Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville (July 29, 1805 – April 16, 1859) 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. An eminent representative of
the 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 to the February 1848 Revolution. He retired from political life after Louis Napoléon Bonaparte's December 2, 1851 coup,
and thereafter began work on The Old Regime and the Revolution, Volume I of which was completed by the time he died.
Biography
Tocqueville's family had its origins in the landed nobility of Normandy, where several places are named after his family. After obtaining a law
degree, Alexis de Tocqueville was named auditor-magistrate at the court of Versailles. There,
he met Gustave de Beaumont, a prosecutor substitute, who collaborated with him on
various literary works. Both were sent to the United States to study the penitentiary system.
During this trip, they wrote Du système pénitentiaire aux Etats-Unis et de son application (1832).
Back in France, Tocqueville became a lawyer, and then published his master-work, De la démocratie en
Amérique, in 1835. The success of this work, an early model for the science that would become known as
sociology, led him to be named chevalier
de la Légion d'honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour) in 1837, and to be elected the next year to the
Académie des sciences morales et politiques. In 1841 he was elected to the Académie française.
Tocqueville, who despised the July Monarchy (1830–1848), began his political career in
the same period. 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
colonization 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.
Apart from Canada, 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 colonization, based on an
assimilationist view, preferring instead the British model of indirect rule, which didn't mix 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 its effective implementation with the 1881 Indigenous code).
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 (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 laboring population of Paris, universal suffrage was conceived as a means to block
the revolutionary spirit of Paris.
During the Second Republic, Tocqueville sided with the parti de l'Ordre against the "socialists"
and workers. A few days after the February insurrection, he believed a violent clash between the workers' population agitating in
favor of a "Democratic and Social Republic" and the conservatives, including the aristocracy and rural population, to be
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 in favour of the "regularization" of the state of siege declared by Cavaignac and others measures leading to the suspension of the
constitutional order.[1]
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 June to October 1849. There, during the troubled
days of June 1849, he pleaded near Jules Dufaure, Interior Minister, in favor of
the reestablishment of the state of siege in the capital and approved the arrest of those whom had recently demonstrated.
Tocqueville, who since February 1848 had supported laws restricting political freedoms, approved the two laws voted immediately
after the June 1849 days, which restricted liberty of clubs and freedom of press.
This active support in favor of laws restricting political freedoms stands in contrast of his defense of freedoms in Democracy
in America.
Tocqueville then supported Cavaignac against Louis Napoléon Bonaparte for the
presidential election of 1851. Opposed to Louis Napoléon's December 2, 1851 coup
which followed his election, Tocqueville was among the deputies whom gathered at the Xe
arrondissement of Paris in an attempt to resist the coup and have Napoleon III judged for "high treason". Detained at
Vincennes and then released, Tocqueville, whom supported the Restoration of the Bourbons against Bonaparte's
Second Empire (1851–1871), quit political life and retreated to his castle
(château de Tocqueville). There, he began the draft of L'Ancien Régime et la
Révolution, publishing the first tome in 1856, but leaving the second one unfinished.
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville
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. He saw democracy as an equation that balanced liberty and
equality, concern for the individual as well as the community. A critic of
individualism, Tocqueville thought that association, the coming together of people for common purpose, would bind Americans to an idea of
nation larger than selfish desires, thus making a civil society which wasn't exclusively
dependent on the state.
Tocqueville's penetrating analysis sought to understand the peculiar nature of American civic life. In describing America, he
agreed with thinkers such as Aristotle, James
Harrington 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
money-making was the dominant ethic, where the common man enjoyed a level of dignity which was unprecedented, where commoners
never deferred to elites, where hard work and money dominated the minds of all, and where what he
described as crass individualism and market capitalism had taken root to an extraordinary
degree.
The uniquely American mores and opinions, Tocqueville argued, lay in the origins of American society and derived from the
peculiar social conditions that had welcomed colonists in prior centuries. Unlike Europe, venturers to America found a vast
expanse of open land. Any and all who arrived could own their own land and cultivate an independent life. Sparse elites and a
number of landed aristocrats existed, but, according to Tocqueville, these few stood no chance against the rapidly developing
values bred by such vast land ownership. With such an open society, layered with so much opportunity, men of all sorts began
working their way up in the world: industriousness became a dominant ethic, and "middling" values began taking root.
This equality of social conditions bred political and social values which determined the type of legislation passed in the
colonies and later 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.
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. Landed elites lost the ability to
pass on fortunes to single individuals. 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. Such an ethos explained, in Tocqueville's mind, 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. These cultural differences, identified so remarkably by
Tocqueville, have led many subsequent scholars to explain that in 19th-century Europe, workers offended by the sight of elites
parading along the streets wearing fancy attire could demand class warfare and
revolution, but in America, at the same time, 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.
