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Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
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A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
Alexis de Tocqueville

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.
Alexis de Tocqueville

Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.
Alexis de Tocqueville

An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say "Gentlemen" to the person with whom he is conversing.
Alexis de Tocqueville

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?
Alexis de Tocqueville

Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort.
Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
Alexis de Tocqueville

Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.
Alexis de Tocqueville

He was as great as a man can be without morality.
Alexis de Tocqueville

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
Alexis de Tocqueville

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I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.
Alexis de Tocqueville

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.
Alexis de Tocqueville

In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
Alexis de Tocqueville

In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.
Alexis de Tocqueville

In no other country in the world is the love of property keener or more alert than in the United States, and nowhere else does the majority display less inclination toward doctrines which in any way threaten the way property is owned.
Alexis de Tocqueville

In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
Alexis de Tocqueville

In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.
Alexis de Tocqueville

In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.
Alexis de Tocqueville

It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.
Alexis de Tocqueville

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Biography Type: Historian
Nationality: French
Born: July 29, 1805
Died: April 16, 1859

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Far across the sea lay true égalité

The new world leaves Alexis de Tocqueville sick and giddy in Hugh Brogan's delightful biography, writes Hilary Spurling
Alexis de Tocqueville: Prophet of Democracy in the Age of Revolution
by Hugh Brogan
Profile £30, pp448
When the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville travelled across America in 1831, he saw trees stretching to the horizon in every direction like the sea. 'The whole country is nothing but one vast forest, in the middle of which they have made clearings,' he wrote after three months, already beginning to suspect that the occupants of this strange, blank, silent, untouched continent held the future in their grasp. 'We are travelling towards unlimited democracy,' he told a friend. 'I don't say this is a good thing. What I see in this country convinces me, on the contrary, that it won't suit France; but we are being driven by an irresistible force. No effort made to stop this movement will do more than bring about brief halts.'
He was 26 years old when he landed in America, a sophisticated, inquisitive, patronising Parisian so unprepared to find even a semblance of polite society in New York that he had to write home at once for silk stockings, cravats and 24 pairs of kid gloves. The US overturned all his preconceptions. 'Everyone shakes hands,' he reported with incredulity. The Protestant religion shocked him deeply, and so did the self-respect of servants who felt they had a perfect right to chat to their employers, and waiters who sat down at table with their customers. In Washington he and his travelling companion were astounded by the simplicity of the presidential palace, where Andrew Jackson poured their drinks himself with no sign of attendant guards or courtiers.
It was all a long way from the Tuileries, writes the author, Hugh Brogan. Tocqueville understood by this time that the men who shaped and ran America had more to teach than learn from visiting Frenchmen: 'It is no longer a question of obtaining from them suggestions about topics we are ignorant of but of re-examining in conversation with them almost everything we already know.'
The sensation made him sick and giddy. Tocqueville had felt like this 10 years before, as a schoolboy in his father's library, when he lost his religious faith in a spasm of doubt so fierce that the ceiling, walls and floor seemed to heave and judder. 'I remember that moment with horror,' he wrote home from the US. In retrospect he saw his whole life as a series of shocks that shattered his philosophical and political underpinning with terrifying violence: 'Once more my intellectual world totters and I am again lost and desperate in a powerful tide which shakes or inverts every truth on which I have based my beliefs and conduct.'
Tocqueville always described his imaginative shifts of vision in terms of storm, flood, earthquake, tempests of anxiety and dread. He suffered all his life from stress, dyspepsia, stomach problems, allergies and the agonies of stage fright. It took phenomenal nerve to advocate democracy at a time when the net result of more than 40 years of convulsive upheaval in France - revolution and counter-revolution, slaughter, mayhem, riot, imperialist war and national defeat - was that just over 2 per cent of Frenchmen had the right to vote. In England, even after the Reform Bill of 1832, it was 10 per cent. All adult white males in the US could do so.
One of the delights of this remarkable biography is to let its readers see the past as if it were the present, through the eyes of civilised Frenchmen like Tocqueville so that his prejudices - or rather his refusal to give way to them - make his achievement all the more impressive. 'One thing is incontrovertibly demonstrated by America which I doubted until now: it is that the middle classes can govern a state,' wrote the aristocrat whose iconoclastic intellect didn't stop him being, in Brogan's words, noble to his fingertips. Despite petty passions, incomplete education and vulgarity, 'they can demonstrably supply practical intelligence, and that is enough'.
These views were unheard of, if not inconceivable, at the time in France. Tocqueville had crossed the Atlantic confidently expecting to find a primitive backwoods people struggling to operate a crude and essentially unworkable system of government. Unlike his English contemporaries (chief among them Fanny Trollope and Charles Dickens), he found nothing of the sort. His book Democracy in America describes a competent, orderly, stable republic based, in sharp contrast to every other existing state, on liberty and equality. He contemplated calmly the crazy idea that all other nations - including 'even the great powers of Europe' - would one day follow the US example.
'In America a free society has created free political institutions,' he jotted down in one of the notebooks that formed the basis of his book. 'In France free political institutions will have to create a free society.' It would be another hundred years and more, as Brogan points out in one of the mild asides that make this biography such fun to read, before the French finally succumbed ('after trying almost everything else') to a Tocquevillean republic in the late 20th century.
A great grandson of Malesherbes, Louis XVI's defence counsel, guillotined along with almost his entire family, and nephew of Chateaubriand, Tocqueville belonged to a family intimately acquainted with the grief and horror of the revolution. It was the level tone of his writing and his absolute lack of partisanship that disconcerted and disarmed readers then as now. Democracy made him an instant celebrity in Paris. Another book, L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution, consolidated his success 20 years later. In England, John Stuart Mill said that none of their contemporaries could hope to understand, let alone influence, the world they lived in, without reading Tocqueville.
Brogan has mapped the emotional landscape of his subject's mind with exemplary lucidity and logic: 'a man like Tocqueville,' he says, explaining why this is a biographical rather than a primarily political or historical investigation, 'enlarges our sense of human possibility and of the meaning of human lives in everything he writes.' And a biography as humane, learned, humorous and perceptive as this extends our understanding of ourselves and where we came from, as well as painting an incomparable portrait of one of the sharpest and most sympathetic writers of all time.
de Toqueville: A life
Born Paris, 29 July 1805
Died Cannes, 16 April 1859
1831 Visits America to research penal system.
1835 Democracy in America published.
1849 French Foreign Minister (June-Oct).
1851 Jailed for opposing coup d'etat of Louis-Napoleon.
1856 Publication of L'Ancien Regime.
What he said:
'No example is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.'
'What do men need in order to remain free? A taste for freedom.'
'Centralisation and socialism are native of the same soil.'
'History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.'


