Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville (July 29, 1805–April 16, 1859) was a French political thinker and historian. His most famous works are Democracy in America (appearing in two volumes: 1835 and 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). He was a champion of the nineteenth century ideals of liberty and democracy. Alexis de Tocqueville observed that it is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.

He was born in Verneuil-sur-Seine, in the Paris region (Île-de-France) and died in Cannes, although his family had its origins in the landed nobility of Normandy, and leant its name to several locations. His most famous work, Democracy in America, based on the observations he made during his travels throughout the United States, is frequently used as a primary source text for high school and college courses in 19th century American history and government. An eminent representative of the post-revolutionary political tradition known as liberalism , his advocacy of private charity rather than government aid to assist the poor has often been cited admiringly during the late 20th and early 21st century by political conservatives and classical liberals.

Tocqueville also made an observational tour of England, which led to his Memoir on Pauperism. In addition, he traveled twice to Algeria ( in 1841 and 1846 ). His first visit inspired his Travail sur l'Algérie, in which he criticized the French model of colonization, which was based on an assimilationist view. Toqueville preferred the British colonial model of indirect rule, which avoided the mixing of native and colonial populations. He went as far as to openly advocate racial segregation between the European settlers and the "Arabs" through the creation of two different legislative systems (half a century before its effective implementation in the 1881 Indigenous Code).

Life

Alexis de Tocqueville was born shortly after the French Revolution. Most of his family had been executed during the “Reign of Terror” (Siedentop, 1994: 1). His parents were spared from the guillotine, but imprisoned for several months awaiting execution. The French Revolution made a great impression on Tocqueville and his family. During his childhood he was obsessed by the idea of imprisonment or exile. Tocqueville wrote of his youth, “I remember thinking of the chances of prison…I had succeeded in imagining for myself an almost agreeable idea of that fearful place” (Siedentop, 1994: 2). At the age of sixteen, Tocqueville entered the Royal College of Metz for his first formal schooling (Siedentop, 1994: 3). While at Metz, Tocqueville was instructed by the wise French priest Abbe Lesueur. Lesueur and Tocqueville became extremely close. He encouraged Tocqueville’s education while nurturing his strong religious faith (Mayer, 1960: 3).

In 1820 Tocqueville left Lesueur to live with his father in Paris. His father, an elected official, often left young Tocqueville by himself. He began reading philosophy in his father’s library, which caused him to question his religious faith. Shortly after moving to Paris, Tocqueville decided to study law. He identified with the post-revolutionary liberal movement, which opposed restoration of the aristocracy. He joined the Society for Christian Morality, a liberal social group that espoused moral equality and civil liberty (Siedentop, 1994: 6). Tocqueville became an advocate for the caus of liberalism. He continued to work on his legal career, but made little progress.

In 1830, the restored Bourbon King Charles X dismissed the legislature in an attempt to re-establish the aristocracy in France (Siedentop, 1994: 8). The thought of civil war haunted Tocqueville, and convinced him that aristocratic restoration was not the answer to France’s political difficulties. During this time Tocqueville contemplated going to the United States to study American democracy and its lessons for French society. One aspect of the July Revolution of 1830 was a call for prison reform. The United States had just instituted a new prison system in Philadelphia and New York. Tocqueville and his colleague Gustave de Beaumont obtained permission to travel to the United States to inspect the new prison system (Siedentop, 1994: 10).

Tocqueville and Beaumont arrived in New York City in May of 1831 (Mayer, 1960: 9). They were both favorably impressed by the absence of social classes in America when compared to European society. They also noticed the frantic pace of commercial activity in the United States. Tocqueville attributed the entrepreneurial spirit he witnessed to the practice of limited government in the United States, based on the ideals of Locke, Montesquieu, and other Enlightenment philosophers. In contrast to French society , Americans seemed to manage their individual affairs with little government control. This convinced Tocqueville that America society should be the model of reform for France.

Tocqueville and Beaumont continued to travel throughout the United States. In New England they found the model for the autonomous township (Siedentop, 1994: 11). The township was a self-governing local community based on self-reliance and mutual cooperation. By contrast, they observed the “peculiar institution” of slavery during their travels in the South, and Tocqueville noted that slavery was the closest institution in the United States to the traditional rule of the aristocracy (Siedentop, 1994: 12). Completing their studies, Tocqueville and Beaumont departed the United States in 1832 (Mayer, 1960: 10).