These unique American values, many have suggested, explain American
exceptionalism and shed light upon many mysterious phenomena such as why America has never embraced socialism as dramatically as other leading Western countries. To Tocqueville, America was set apart by its
peculiar democratic mores. But, despite maintaining, with Aristotle, More, Harrington, 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, choices which many have suggested shed light on
American society today. 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. Uniquely positioned at a crossroads in American history, Tocqueville's Democracy in
America attempted to capture the essence of American culture and values.
However, as a supporter of colonialism, Tocqueville also endorsed the common
racialist views of his epoch. 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."[2]
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.[3]
Segregation however would be the second best solution to race relations if blacks were not removed or wiped out by a race war.
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 African-Americans. American political scientist Rogers
Smith views Tocqueville as one source of white supremacist thought in America.
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 Gobineau's scientific
racism theories which the latter had espoused in his essay on The Inequality of Human Races (1853–1855).[4]
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.[5]
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”.[6][7]
- "Whatever the case", continued Tocqueville, "we may say in a general manner that all political freedoms must be suspended in
Algeria.[8] According to historian Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, "de 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."[9]
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 became 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."[10]
Tocqueville advocated racial segregation in Algeria: "There should therefore be
two quite distinct legislations in Africa, for there are two very separate communities. There is absolutely nothing to prevent us
treating Europeans as if they were on their own, as the rules established for them will only ever apply to them."[11] Such legislation would be enacted with the Crémieux decrees and the 1881 Indigenous Code, which gave
French citizenship to the European Jewish settlers only, while Muslim Algerians
were confined to a second-grade citizenship.
Tocqueville's opposition to the invasion of Kabylia
On the other hand, Jean-Louis Benoît has claimed, against Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, that, given the extent of racial
prejudices during the colonization of Algeria, Tocqueville was one of its "most moderate supporters." Benoît claims that it is
totally unthinkable to suppose that Tocqueville was a staunch 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 will to invade Kabylia, home of the Berbers,
specifically 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, cited by Jean-Louis Benoît, Tocqueville thus 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 have evolved during 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 and 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:
“Thus, I fully acknowledge the great military qualities of Marshal Bugeaud; this being said, I may be given the liberty to
add that Marshal Bugeaud achieved nothing, nothing at all, he did a lot of harm (…). Therefore he did not achieve anything, and
often he prevented action.”[12]
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: "the party of resignation... Marshal Bugeaud has not been disowned, he has just
not been recalled".[13] His speech ended on these
words:
“ When I hear that Marshal Bugeaud handed in his resignation and that it was turned down, I cannot help assuming that
maintaining Marshal Bugeaud in Africa is less for the good he could do in the name of France, than the harm he might be expected
to do here in Paris”.[14]
Report on Algeria (1847)
In his 1847 Report on Algeria, Tocqueville declared: "Let's not repeat, in the middle of the 19th century, the
history of the conquest of America. Let's not imitate those bloody
examples that the human kind's opinion has seared".[15] 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. In 1847, Tocqueville includes in his report on Algeria the following premonitory
caution:
“The committee is convinced that the future of our sway over Africa, of the enrolment of our soldiers and the fate of our
finances will depend on how we treat the natives; for, in this respect, the questions of humanity and budget bear on each other
and mingle. The committee believes that, in the long run, a sound government can bring about the effective establishment of peace
in the country and a significant reduction in the number of our soldiers.
However should things be different, and they sometimes happened but were never told, should we act so as to show that we
consider the former inhabitants of Algeria but as an obstacle to be discarded or trod upon, should we embrace their populations
not to raise them towards well-being and light but to stifle them, then the question of life and death between the two races
would be posed. Sooner or later, believe me, Algeria would become an enclosed field, a walled-in arena, where the two peoples
would fight without mercy and where one of them must die. Gentlemen, may God save us from such a destiny!"
References
- ^ "Regularization" is a term used by Tocqueville himself, see Souvenirs, Third part, p.289–290 French ed (Paris, Gallimard,
1999).
- ^ 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".
- ^ in Oeuvres completes, Gallimard, T. VII, pp.
1663-164.
- ^ See Correspondence avec Arthur de Gobineau,
quoted by Jean-Louis
Benoît
- ^ (French) Olivier LeCour
Grandmaison. "Le
négationnisme colonial", Le Monde, February 2, 2005.
- ^ 1841 — Extract of Travail sur l’Algérie, in
Œuvres complètes, Gallimard, Pléïade, 1991, p. 704 & 705.
- ^ (English) Olivier LeCour Grandmaison. "Torture in Algeria: Past Acts That Haunt France —
Liberty, Equality and Colony", Le Monde diplomatique, June 2001.
(quoting Alexis de Tocqueville, Travail sur l’Algérie in Œuvres
complètes, Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1991, pp
704 and 705).
- ^ (French) Olivier LeCour Grandmaison (2001). Tocqueville et la conquête de
l'Algérie. La Mazarine.
- ^ (English) Olivier LeCour Grandmaison. "Torture in Algeria: Past Acts That Haunt France —
Liberty, Equality and Colony", Le Monde diplomatique, June 2001.