 

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Alexis de Tocqueville

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Tocqueville" redirects here. For other uses, see Tocqueville (disambiguation).
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
Full nameAlexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
Born29 July 1805
Paris, France
Died16 April 1859 (aged 53)
Cannes, France
Era19th-century philosophy
RegionWestern Philosophy
SchoolEnlightenment, Classical liberalism
Main interestsHistory, Political philosophy, Sociology
Notable ideasClassical liberalism, Voluntary association
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville (French pronunciation: [alɛksi or alɛksis də tɔkvil]; 29 July 1805, Paris – 16 April 1859, Cannes) was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America (appearing in two volumes: 1835 and 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in western societies. Democracy in America (1835), his major work, published after his travels in the United States, is today considered an early work of sociology and political science.
An eminent representative of the classical liberal political tradition, Tocqueville was an active participant in French politics, first under the July Monarchy (1830–1848) and then during the Second Republic (1849–1851) which succeeded the February 1848 Revolution. He retired from political life after Louis Napoléon Bonaparte's 2 December 1851 coup, and thereafter began work on The Old Regime and the Revolution, Volume I.

Contents

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[edit] Life

Alexis de Tocqueville came from an old Norman aristocratic family with ancestors who participated in the Battle of Hastings in 1066. His parents, Hervé Louis François Jean Bonaventure Clérel, Comte de Tocqueville, an officer of the Constitutional Guard of King Louis XVI, and Louise Madeleine Le Peletier de Rosanbo, narrowly avoided the guillotine due to the fall of Robespierre in 1794. After an exile in England, they returned to France during the reign of Napoleon. Under the Bourbon Restoration, his father became a noble peer and prefect.[citation needed] Tocqueville attended the Lycée Fabert in Metz.[1]
The Fabert School in Metz, where Tocqueville was fellow student between 1817 and 1823.
Tocqueville, who despised the July Monarchy (1830–1848), began his political career at the start of the same period, 1830. Thus, he became deputy of the Manche department (Valognes), a position which he maintained until 1851. In parliament, he defended abolitionist views and upheld free trade, while supporting the colonisation of Algeria carried on by Louis-Philippe's regime. Tocqueville was also elected general counsellor of the Manche in 1842, and became the president of the department's conseil général between 1849 and 1851. According to one account, Tocqueville's political position became untenable during this time in the sense that he was mistrusted by both the left and right, and was looking for an excuse to leave France.[2] In 1831, he obtained from the July Monarchy a mission to examine prisons and penitentiaries in America, and proceeded there with his life-long friend Gustave de Beaumont. While Tocqueville did visit some prisons, he traveled widely in America and took extensive notes about his observations and reflections.[2] He returned in less than two years, and published a report, but the real result of his tour was De la démocratie en Amerique, which appeared in 1835.[3]
Apart from America, Tocqueville also made an observational tour of England, producing Memoir on Pauperism. In 1841 and 1846, he traveled to Algeria. His first travel inspired his Travail sur l'Algérie, in which he criticized the French model of colonisation, which was based on an assimilationist view, preferring instead the British model of indirect rule, which avoided mixing different populations together. He went as far as openly advocating racial segregation between the European colonists and the "Arabs" through the implementation of two different legislative systems (a half century before implementation of the 1881 Indigenous code based on religion). In 1835 de Tocqueville made a journey through Ireland. His observations provide one of the best pictures of how Ireland stood before the Great Famine 1845-1849. The observations chronicle the growing Catholic middle-class and the appalling conditions in which most Catholic tenant farmers lived. De Tocqueville's libertarian sympathies and his affinity for his Irish co-religionists are made clear.[4]
After the fall of the July Monarchy during the February 1848 Revolution, Tocqueville was elected a member of the Constituent Assembly of 1848, where he became a member of the Commission charged with the drafting of the new Constitution of the Second Republic (1848–1851). He defended bicameralism (the existence of two parliamentary chambers) and the election of the President of the Republic by universal suffrage. As the countryside was thought to be more conservative than the labouring population of Paris, universal suffrage was conceived as a means to counteract the revolutionary spirit of Paris.
Liberalism
Yellow flag waving.svg
 
During the Second Republic, Tocqueville sided with the parti de l'Ordre against the socialists. A few days after the February insurrection, he believed that a violent clash between the Parisian workers' population led by socialists agitating in favor of a "Democratic and Social Republic" and the conservatives, which included the aristocracy and the rural population, was inescapable. As Tocqueville had foreseen, these social tensions eventually exploded during the June Days Uprising of 1848. Led by General Cavaignac, the repression was supported by Tocqueville, who advocated the "regularization" of the state of siege declared by Cavaignac, and other measures promoting suspension of the constitutional order.[5] Between May and September, Tocqueville participated in the Constitutional Commission which wrote the new Constitution. His proposals underlined the importance of his American experience, as his amendment about the President and his reelection.[6]
A supporter of Cavaignac and of the parti de l'Ordre, Tocqueville, however, accepted an invitation to enter Odilon Barrot's government as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 3 June to 31 October 1849. There, during the troubled days of June 1849, he pleaded with Jules Dufaure, Interior Minister, for the reestablishment of the state of siege in the capital and approved the arrest of demonstrators. Tocqueville, who since February 1848 had supported laws restricting political freedoms, approved the two laws voted immediately after the June 1849 days, which restricted the liberty of clubs and freedom of the press. This active support in favor of laws restricting political freedoms stands in contrast of his defense of freedoms in Democracy in America. A closer analysis reveals, however, that Tocqueville favored order as "the sine qua non for the conduct of serious politics. He [hoped] to bring the kind of stability to French political life that would permit the steady growth of liberty unimpeded by the regular rumblings of the earthquakes of revolutionary change.″[7]
Tocqueville had supported Cavaignac against Louis Napoléon Bonaparte for the presidential election of 1848. Opposed to Louis Napoléon's 2 December 1851 coup which followed his election, Tocqueville was among the deputies who gathered at the 10th arrondissement of Paris in an attempt to resist the coup and have Napoleon III judged for "high treason," as he had violated the constitutional limit on terms of office. Detained at Vincennes and then released, Tocqueville, who supported the Restoration of the Bourbons against Bonaparte's Second Empire (1851–1871), quit political life and retreated to his castle (Château de Tocqueville). Against this image of Tocqueville, biographer Joseph Epstein has concluded: "Tocqueville could never bring himself to serve a man he considered a usurper and despot. He fought as best he could for the political liberty in which he so ardently believed—had given it, in all, thirteen years of his life [....] He would spend the days remaining to him fighting the same fight, but conducting it now from libraries, archives, and his own desk."[8] There, he began the draft of L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution, publishing the first tome in 1856, but leaving the second one unfinished.
A longtime sufferer from bouts of tuberculosis, Tocqueville would eventually succumb to the disease on April 16, 1859. He was buried in the Tocqueville cemetery in Normandy.
Tocqueville's professed religion was Roman Catholicism.[9] He saw religion as being compatible with both equality and individualism, and felt that religion would be strongest when separated from politics.[2]

