici overthrow the Republic, they were performing a "remarkable defense of convicted sodomites" by asking that their friends jailed for that offense be released (228). He ignores other reasons why these young men might have supported the powerful Medici family. With Forbidden Friendships, Rocke has provided valuable new material that will help us understand male culture in Renaissance Florence better. I only wish that he had addressed the fascinating question his work raised -- why were practitioners of a behavior as common and accepted as sodomy was in Florence so persecuted? -- instead of dancing around it.

    The work skillfully combines social and political history, examining both the general structure of patronage and the particular calculations of the crown, papacy, and nobility. The first of four sections describes the range of size, wealth, and prestige of the French dioceses, the complicated process by which episcopal nominees were selected and confirmed, and the frequent exaction of pensions from episcopal revenues. While intended for the assistance of retired or disabled bishops, pensions were paid to a variety of clerical and lay patrons with more than the occasional hint of simony. The second section considers the bishops as a group. Instead of the exclusive focus upon ancestry, status, and social mobility common to many studies of elites, Bergin in addition devotes incisive chapters to the geographical origin, education, pre-episcopal clerical career, and tenure of office of the bishops. The third section integrates the preceding corporate analyses into a close political narrative which shows the priorities, decisions, and actions of the French monarchs and regents from the turbulent end of the Wars of Religion to the Fronde's aftermath. The fourth and final section is a biographical dictionary of the 351 bishops which in itself makes the volume essential to specialists.

    The work demonstrates a mastery of French and Vatican archival manuscripts as well as the printed sources. Numerous case studies, an abundance of maps and tables, and comparisons of the French episcopate to those of England, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire enhance the arguments of each chapter. As Bergin declares in his introduction, this work does not discuss episcopal administration, theology, or individual piety, that is, how a bishop acted after attaining his office. Nonetheless, the work is an indispensable reference for research in those topics. As a significant contribution to the history of France, religious institutions, and patronage, Bergin's study deserves a wide readership.
James Guba

    Why do we study history? Two scholars explore the reasons why historians do what they do, by discussing the intellectual currents which have affected their perspectives. Southgate seeks to explain where the field of history is going, in light of recent philosophical developments, while Frykenberg is more interested in explaining the significance of history as a discipline. Although the two authors go in different directions, the books do overlap and complement each other. Frykenberg demonstrates how historians establish and interpret a collective past, while Southgate provides a frame of reference for understanding contemporary ideological debates within the discipline, based upon the vision of the collective past held by ancient, modern and post-modern historians.

    Frykenberg proposes that various interpretations of history determined historical inquiry: history can be seen as simply those events which took place in the past, or as explanations of those events. History can also be defined as one's memory, story, or an anecdote. History as antiquity comprises those mythical legacies in the "search for beginnings and origins" in ancient civilizations. Classicity points to those ancient "high" cultures which provided a model for subsequent generations to follow, a foundation from which the latter developed, such as those civilizations of ancient India, China, Greece, and Rome. History viewed as theodocity relates to our means of understanding religion, God, and personal redemption.

    Once Frykenberg starts to define history as description, destiny, and rhetoric, the intersections with Southgate become more apparent. Historians describe events through their own perspectives, and through the eyes of their subjects; thus, the information and documentation they use has been tainted: there is no objectivity and no pure history. Because explanations of causality can never be certain, history is an ambiguous science, explains Frykenberg, and thus follows the debate on the purpose of historical inquiry, proposes Southgate.

    Southgate argues that postmodernists recognize that history "can never be one single privileged position from which the story of the past can finally be told." Historians have constantly struggled with determining the ultimate "facts" and "objective truth." But the problem, as demonstrated by the Marxists, Feminists and Post-colonialists, is that history has always been written by the winners in the struggle for position, influence and resources. Postmodernists are only broadening the discourse by adding the stories and interpretations of the losers in the battle, because they perceive it to be the only means of finding a more comprehensive understanding of events. History, in the eyes of Southgate, is ultimately a hypothesis. For Frykenberg, historical understanding is rooted in "those structures and systems of belief which some individual or some larger aggregate of persons hold dear." Current historical debates reflect the rhetorical struggles which inevitably ensue when belief systems clash.

    For the reader who is interested in the intellectual history of historical inquiry, Southgate offers an overview of the attitudes historians have taken towards their discipline over time: what historians said they were doing, and why they were doing it. External forces, such as developments in the psychology of perception, the problems of language, as explained by linguistics, or the issue of scepticism in philosophy, all impacted upon history from the outside, by questioning the methodology historians had always taken for granted. Marxism, feminism and post-colonialism impacted the discipline from the inside, by disputing the core beliefs traditionally held by members of the discipline. Frykenberg is more interested in the philosophy of history; he argues that history is intertwined with faith and religious belief, but in a broader sense. Frames of reference define the viewpoints and approaches individuals bring to historical understanding, and historical perceptions underlie the belief systems individuals adhere to. Southgate looks at some of those "faiths," the frames of reference in the political, social and intellectual movements which have affected historical inquiry.

    Jules R. Benjamin has written the sixth edition of his introduction to historical study for undergraduates. It is a good step-by-step guide for the student who has no history background, or for those who might have already taken one or two classes. Although the book is meant to be used by a student of history, it is useful for a student of any discipline. He clearly illustrates the pitfalls students can tumble into, thus ensuring that the student understands the concepts and will learn how to avoid plagiarism, bad writing, researching, note taking and study habits.

    Benjamin explains what historical study is and what historians do. He advises students on how to read assigned texts, take notes, study for an exam, and do historical research; he then goes further to demonstrate how each task is performed. He includes in the appendix a listing of basic reference sources, research and study guides, the names of some common grammar and style manuals, and the call number systems used by the Library of Congress and the Dewey Decimal System.

    Benjamin's style is straightforward, and the book is simply written. His guidebook is helpful for the instructor who needs guidance in teaching history students the basics, but it is not meant to be an introduction to substantive areas of historical study or schools of historical thought.
Bernie D. Jones