- ^ 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. "Torture in Algeria: Past Acts That Haunt France —
Liberty, Equality and Colony", Le Monde diplomatique, June 2001. >
- ^ Travail sur l'Algérie, op.cit. p. 752 (quoted in (English)
Olivier LeCour Grandmaison. "Torture in
Algeria: Past Acts That Haunt France — Liberty, Equality and Colony", Le Monde
diplomatique, June 2001. )
- ^ Tocqueville, Oeuvres completes, III, 1, Gallimard,
1962, pp.299–300).
- ^ Tocqueville, Oeuvres completes, III, 1, Gallimard,
1962, pp. 303.
- ^ Tocqueville, Œuvres complètes, III, 1, Gallimard,
1962, pp. 299–306.
- ^ Arguments in favor of Tocqueville, Jean-Louis Benoît (French)
Recommended Readings
- Drescher, Seymour. Dilemmas of Democracy: Tocqueville and Modernization. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1968.
- Lively, Jack. The Social and Political Thought of Alexis De Toqueville. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962.
Further reading
- Allen Barbara : Tocqueville, Covenant, and the Democratic Revolution: Harmonizing Earth with Heaven. — Lexington :
Lexington Books, 2005.
- Audier Serge: Tocqueville retrouvé : Genèse et enjeux du renouveau tocquevillien. — Paris : Librairie Philosophique
Vrin, 2004.
- Benoît Jean-Louis : Tocqueville : un destin paradoxal. — Paris : Bayard, 2005.
- Benoît Jean-Louis : Tocqueville moraliste, Honoré Champion, Paris 2004.
- Benoît Jean-Louis : Comprendre Tocqueville, Armand Colin/Cursus, Paris 2004.
- Benoît Jean-Louis et Keslassy Eric : Alexis de Tocqueville Textes économiques Anthologie critique, Pocket/Agora, Paris
2005.[1]
- Boesche Roger Tocqueville's Road Map: Methodology, Liberalism, Revolution, And Despotism, 2006)
- Boudon Raymond: Tocqueville aujourd’hui. — Paris : Odile Jacob, 2005.
- Brogan Hugh: Alexis De Tocqueville, Profile Books, 2006.
- Drescher Seymour : Tocqueville and England , Harward University Press, 1964.
- Drescher Seymour : Dilemmas of Democracy : Tocqueville and Modernization, University of Pittsburgh Press,
1964.
- Epstein Joseph : Alexis De Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide, 2006.
- Gannett Robert T.: Tocqueville Unveiled: The Historian and His Sources for the Old Regime and the Revolution, The University
of Chicago Press, 2003.
- Guellec Laurence : Tocqueville et les langages de la démocratie. — Honoré Champion, 2004.
- Guellec Laurence : Tocqueville : l'apprentissage de la liberté. Michalon, 1996.
- Kahan Alan : Aristocratic Liberalism : The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhardt, Johns Stuart Mill and
Alexis de Tocqueville, Oxford University Press, 1992.
- Keslassy Eric: Le libéralisme de Tocqueville a l'épreuve du paupérisme. — Paris : L'Harmattan, 2000.
- Manent Pierre : Tocqueville et la nature de la démocratie. — Fayard, 1993. — 181 p. — ISBN 2-213-03036-7, Tel-Gallimard,
2006
- Mélonio Françoise : Tocqueville et les Français. — Paris : Aubier Montaigne, 1993.
- Mélonio Françoise : Tocqueville and the French, University of Virginia Press, 1998.
- Mitchell Harvey : Individual Choice and the Structures of History — Alexis de Tocqueville as an historian reappraised,
Londres : Cambridge University Press, 1996.
- Pierson George : Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, — Oxford University Press, New-York, 1938, réédition, 1996.
- Pitts Jennifer : A Turn to Empire, Princeton University Press, 2005.
- Richter Melvin and Baehr Peter : Dictatorship in History and Theory: Bonapartism, Caesarism, and Totalitarianism,
Publications of the German Institute, Cambridge University Press, 2004.
- Schleifer, James : The Making of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, — Chapell Hill : University of North Carolina
Press, 1980.
- Shiner Larry : The Secret Mirror: Literary Form and History in Tocqueville’s Recollections, Ithaca & Londres,
Cornell University Press, 1988.
- Welch Cheryl : De Tocqueville, Oxford University Press, 2001.
- Welch Cheryl : The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
- Wolin Sheldon : Tocqueville between two Worlds, Princeton University Press, 2001.
Works
- 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 978-1-93108254-9.
- 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.
See also
External links
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| Persondata |
| NAME |
Tocqueville, Alexis de |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES |
Tocqueville, Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de; de Tocqueville, Alexis; de Tocqueville, Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION |
French political philosopher, historian |
| DATE OF BIRTH |
July 29, 1805 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH |
Verneuil-sur-Seine, Île-de-France,
France |
| DATE OF DEATH |
April 16, 1859 |
| PLACE OF DEATH |
Cannes, France |
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