[edit] Translated Versions of Democracy in America and Effects on Meaning

Henry Reeve, translated circa 1839[10] This translation was completed by Reeve and later revised by Francis Bowen. In 1945, it was reissued in a modern edition by Alfred A. Knopf edited and with an extensive historical essay by Phillips Bradley. Tocqueville wrote to Reeve providing a critique of the translation: "Without wishing to do so and by following the instinct of your opinions, you have quite vividly colored what was contrary to Democracy and almost erased what could do harm to Aristocracy." This statement indicates, first, that Tocqueville believed Reeve's translation to be problematic, and second, that he believed that Reeve's political views induced him, albeit unconsciously, to distort the original book's meaning.[11]
George Lawrence, translated in 1966 with an introduction by J. P. Mayer[12]
Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, translated circa 2000[13]
Gerald Bevan, translated circa 2003[14]
Arthur Goldhammer, translated circa 2004[15] This authoritative translation of the text by Tocqueville, published by the Library of America, requires the reader to think more about the text instead of relying on "instant opinions" provided by previous translations. A speech from the translator given at Harvard University provides a keen insight into his development of his translation:[11]
To shed light on the possible inaccuracies of the original translation, the title of the text should be "On Democracy in America", however this was changed by Reeve. Although not a complete rewrite, the clarity that Tocqueville wrote with depended on its concreteness and by making words interchangeable at will, it does have an effect on the meaning especially to readers who do not put the effort to research the text or read it in its native French.
James T. Schleifer, edited by Eduardo Nolla and published by Liberty Fund in March 2010[16] Bilingual edition based on the authoritative edition of the original French-language text.

