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This article investigates clerical child sexual abuse in the first decades of the French Third Republic. Thanks in large part to the difficulty of accessing relevant archival records, we know very little about this crime or how it was investigated by judicial officials. This study addresses this gap by drawing on a rich and untapped collection of correspondence between local prosecutors and the Ministry of Justice in Paris. The files reveal the process for investigating and prosecuting abusive priests, as well as the reverberations within local communities. Though generated by the state rather than the church, they offer an insight as well into the response of ecclesiastical authorities. Finally, they shed light on the relationship between clerical crime and the culture wars pitting French republicans against Catholics, a conflict that was reaching a peak of intensity in this period. What emerges from this study is an appreciation of the personal toll and political impact of clerical sexual abuse, as well as a new perspective on the recent scandals which have engulfed the Catholic church in a range of nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By 1939, there were an estimated 150,000 immigrant Jews in Paris: half the entire Jewish population of France. More than seventy-five percent of them came from Eastern Europe. Scholarship on the immigrant Jewish community in Paris primarily focuses on the role that the Yiddish-language immigrant press played in demarcating political affiliation. Less explored, however, are the roles that the Yiddish press played in creating a Jewish community rooted in both French and Jewish cultural norms. This article analyzes Naye prese through its use of culture and gender constructs to understand more fully the larger implications of the Yiddish press in Paris. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the policing of Russian emigration in Paris, France from 1880 to 1914, featuring excerpts from the author's book "The Tsarist Secret Police Abroad: Policing Europe in a Modernising World." It highlights co-operation between the political police of Tsarist Russia and Republican France. The author comments on the case of Lev Nikolaevich Gartman, a Russian terrorist who fled to Paris in 1880. He also explores counterterrorism efforts and comments on the efforts of the police of the Paris Prefecture, French Directeur-Général des Recherches A.C. Puibaraud, and Russian Chief of the Foreign Agentura Peter Ivanovich Rachkovskii.

The article looks back at the angst toward the Paris Commune in France in 1871. It is noted that the ramifications of the Commune toward the uprising following the Prussian siege of Paris had threatened all strata of Parisian society. According to scholars, the last quarter of the nineteenth century was a golden age of monument building. It was hoped by the Third Republic that the potentially subversive impact of the revolt may be mitigated by censoring the public works that it commissioned. However, the author pointed out that the government's program failed to erase people's memory of the Commune.