There is no single, universal history of homosexuality. This history has been constructed from an "integrationist" approach, which follows the developments of homosexuality by placing them within the major processes of social and political history, balancing the analysis of practices, representations, and discourses, intertwining multiple sources, and alternating geographical and historical-ethnographic explorations with the history of concepts (theological-moral, philosophical, scientific) and images (visual arts, literature, advertising). The history of male homosexuality in the West has been organized around three main axes. First, the study of control and persecution practices deployed by various social institutions and historical periods. Second, the forms of resistance aimed at creating livable spaces, a community of their own, and eventually a subculture or a movement of contestation in each era. Finally, it also seeks to capture the forms of identity and subjectivity shaped in this agonizing relationship between the exercise of power and the challenges of individual freedom. The result is an ambitious work from which the most strictly academic edges have been smoothed, seeking the accessible language necessary for greater understanding.