[edit] Democracy in America

In Democracy in America, published in 1835, Tocqueville wrote of the New World and its burgeoning democratic order. Observing from the perspective of a detached social scientist, Tocqueville wrote of his travels through America in the early 19th Century when the market revolution, Western expansion, and Jacksonian democracy were radically transforming the fabric of American life. One purpose of writing Democracy in America, according to Joshua Kaplan, was to help the people of France get a better understanding of their position between a fading aristocratic order and an emerging democratic order, and to help them sort out the confusion.[2] Tocqueville saw democracy as an equation that balanced liberty and equality, concern for the individual as well as the community. Tocqueville's impressions of American religion and its relationship to the broader national culture are likewise notable:
"Moreover, almost all the sects of the United States are comprised within the great unity of Christianity, and Christian morality is everywhere the same. In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.
There are certain populations in Europe whose unbelief is only equaled by their ignorance and their debasement, while in America one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the world fulfills all the outward duties of religion with fervor.
Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country."
Source: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, (New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1851), pp. 331, 332, 335, 336-7, 337, respectively.
Tocqueville saw equality as an emerging and unstoppable force in modern life.[2] He wrote of "Political Consequences of the Social State of the Anglo-Americans" by saying "But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom".[17] He further comments on equality by saying "Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power. As none of them is strong enough to fight alone with advantage, the only guarantee of liberty is for everyone to combine forces. But such a combination is not always in evidence."[18] The above is often misquoted as a slavery quote due to previous translations of the French text. The most recent translation from Arthur Goldhammer in 2004 translates the meaning to be as stated above. Examples of misquoted sources are numerous on the internet;[19] the actual text does not contain the words "Americans were so enamored by equality" anywhere in the text.
Page from original working manuscript of Democracy in America, ca. 1840
Tocqueville explicitly cites inequality as being incentive for poor to become rich, and notes that it is not often two generations within a family maintain success, and that it is inheritance laws that split and eventually break apart someone's estate that cause a constant cycle of churn between the poor and rich, thereby over generations making the poor rich and rich poor. He cites protective laws in France at the time that protected an estate from being split apart amongst heirs, thereby preserving wealth and preventing a churn of wealth such as was perceived by him in 1835 within the United States of America.
Tocqueville's main purpose was to analyze the functioning of political society and various forms of political associations, although he brought some reflections on civil society too (and relations between political and civil society). For Tocqueville as for Hegel and Marx, civil society was a sphere of private entrepreneurship and civilian affairs regulated by civil code.[20] As a critic of individualism, Tocqueville thought that through associating, the coming together of people for mutual purpose, both in public and private, Americans are able to overcome selfish desires, thus making both a self-conscious and active political society and a vibrant civil society functioning independently from the state.[2] According to political scientist Joshua Kaplan, Tocqueville did not originate the concept of individualism but changed its meaning, and saw it as a "calm and considered feeling which deposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and to withdraw into the circle of family and friends ... with this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look for itself."[2] While Tocqueville saw egotism and selfishness as vices, he saw individualism as not a failure of feeling but as a way of thinking about things which could have either positive consequences such as a willingness to work together, or negative consequences such as isolation, and that individualism could be remedied by improved understanding.[2] When individualism was a positive force and prompted people to work together for common purposes, and seen as "self interest properly understood", then it helped to counterbalance the danger of the tyranny of the majority, since people could "take control over their own lives" without government aid.[2] According to Kaplan, Americans have a difficult time accepting Tocqueville's criticism of the stifling intellectual effect of the "omnipotence of the majority," and that Americans tend to deny that there is a problem in this regard.[2]
Tocqueville warned that "modern democracy may be adept at inventing new forms of tyranny, because radical equality could lead to the materialism of an expanding bourgeoisie and to the selfishness of individualism. In such conditions "we loose interest in the future of our descendents...and meekly allow ourselves to be led in ignorance by a despotic force all the more powerful because it does not resemble one."[21] Tocqueville worried that if despotism were to take root in a modern democracy, it would be a much more dangerous version than the oppression under the Roman emperors or tyrants of the past who could only exert a pernicious influence on a small group of people at a time. In contrast, a despotism under a democracy could see "a multitude of men," uniformly alike, equal, "constantly circling for petty pleasures," unaware of fellow citizens, and subject to the will of a powerful state which exerted an "immense protective power".[2] Tocqueville compared a potentially despotic democratic government to a protective parent who wants to keep its citizens (children) as "perpetual children," and which doesn't break men's wills but rather guides it, and presides over people in the same way as a shepherd looking after a "flock of timid animals."[2]
Tocqueville's penetrating analysis sought to understand the peculiar nature of American political life. In describing America, he agreed with thinkers such as Aristotle and Montesquieu that the balance of property determined the balance of political power, but his conclusions after that differed radically from those of his predecessors. Tocqueville tried to understand why America was so different from Europe in the last throes of aristocracy. America, in contrast to the aristocratic ethic, was a society where hard work and money-making was the dominant ethic, where the common man enjoyed a level of dignity which was unprecedented, where commoners never deferred to elites, and where what he described as crass individualism and market capitalism had taken root to an extraordinary degree.
Tocqueville expressed interest in the unique American condition of equality in terms of income, using the 90/10 inequality ratio.[citation needed] His hypothetical analysis could later be applied to the Kuznets Curve. Tocqueville's data is consistent with the early stages of income equality of a developing country, which is not surprising considering America's heavy reliance on agriculture in the early nineteenth century. Tocqueville writes "Among a democratic people, where there is no hereditary wealth, every man works to earn a living...Labor is held in honor; the prejudice is not against but in its favor."[22]
This equality of social conditions bred political and civilian values which determined the type of legislation passed in the colonies and later in the states. By the late 18th Century, democratic values which championed money-making, hard work, and individualism had eradicated, in the North, most remaining vestiges of old world aristocracy and values. Eliminating them in the South proved more difficult, for slavery had produced a landed aristocracy and web of patronage and dependence similar to the old world, which would last until the antebellum period before the Civil War.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Tocqueville asserted that the values that had triumphed in the North and were present in the South had begun to suffocate old-world ethics and social arrangements. Legislatures abolished primogeniture and entails, resulting in more widely distributed land holdings. This was a contrast to the general aristocratic pattern in which only the eldest child, usually a man, inherited the estate, which had the effect of keeping large estates intact from generation to generation; in America, in contrast, landed elites were less likely to pass on fortunes to a single child by the action of primogeniture, which meant that as time went by, large estates became broken up within a few generations which, in turn, made the children more equal overall.[2] It was not always a negative development, according to Joshua Kaplan's interpretation of Tocqueville, since bonds of affection and shared experience between children often replaced the more formal relation between the eldest child and the siblings, characterisitic of the previous aristocratic pattern.[2] Overall, in the new democracies, hereditary fortunes became exceedingly difficult to secure and more people were forced to struggle for their own living.
This rapidly democratizing society, as Tocqueville understood it, had a population devoted to "middling" values which wanted to amass, through hard work, vast fortunes. In Tocqueville's mind, this explained why America was so different from Europe. In Europe, he claimed, nobody cared about making money. The lower classes had no hope of gaining more than minimal wealth, while the upper classes found it crass, vulgar, and unbecoming of their sort to care about something as unseemly as money; many were virtually guaranteed wealth and took it for granted. At the same time in America workers would see people fashioned in exquisite attire and merely proclaim that through hard work they too would soon possess the fortune necessary to enjoy such luxuries.
But, despite maintaining with Aristotle, Montesquieu, and others that the balance of property determined the balance of power, Tocqueville argued that, as America showed, equitable property holdings did not ensure the rule of the best men. In fact, it did quite the opposite. The widespread, relatively equitable property ownership which distinguished America and determined its mores and values also explained why the American masses held elites in such contempt.
More than just imploding any traces of old-world aristocracy, ordinary Americans also refused to defer to those possessing, as Tocqueville put it, superior talent and intelligence. These natural elites, who Tocqueville asserted were the lone virtuous members of American society, could not enjoy much share in the political sphere as a result. Ordinary Americans enjoyed too much power, claimed too great a voice in the public sphere, to defer to intellectual superiors. This culture promoted a relatively pronounced equality, Tocqueville argued, but the same mores and opinions that ensured such equality also promoted, as he put it, a middling mediocrity. Those who possessed true virtue and talent would be left with limited choices. Those with the most education and intelligence would either, Tocqueville prognosticated, join limited intellectual circles to explore the weighty and complex problems facing society which have today become the academic or contemplative realms, or use their superior talents to take advantage of America's growing obsession with money-making and amass vast fortunes in the private sector. Tocqueville wrote that he did not know of any country where there was "less independence of mind, and true freedom of discussion, than in America."[2] He blamed the omnipotence of majority rule as a chief factor in stifling thinking: "The majority has enclosed thought within a formidable fence. A writer is free inside that area, but woe to the man who goes beyond it, not that he stands in fear of an inquisition, but he must face all kinds of unpleasantness in every day persecution. A career in politics is closed to him for he has offended the only power that holds the keys."[2] Tocqueville, in contrast to previous political thinkers, argued that a serious problem in political life was not that people were too strong, but that people were "too weak" and felt powerless; the danger is that people felt "swept up in something that they could not control," according to Kaplan's interpretation of Tocqueville.[2]
Uniquely positioned at a crossroads in American History, Tocqueville's Democracy in America attempted to capture the essence of American culture and values. Though a supporter of colonialism, Tocqueville could clearly perceive the evils that blacks and Indians had been subjected to in America. Tocqueville notes that among the races that exist in America:
The first who attracts the eye, the first in enlightenment, in power and in happiness, is the white man, the European, man par excellence; below him appear the Negro and the Indian. These two unfortunate races have neither birth, nor face, nor language, nor mores in common; only their misfortunes look alike. Both occupy an equally inferior position in the country that they inhabit; both experience the effects of tyranny; and if their miseries are different, they can accuse the same author for them.[23]
Tocqueville contrasted the settlers of Virginia with the middle-class, religious Puritans who founded New England, and analyzed the debasing influence of slavery:
"The men sent to Virginia were seekers of gold, adventurers without resources and without character, whose turbulent and restless spirit endangered the infant colony...Artisans and agriculturalists arrived afterwards...hardly in any respect above the level of the inferior classes in England. No lofty views, no spiritual conception presided over the foundation of these new settlements. The colony was scarcely established when slavery was introduced; this was the capital fact which was to exercise an immense influence on the character, the laws and the whole future of the South. Slavery...dishonors labor; it introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man. On this same English foundation there developed in the North very different characteristics.
[24]
Tocqueville concluded that removal of the Negro population from America could not resolve the problem as he writes at the end of the first Democracy:
If the colony of Liberia were able to receive thousands of new inhabitants every year, and if the Negroes were in a state to be sent thither with advantage; if the Union were to supply the society with annual subsidies, and to transport the Negroes to Africa in government vessels, it would still be unable to counterpoise the natural increase of population among the blacks; and as it could not remove as many men in a year as are born upon its territory within that time, it could not prevent the growth of the evil which is daily increasing in the states. The Negro race will never leave those shores of the American continent to which it was brought by the passions and the vices of Europeans; and it will not disappear from the New World as long as it continues to exist. The inhabitants of the United States may retard the calamities which they apprehend, but they cannot now destroy their efficient cause.
In 1855, he wrote the following text published by Maria Weston Chapman in the Liberty Bell: Testimony against Slavery
I do not think it is for me, a foreigner, to indicate to the United States the time, the measures, or the men by whom Slavery shall be abolished.Still, as the persevering enemy of despotism everywhere, and under all its forms, I am pained and astonished by the fact that the freest people in the world is, at the present time, almost the only one among civilized and Christian nations which yet maintains personal servitude; and this while serfdom itself is about disappearing, where it has not already disappeared, from the most degraded nations of Europe.
An old and sincere friend of America, I am uneasy at seeing Slavery retard her progress, tarnish her glory, furnish arms to her detractors, compromise the future career of the Union which is the guaranty of her safety and greatness, and point out beforehand to her, to all her enemies, the spot where they are to strike. As a man, too, I am moved at the spectacle of man's degradation by man, and I hope to see the day when the law will grant equal civil liberty to all the inhabitants of the same empire, as God accords the freedom of the will, without distinction, to the dwellers upon earth.[25]
According to him assimilation of blacks would be almost impossible and this was already being demonstrated in the Northern states. As Tocqueville predicted, formal freedom and equality and segregation would become this population's reality after the Civil War and during Reconstruction — as would the bumpy road to true integration of blacks.
Assimilation, however, was the best solution for Native Americans. But since they were too proud to assimilate, they would inevitably become extinct. Displacement was another part of America's Indian policy. Both populations were "undemocratic", or without the qualities, intellectual and otherwise, needed to live in a democracy. Tocqueville shared many views on assimilation and segregation of his and the coming epochs, but he opposed Arthur de Gobineau's "scientific" racism theories as found in The Inequality of Human Races (1853–1855).[26]
In his Democracy In America, Tocqueville also forcasted the preeminence of the United States and Russia as the two main global powers. In his book, he stated:
"There are now two great nations in the world, which starting from different points, seem to be advancing toward the same goal: the Russians and the Anglo-Americans... Each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world."[27]
When Tocqueville toured the United States from 1831 to 1832 the Naturalization Act of 1790, signed into law by George Washington, prohibited persons of color from becoming citizens. Only persons who were "white" of "good moral character" could become citizens; while freed blacks, Asians, and Native Americans were denied citizenship. The citizens mentioned in Tocqueville's book, Democracy in America, were all of the white race.[28]

