This groundbreaking volume of essays offers the first historical account of the impact that the work of sexual scientists, doctors, writers and political activists from around the world had on the field of sexology and on wider sociopolitical changes during the 1880–1960 period. The contributors examine how European sexual science was constructed around oppositional terms between the modern and the non-European, non-modern Others. Nonetheless, in non-European spheres sexual science developed through an unruly appropriation of the work of European sexologists; that is, through its amalgamation with local traditions and theories of sexuality. The originality of this volume lies in its scope and focus on highlighting the interconnections between political and sexological debates at local and global levels. As for the term ‘global’ per se, the influential historian Howard Chiang explains that this is intrinsically related to ‘a historical world … punctuated by the familiar grids of empire’ (p. 445).

A unique case in such a global history of sexual science is that of Agnes Smedley, who, as Veronika Fuechtner observes, ‘was a figure at the crossroads of a variety of global discourses and networks: sexology, feminism, communism, and the Indian independence movement’ (p. 401). The American-born Smedley was a friend and collaborator of Margaret Sanger, the pioneer of the birth control movement. After leaving New York in 1920, she lived in Berlin, Moscow and then Shangai, where she campaigned for communism and established a birth control clinic as part of her collaboration with Sanger. As Fuechtner notes, ‘This account of Smedley's movements throughout her life shows how different intellectual circles on different continents actually connected through the project of converting knowledge from sexual science into political activism, which was in turn only a part of different, larger political visions’ (p. 406). This constellation of historical and cultural forces was most powerful during the time Smedley lived in Berlin (1920–1928), where she represented Sanger and founded birth control clinics. She was also the founder of the German Birth Control Committee, which included influential socialist and feminist doctors, activists and artists as members. The committee's activities were publicized by the communist publisher Willi Münzenberg, who together with Smedley's then companion, the Indian revolutionary Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, had established the League against Imperialism. Such sexual and political organizations were fostered by the Weimar Republic, which promoted sexual reform; strengthened politically the women's movement; enabled the dissemination of birth control information and devices; and challenged accepted ideas regarding marriage, which under the influence of ‘the communist vision of science’ and the sexual reform movement was understood ‘as a space for the enlightened and healthy management of libidinal urges rather than for (or just for) sexual reproduction’ (p. 407). Intrinsically linked with the cultural avant-garde of the Weimar Republic was the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute (BPI). Karen Horney and Melanie Klein trained there while researchers such as Ernst Simmel, Wilhelm Reich, Otto Fenichel and the Kinderseminar group investigated how socialism and communism could be connected with psychoanalysis. The BPI collaborated with Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science, indicative of how intertwined psychoanalysis and sex reform were. Smedley started analysis at the BPI and the technique of psychoanalytic self-reflection shaped her writings on topics as wide-ranging as Indian independence, German sexual science, birth control, psychoanalysis and communism. A significant number of these writings appeared in the Indian press since she was a member of the Indian Journalists Association.

As Shrikant Botre and Douglas E. Haynes illustrate in their chapter, Indian journals became a significant publication outlet for prominent Asian sexologists. One of them was R.D. Karve, whose writings against self-restraint (brahmacharya) addressed the public controversies in India regarding masculinity and ‘national revitalization’ (p. 173). Gandhi and other nationalists advocated celibacy as a means to liberation but Karve drew on the writings of Havelock Ellis, Iwan Bloch and William J. Robinson to repeatedly outline its negative effects in the psychic life of an individual.

Sanjam Ahluwalia's chapter pays equal attention to public debates in Indian journals. She uses a post-colonial feminist methodology to examine how sexologists and readers wrote about the female orgasm in the pages of the Bombay-based International Journal of Sexology (1947–1955). Thanks to its editor Alliyapan Padmanabhan Pillay, the journal pioneered the international conversation regarding women's sexuality. Contrary to Western sexologists, Ahluwalia argues, Pillay ‘challenged the hierarchal categorization of clitoral orgasm as being inferior to vaginal orgasm; he also questioned the rationale for regarding frigid women as neurotic’ (p. 362). On the other hand, Ahluwalia draws on Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's advice that post-colonial scholars should not overemphasize marginality. Indeed, Ahluwalia acknowledges that despite his marginal status as non-Western sexologist, Pillay's ‘privileged class, caste, gender, and urban location within India bestowed immense epistemic power on him to temporarily direct the global scripting of sexual normativity through the pages of the IJS’ (p. 369).

The matrices of colonialism and imperialism overshadow a number of chapters in the volume on sexological developments in other parts of the world. As Kurt MacMillan shows, the writings of the Spanish doctor Gregorio Marañón were vital for doctors in Chile in 1929 to decide about the treatment of a woman with intersexual characteristics. Scientists like Marañón envisaged a neo-Spanish cultural form of imperialism and their work was of great political significance at a time when Spain's relations with its previous colonies in Latin America were being reconfigured.

Additionally, Rebecca Hodes's chapter brings into the discussion the emergence of scientific racism in the nineteenth century and investigates the history of the belief that the elongated labia of Hottentot women of South Africa were a marker of racial inferiority. Hodes focuses on the case of the ‘Hottentot Venus’ Sarah Baartmann, who in 1810 left Cape Town after a British surgeon persuaded her to be taken to Britain to be exhibited as an object of curiosity in freak shows and salons. In 1815, Baartmann died in Paris. After an application to the authorities, the renowned zoologist Georges Cuvier dissected her body and published a report describing her genitals, which were subsequently exhibited at the Musée de l'homme in Paris.

Apart from the chapters discussed here, the volume as a whole presents original archival research and re-evaluates a wide range of secondary sources. It is an indispensable book for other researchers and for the general readership interested in the history of sexual science.