Work

Democracy in America

In Democracy in America (1835), Alexis de Tocqueville praised the New World and the democracy it would bring, while at the same time warning against the dangers of individualism, which could only be averted through the formation of civic associations. He saw democracy as an equation that balanced liberty and equality, concern for the individual as well as the community. Tocqueville thought that radical social egalitarianism would eventually lead to social isolation, greater intervention by the government and thus less individual liberty. A critic of individualism, Alexis de Tocqueville thought that association, the coming together of people for common purposes, would bind Americans to an idea of common nationhood which would be greater than the sum of its individuals acting in self-interest, thus creating a civil society which wasn't exclusively dependent on the state.

As a supporter of colonialism, he also endorsed the common racialist views of his epoch, stating for example that among the "widely differing families of men, the first which attracts attention, the superior in intelligence, in power and in enjoyment, is the white or European, the man pre-eminent; and in subordinate grades, the Negro and the Indian ...Both of them occupy an inferior rank in the country they inhabit...." . He thus limited the practice of democracy to the Europeans settlers, stating that the Native Americans would become extinct because they were too proud to assimilate, and further explaining why persons of African descent had physical marks of their slavery, while Europeans who had been enslaved did not possess the physical marks of slavery.

According to Toqueville, Americans of African descent were inferior to Europeans when it came to their facial and physical features, intelligence, marriages, and families, particularly in their marital and parental relationships. Removal of this population from America was thereby the best solution to the problems of race relations for both Americans of African and European descent. French historian of colonialism Olivier LeCour Grandmaison has underlined how Tocqueville openly talked of "extermination" regarding the colonization of the Western United States and the Indian Removal period . However, if Tocqueville shared these common views of his epoch, he also opposed the scientific racism theories of Gobineau , which had been developed in Gobineau's essay on The Inequality of Human Races (1853-55) .

The French conquest of Algeria

While most French intellectuals prefer to make of Tocqueville the representative of the liberal tradition, historian Olivier LeCour Grandmaison demonstrated that in less noble works, Tocqueville made the apology of the brutal techniques employed during the 1830s conquest of Algeria:

"In France I have often heard people I respect, but do not approve, deplore [the army] burning harvests, emptying granaries and seizing unarmed men, women and children. As I see it, these are unfortunate necessities that any people wishing to make war on the Arabs must accept... I believe the laws of war entitle us to ravage the country and that we must do this, either by destroying crops at harvest time, or all the time by making rapid incursions, known as raids, the aim of which is to carry off men and flocks"

"Whatever the case", continued Tocqueville, "we may say in a general manner that all political freedoms must be suspended in Algeria" According to LeCour 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." Tocqueville, who despised the July monarchy (1830-1848), 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" . Years before the Crémieux decrees and the 1881 Indigenous Code that would separate European Jews colons, given French citizenship, and Muslims, 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"

However, LeCour Grandmaison's work has been contested by Jean-Louis Benoît, who claimed that these quotes (also used by Tzvetan Todorov) had been instrumentalized to discredit Tocqueville. However, Jean-Louis Benoît did admit that Tocqueville was a strong support of colonialism and of segregation between Europeans and Arabs. In a reference to an August 22, 1837 proposal, Benoît shows that Tocqueville distinguished the Berbers from the Arabs, and 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). Benoît thus admits that Tocqueville proned racial segregation. Benoît also quotes Tocqueville's 1847 Rapport sur l'Algérie: "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".

Publications

• 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.
• De la démocratie en Amerique (1835/1840)—Democracy in America. It was published in two volumes, the first in 1835, the second in 1840. For an excellent translation see, Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. and eds., Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, University of Chicago Press, 2000.
• 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.

External links

• The Alexis de Tocqueville Tour, a C-SPAN website
• Democracy in America Hypertext of Alexis DeTocqueville's Democracy in America with a gallery of related projects describing America ca. 1820-1840.
• In Search of Tocqueville's Democracy in America Information and resources about Alexis de Tocqueville.
• ClassicNotes: Alexis de Tocqueville Biography of Alexis de Tocqueville written by Harvard students.
• Great Books Index - Alexis de Tocqueville Links to Information About Alexis de Tocqueville
• Works by Alexis de Tocqueville. Project Gutenberg
• Alexis de Tocqueville, French Ministry of Culture
• Les classiques des sciences sociales: Alexis de Tocqueville, Works of Tocqueville in the original French
• Alexis de Tocqueville by Robert C. Frederiksen, Florida State University

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