[edit] The 1841 discourse on the Conquest of Algeria

French historian of colonialism Olivier LeCour Grandmaison has underlined how Tocqueville (as well as Michelet) used the term "extermination" to describe what was happening during the colonization of Western United States and the Indian removal period.[29] Tocqueville thus expressed himself, in 1841, concerning the conquest of Algeria:
As far as I am concerned, I came back from Africa with the pathetic notion that at present in our way of waging war we are far more barbaric than the Arabs themselves. These days, they represent civilization, we do not. This way of waging war seems to me as stupid as it is cruel. It can only be found in the head of a coarse and brutal soldier. Indeed, it was pointless to replace the Turks only to reproduce what the world rightly found so hateful in them. This, even for the sake of interest is more noxious than useful; for, as another officer was telling me, if our sole aim is to equal the Turks, in fact we shall be in a far lower position than theirs: barbarians for barbarians, the Turks will always outdo us because they are Muslim barbarians. In France, I have often heard men I respect but do not approve of, deplore that crops should be burnt and granaries emptied and finally that unarmed men, women and children should be seized. In my view these are unfortunate circumstances that any people wishing to wage war against the Arabs must accept. I think that all the means available to wreck tribes must be used, barring those that the human kind and the right of nations condemn. I personally believe that the laws of war enable us to ravage the country and that we must do so either by destroying the crops at harvest time or any time by making fast forays also known as raids the aim of which it to get hold of men or flocks.[30][31]
Whatever the case, we may say in a general manner that all political freedoms must be suspended in Algeria.[32]
Tocqueville thought the conquest of Algeria was important for two reasons: first, his understanding of the international situation and France's position in the world, and, second, changes in French society.[33] Tocqueville believed that war and colonization would "restore national pride, threatened," he believed, by "the gradual softening of social mores" in the middle classes. Their taste for "material pleasures" was spreading to the whole of society, giving it "an example of weakness and egotism"." Applauding the methods of General Bugeaud, Tocqueville went as far as saying that "war in Africa" had become a science: "war in Africa is a science. Everyone is familiar with its rules and everyone can apply those rules with almost complete certainty of success. One of the greatest services that Field Marshal Bugeaud has rendered his country is to have spread, perfected and made everyone aware of this new science."[34]
Tocqueville advocated racial segregation in Algeria with two distinct legislations, one for each very separate communities.[35] Such legislation would eventually be enacted with the Crémieux decrees and the 1881 Indigenous Code, which gave French citizenship only to European settlers and Algerian Jews, while Muslim Algerians were confined to a second-grade citizenship.

[edit] Tocqueville's opposition to the invasion of Kabylia

In opposition to Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, Jean-Louis Benoît claimed that given the extent of racial prejudices during the colonization of Algeria, Tocqueville was one of its "most moderate supporters." Benoît claimed that it was wrong to assume Tocqueville was a supporter of Bugeaud, despite his 1841 apologetic discourse. It seems that Tocqueville changed viewpoint in particular after his second travel to Algeria in 1846. Hereafter, he criticized Bugeaud's desire to invade Kabylia (home of the Berbers) in a 1847 speech to the Assembly. Tocqueville, who did advocate racial segregation between Europeans and Arabs, judged otherwise the Berbers. In an August 22, 1837 proposal, Tocqueville distinguished the Berbers from the Arabs. He considered that these last ones should have a self-government (a bit on the model of British indirect rule, thus going against the French assimiliationist stance).
Tocqueville's views on the matter were complex, and evolved over time. Even though in his 1841 report on Algeria Tocqueville admitted that Bugeaud succeeded in implementing a technique of war that enabled him to defeat Abd al-Qadir's resistance and applauded him on one hand, he opposed on the other hand the conquest of Kabylia in his first Letter about Algeria (1837). In this document, he advocated that France and the French military leave Kabylia apart to preserve a peaceful zone so as to try to develop commercial links. In all his subsequent speeches and writings he kept on being against any attempt towards intrusion into Kabylia.
During the debate concerning the 1846 extraordinary funds, Tocqueville denounced Bugeaud's conduct of military operations, and succeeded in convincing the Assembly of not voting the funds in support of Bugeaud's military columns.[36] Tocqueville considered Bugeaud's will to invade Kabylia, despite the opposition of the Assembly, as a seditious move in front of which the government opted for cowardice.[37][38]

[edit] Report on Algeria (1847)

In his 1847 Report on Algeria, Tocqueville declared that Europe should avoid making the same mistake they made with the European colonization of the Americas in order to avoid the bloody consequences.[39] More particularly he reminds his countrymen of a solemn caution whereby he warns them that if the methods used towards the Algerian people remain unchanged, colonization will end in a blood bath. The 1847 caution went unheeded and the heralded tragedy did happen.
Tocqueville includes in his report on Algeria that the fate of their soldiers and finances depended on how they treated the natives and established a sound government. Creating peace in the country would reduce the number of soldiers. However, by treating the inhabitants of Algeria as an obstacle then the two sides would be subject to much conflict and strife.

[edit] References in popular literature

Tocqueville was quoted in several chapters of the Toby Young's memoirs, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People to explain his observation of widespread homogeneity of thought even amongst intellectual elites at Harvard University, during his time spent there. He is frequently quoted and studied in American history classes. Tocqueville is the inspiration for Australian novelist Peter Carey in his 2009 novel, Parrot and Olivier in America.[40]

[edit] Works

  • Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America: Their Friendship and Their Travels edited by Oliver Zunz, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (University of Virginia Press; 2011) 698 pages; Includes previously unpublished letters, essays, and other writings
  • Du système pénitentaire aux États-Unis et de son application en France (1833)—On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application to France, with Gustave de Beaumont.
  • De la démocratie en Amerique (1835/1840)—Democracy in America. It was published in two volumes, the first in 1835, the second in 1840. English language versions: Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. and eds., Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, University of Chicago Press, 2000; Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Arthur Goldhammer, trans.; Olivier Zunz, ed.) (The Library of America, 2004) ISBN 978-1-931082-54-9.
  • L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution (1856)—The Old Regime and the Revolution. It is Tocqueville's second most famous work.
  • Recollections (1893)—This work was a private journal of the Revolution of 1848. He never intended to publish this during his lifetime; it was published by his wife and his friend Gustave de Beaumont after his death.
  • Journey to America (1831–1832)—Alexis de Tocqueville's travel diary of his visit to America; translated into English by George Lawrence, edited by J. P. Mayer, Yale University Press, 1960; based on vol. V, 1 of the Œuvres Complètes of Tocqueville.
  • L'Etat social et politique de la France avant et depuis 1789 —Alexis de Tocqueville
  • Memoir On Pauperism: Does public charity produce an idle and dependant class of society? (1835) originally published by Ivan R. Dee. Inspired by a trip to England. One of de Tocqueville's more obscure works.
  • Journeys to England and Ireland 1835

[edit] See also


[edit] References

  1. ^ "Le lycée Fabert : 1000 ans d'histoire (French)." Lycée Fabert. Retrieved 18 September 2010.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Joshua Kaplan (2005). "Political Theory: The Classic Texts and their Continuing Relevance". The Modern Scholar. "14 lectures; (lectures #11 & #12) -- see disc 6"
  3. ^  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Tocqueville, Alexis Henri Charles Maurice Clerel, Comte de". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  4. ^ de Tocqueville, "Journey in Ireland, July–August, 1835" Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D.C, 1990
  5. ^ "Regularization" is a term used by Tocqueville himself, see Souvenirs, Third part, p.289–290 French ed (Paris, Gallimard, 1999).
  6. ^ Coutant Arnaud, Tocqueville et la constitution democratique, Paris, Mare et Martin, 2008, 680 p. see also http://www.arnaud-coutant.fr/ or http://www.arnaud.coutant.over-blog.com
  7. ^ P. 148, "Alexis De Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide," Joseph Epstein, HarperCollins Publishing, 2006.
  8. ^ P. 160, "Alexis De Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide," Joseph Epstein, HarperCollins Publishing, 2006.
  9. ^ Pp. 282-283. Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2000.
  10. ^ http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/805328note.html
  11. ^ a b http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~agoldham/articles/classic.htm
  12. ^ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060956666
  13. ^ http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=3612682
  14. ^ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0140447601
  15. ^ http://www.loa.org/excerpts/tocqueville/note.jsp
  16. ^ http://www.libertyfund.org/details.aspx?id=2149
  17. ^ see Volumes One, Part I, Chapter 3
  18. ^ http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville
  19. ^ http://www.notable-quotes.com/s/slavery_quotes.html
  20. ^ Zaleski, Pawel (2008). "Tocqueville on Civilian Society. A Romantic Vision of the Dichotomic Structure of Social Reality". Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte (Felix Meiner Verlag) 50.
  21. ^ Woods, James, "Tocqueville In America," The New Yorker, May 17, 2010
  22. ^ http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/DETOC/ch2_18.htm
  23. ^ Beginning of chapter 18 of Democracy in America, "The Present and Probably Future Condition of the Three Races that Inhabit the Territory of the United States".
  24. ^ Democracy in America, Vintage Books, 1945, p. 31-32
  25. ^ in Oeuvres completes, Gallimard, T. VII, pp. 1663–1664.
  26. ^ See Correspondence avec Arthur de Gobineau, quoted by Jean-Louis Benoît
  27. ^ Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, pp.412-13
  28. ^ Schultz, Jeffrey D. (2002). Encyclopedia of Minorities in American Politics: African Americans and Asian Americans. p. 284. ISBN 978-1-57356-148-8. Retrieved 2010-03-25.
  29. ^ Olivier LeCour Grandmaison (2005-02-02). "Le négationnisme colonial". Le Monde.(French)
  30. ^ 1841 — Extract of Travail sur l'Algérie, in Œuvres complètes, Gallimard, Pléïade, 1991, p. 704 & 705.
  31. ^ Olivier LeCour Grandmaison (June 2001). "Torture in Algeria: Past Acts That Haunt France — Liberty, Equality and Colony". Le Monde diplomatique. (quoting Alexis de Tocqueville, Travail sur l'Algérie in Œuvres complètes, Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1991, pp 704 and 705).(English)
  32. ^ Olivier LeCour Grandmaison (2001). "Tocqueville et la conquête de l'Algérie". La Mazarine.(French)
  33. ^ Olivier LeCour Grandmaison (June 2001). "Torture in Algeria: Past Acts That Haunt France — Liberty, Equality and Colony". Le Monde diplomatique.(English)
  34. ^ Alexis de Tocqueville, "Rapports sur l'Algérie", in Œuvres complètes, Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1991,p 806 (quoted in (English) Olivier LeCour Grandmaison (June 2001). "Torture in Algeria: Past Acts That Haunt France — Liberty, Equality and Colony". Le Monde diplomatique.>
  35. ^ Travail sur l'Algérie, op.cit. p. 752 (quoted in (English) Olivier LeCour Grandmaison (June 2001). "Torture in Algeria: Past Acts That Haunt France — Liberty, Equality and Colony". Le Monde diplomatique.)
  36. ^ Tocqueville, Oeuvres completes, III, 1, Gallimard, 1962, pp.299–300).
  37. ^ Tocqueville, Oeuvres completes, III, 1, Gallimard, 1962, pp. 303.
  38. ^ Tocqueville, Œuvres complètes, III, 1, Gallimard, 1962, pp. 299–306.
  39. ^ Arguments in favor of Tocqueville, Jean-Louis Benoît (French)
  40. ^ http://petercareybooks.com/Parrot-Olivier-America

[edit] Further reading

  • Allen, Barbara. Tocqueville, Covenant, and the Democratic Revolution: Harmonizing Earth with Heaven. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005.
  • Benoît, Jean-Louis. Comprendre Tocqueville. Paris: Armand Colin/Cursus, 2004.
  • Benoît, Jean-Louis, et Keslassy, Eric. Alexis de Tocqueville: Textes économiques Anthologie critique. Paris: Pocket/Agora, 2005.[1]
  • Benoît, Jean-Louis. Tocqueville, Notes sur le Coran et autres textes sur les religions. Paris : Bayard, 2005. [2][3]
  • Boesche, Roger. The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987.
  • Boesche, Roger. Tocqueville's Road Map: Methodology, Liberalism, Revolution, And Despotism. Lnahma, MD: Lexington Books, 2006.
  • Brogan, Hugh. Alexis De Tocqueville. London: Profile Books, and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.
  • Coutant, Arnaud. Tocqueville et la Constitution democratique. Mare et Martin, 2008.
  • Coutant, Arnaud. Une Critique republicaine de la democratie liberale, de la democratie en Amerique de Tocqueville. Mare et Martin, 2007.
  • Craiutu, Aurelian, and Jeremy Jennings, eds. Tocqueville on America after 1840: Letters and Other Writings. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 560 pp. isbn 978-0-521-85955-4
  • Damrosch, Leo. Tocqueville's Discovery of America. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2010.
  • Drescher Seymour. Tocqueville and England. Cambridge, MA: Harward University Press, 1964.
  • Drescher, Seymour. Dilemmas of Democracy: Tocqueville and Modernization. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1968.
  • Epstein, Joseph. Alexis De Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide. New York: Atlas Books, 2006.
  • Gannett, Robert T. Tocqueville Unveiled: The Historian and His Sources for the Old Regime and the Revolution. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
  • Herr, Richard. Tocqueville and the Old Regime. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962.
  • Jardin, Andre. Tocqueville. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1989.
  • Jaume, Lucien, Tocqueville. Bayard, 2008.
  • Kahan, Allan S. Aristocratic Liberalism : The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhardt, Johns Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
  • Lively, Jack. The Social and Political Thought of Alexis De Toqueville. Oxford: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 1962.
  • Mansfield, Harvey C. Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
  • Mélonio, Françoise. Tocqueville and the French. Charlottesvile: University of Virginia Press, 1998.
  • Mitchell, Harvey. Individual Choice and the Structures of History -- Alexis de Tocqueville as an historian reappraised. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
  • Mitchell, Joshua. The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and the American Future. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
  • Pierson, George. Tocqueville and Beaumont in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1938. Reissued as Tocqueville in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
  • Pitts, Jennifer. A Turn to Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
  • Schleifer, James T. The Making of Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Chapell Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 1980; second ed., Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1999.
  • Shiner, L. E. The Secret Mirror: Literary Form and History in Tocqueville's Recollections Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988.
  • Swedberg, Richard Tocqueville's Political Economy Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
  • Welch, Cheryl. De Tocqueville. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
  • Welch, Cheryl. The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville. Cambridge, Eng., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  • Williams, Roger L., "Tocqueville on Religion," Journal of the Historical Society, 8:4 (2008): 585-600.
  • Wolin, Sheldon. Tocqueville Between Two Worlds. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.

[edit] External links

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Édouard Drouyn de Lhuys		Minister of Foreign Affairs
2 June 1849–31 October 1849		Succeeded by
Alphonse de Rayneval
 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company.
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All About Alexis de Tocqueville



Who was Alexis de Tocqueville?
An aristocratic Frenchman who came to the U.S. in 1831 -- when he was only 25 years old -- and later wrote Democracy in America, a two-volume study of the American people and their political institutions. The book is frequently quoted by journalists and politicans.

When did he live?
Tocqueville was born July 29, 1805 in Paris. His parents were Herve-Bonaventure Clerel de Tocqueville, a descendant of a noble Norman family, and Louise Le Peletier de Rosanbo, granddaughter of Malesherbes and sister-in-law of Chateaubriand. His older brothers were named Hippolyte and Edouard. He died April 16, 1859 in Cannes. Tocqueville is buried in the village of Tocqueville near Normandy.

What was his background?
Tocqueville came from an aristocratic background and he had a private tutor, the abbe Lesueur, until high school and then attended high school and college in Metz. He studied law in Paris and worked as a substitute judge in Versailles before coming to the U.S. In 1839 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as a representative of Valognes and later to the Constituent Assembly and Legislative Assembly. He briefly served as minister of foreign affairs.

Was he married?
He married Mary Motley, an English woman, in 1835. They had no children.

What books did he write?
The U.S. Penitentiary System and its Application in France with Gustave de Beaumont (1833)
Democracy in America (Volume I, 1835 and Volume II, 1840)
The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856)
Recollections (1893, published posthumously)

Are any of Tocqueville's descendents alive today?
Tocqueville's great-great-grandniece, Marie-Henriette Tocqueville, died in 1994. Her husband, Count Guy d' Herouville, and two of their sons (one of whom is named Alexis) still live in France. Another son lives in London.

Why is his book, Democracy in America, so popular?
The book deals with issues like religion, the press, money, class structure, racism, the role of government, the judicial system, etc. -- issues that are just as relevant today as they were then. Democracy in America has undergone several periods of popularity throughout the century, but it's never been as popular as it is now. Scores of colleges around the country use the text in political science and history courses, and historians consider it one of the most comprehensive and insightful books ever written about the U.S.

Still curious? For more detailed information about Alexis de Tocqueville, follow the links below ...






Early Life and American Journey, 1805 - 1831

1805
July 29 - Alexis de Tocqueville is born in Paris and spends most of his younger years in Verneuil, where his father, Herve, is mayor. As a child, Alexis was tutored by the Abbe Leseur.
1814-1828
Tocqueville's father serves as prefect throughout France - Angers, Beauvais, Dijon, Metz, Amiens and Versailles. In 1817, Tocqueville moves from Metz to Paris with his mother, Louise.
1820-24
Tocqueville returns to Metz at his father's request to attend secondary school and the college royal, where he studies rhetoric and philosophy.
1825-27
Studies law in Paris while living with his mother in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
1826
December - Goes to Italy with his brother Edouard and visits Rome, Naples and Sicily; writes Voyage en Sicile.
1827
Appointed juge auditeur (mediator) at the court of law in Versailles, an unsalaried apprenticeship.
1828
Takes an apartment in rue d'Anjou with Gustave de Beaumont, the deputy public prosecutor at the court of Versailles.
In Versailles he meets Mary Motley, of England, who later becomes his wife.
1829-1830
Reads and discusses history with Beaumont; both of them are taking Francois-Pierre-Guillaume Guizot's course in the history of civilization in France.
1830
The July Revolution: Charles X, the last Bourbon king, is overthrown and replaced by the constitutional monarch Louis-Philippe, who obliges all civil servants to swear an oath of loyalty. Tocqueville reluctantly takes the oath August 16 and again in October when he is promoted to juge suppleant (substitute judge).
August - Tocqueville begins thinking of visiting the United States.
October - Beaumont writes a report to the minister of the interior on the reform of the French penal system.
1831
February 6 - Tocqueville and Beaumont are given an 18-month leave to study the penal system in the United States.
April 2 - They embark for America from Le Havre, France.
For a complete chronology of the journey, see "Tocqueville's American Journey"
May 9 - Arrive at Newport, Rhode Island, going on to New York; thereafter they travel as far west as Green Bay, on Lake Michigan, north to Quebec and south to New Orleans.
Return to Top of Page



Democracy in America and Early Political Career, 1832 - 1848

1832
February 20 - Leave for France, arriving home in late March. Beaumont begins writing Du systeme penitentiairewith Tocqueville supplying facts and ideas.
May 17 - Tocqueville resigns his position as juge suppleant when he learns of Beaumont's dismissal (May 16) as deputy public prosecutor.
1833
January - Tocqueville and Beaumont publish Du systeme penitentiaire aux Etats-Unis et de son application en France, winning the French Academy's Montyon Prize.
August - Tocqueville visits England and meets Nassau William Senior.
September - Tocqueville begins writing Democracy in America at his parents' home in Paris, 49 rue de Verneuil.
1834
August 14 - Finishes the first part of Democracy in America.
December 24 - a prepublication article by Leon Faucher appears in Le Courier francais.
1835
January - Gosselin publishes an edition of fewer than 500 copies of Democracy in America.
March 16 - Tocqueville meets Henry Reeve, who becomes a lifelong friend and the official translator of his work, in Paris.
March 31 - Chateaubriand introduces Tocqueville to the select salon of Mme Recamier.
April 25 - August 23 - Tocqueville and Beaumont visit England and Ireland, studying industrial towns such as Coventry, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.
June - The book's success leads to a second edition (the eighth edition, in 1840, will include the second and final part).
October - John Stuart Mill's highly complimentary review of Democracy in America appears in the London Review.
October 26 - Tocqueville and Mary Motley are wed at the Church of Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin, Paris, with his cousin Louis de Kergorlay and Beaumont as witnesses.
1836
Tocqueville's mother, Louise, dies. When her property is divided, Tocqueville receives the chateau and lands of Tocqueville and the title of cmte, which he does not use.
Tocqueville receives the Montyon prize from the French Academy for Democracy in America
July - Beaumont marries Clementine de Lafayette, granddaughter of the Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834)
1839
March - Tocqueville is elected deputy from Valognes, sitting on the left of center, and is considered an expert on prisons and slavery.
July 23 - As rapporteur for a committee on slavery, Tocqueville files a report advocating the immediate emancipation of all slaves in French possessions, which is published as a pamphlet by the Society for the Abolition of Slavery.
November - Completes the manuscript of the second part of Democracy in America
1840
April 20 - Democracy in America, part II, is published simultaneously in Paris and in London, in a translation by Henry Reeve.
October - John Stuart Mill writes a perceptive review of Tocqueville's work in the Edinburgh Review
1841
May 4 - June 11 - Tocqueville goes to Algeria with his brother Hippolyte and Beaumont, visiting Algiers, Mostaganem, Philippeville (now Skikda) and other cities and villages.
October - Tocqueville writes Travail sur l'Algerie.
December 23 - Tocqueville is elected to the French Academy.
1842
Tocqueville actively engages in debates in the Chamber of Deputies on issues such as the slave trade, Algerian colonization and reforms and the question of succession after Louis-Phillipe's death, in which he favors an elective regency.
1844
Tocqueville sits for a portrait drawing by Theodore Chasseriau, brother of his friend Frderic Chasseriau.
June 29 - With others, Tocqueville purchases the newspaper Le Commerce.
August - Le Commerce fails; it is sold in November.
1848
January 27 - Speaking in the Chamber of Deputies, Tocqueville prophesies the coming revolution and attacks the too-narrow base of the French political system.
February 24 - Louis-Philippe abdicates and the Second Republic is declared dead.
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Politics andThe Ancient Regime, 1848 - 1859

1848
April 24 - Tocqueville is elected to the Constituent Assembly.
May 17 - Tocqueville is elected to a committee charged with drawing up a new constitution.
December 10 - Louis-Napoleon is elected president and forms a new cabinet led by Odilon Barrot.
1849
May 7 - Tocqueville goes to Germany to observe the revolution there firsthand.
May 13 - Tocqueville is elected to the new legislative Assembly by a large margin. Less than a month later, Louis-Napoleon appoints him minister of foreign affairs.
October 31 - Louis-Napoleon replaces Tocqueville and other ministers after the Barrot ministry topples.
1850
March - Tocqueville suffers his first pulmonary attack and is seriously ill with tuberculosis.
July - At the Chateau de Tocqueville, he begins writing his Souvenirs, reflections on the February Revolution and on his ministry. He is reelected president of the departmental council of la Manche.
November 1 - April 14 - With Mme de Tocqueville, he goes to Sorrento, Italy to convalesce.
1851
July - Tocqueville finishes Souvenirs.
December 2 - Louis-Napoleon seizes control of government in a coup d'etat.
December 3 - Tocqueville, along with about 50 other representatives, is imprisoned overnight at Vincennes for his opposition to the coup.
December 11 - Tocqueville secretly conveys and anonymously publishes an article in the London Times condemning the coup.
1852
July - Once more at the Chateau de Tocqueville, Tocqueville resigns from the departmental council of la Manche when the new regime requires an oath of allegiance.
1853
June - Tocqueville settles for a year in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, in Touraine, where he tries to regain his health and begins research on his work on the Ancien Regime.
1854
June - September - With Mme de Tocqueville, he visits Germany to study the vestiges of feudalism and the fading revolution there.
November 6 - He settles in Compiegne, where his father lives.
1855
July - Tocqueville moves to the Chateau de Tocqueville, where he continues writing.
1856
January - Tocqueville finishes revising his study on the Ancien Regime. The manuscript is read by his father, Herve, his brothers Edouard and Hippolyte, Beaumont and others.
February 16 - In Paris, Tocqueville negotiates with Michael Levy for the publication of L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution.
June 9 - His father, Herve, dies.
June 16 - L'Ancien Regime is published simultaneously in France and England (translated by Henry Reeve) and is a great success.
June - He returns to the Chateau de Tocqueville
1857
June 19 - Tocqueville goes to the British Museum in London to do research on the revolution.
October - Begins writing the first book of his sequel to L'Ancien Regime.
1858
April - Goes to Paris to study papers of municipal authorities, at the archives.
1858
May - He returns, ill with tuberculosis, to the Chateau de Tocqueville.
October 28 - At the advice of physicians, he goes to Cannes and soon hires a reader for intellectual stimulus.
December - His brother, Hippolyte, comes to Cannes for three months.
1859
April 6 - Beaumont arrives at Tocqueville's bedside.
April 9 - Tocqueville's cousin, Louis de Kergolay, arrives in Cannes.
April 16 - Tocqueville dies. A religious ceremony is held in Cannes, after which his body is moved to Paris and placed in the crypt of the Eglise de la Madeleine and then transported to the village of Tocqueville. He is buried in the cemetery there May 10.
Source: "A Passion for Liberty: Alexis de Tocqueville on Democracy and Revolution" by Andrew J. Cosentino; Library of Congress, Washington, 1989


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