Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville (July 29, 1805 – April 16, 1859) was a French political thinker, historian and writer. He was a champion of the nineteenth century ideals of liberty and democracy, and observed that it is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth. An eminent representative of the post-revolutionary political tradition known as liberalism, Tocqueville's 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. His most famous work, Democracy in America (1835), is continually regarded as the premier commentary on American government written by a foreigner.

Life

Alexis de Tocqueville was born on July 29th, 1805 in Verneuil-sur-Seine, France to an aristocratic family of Norman descent. Born shortly after the French Revolution, most of Tocqueville’s family had been executed during the Reign of Terror. Though his parents were spared from the guillotine, they were imprisoned for several months. The French Revolution made a great impression on Tocqueville and his family; throughout his childhood he was fascinated 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”

At the age of sixteen, Tocqueville would enter the Royal College of Metz for his first formal schooling. While at Metz, Tocqueville was instructed by the wise French priest Abbe Lesueur. Lesueur and Tocqueville became extremely close; Leseur encouraged Tocqueville’s education while nurturing his strong religious faith. In 1820 Tocqueville left Lesueur to live with his father, an elected official, in Paris.

Often left by himself, Tocqueville began reading philosophy in his father’s library, which caused him to question his religious faith. From 1823 to 1826 Tocqueville studied French law, identifying with the post-revolutionary liberal movement which opposed the restoration of the French aristocracy. Tocqueville became an advocate for the cause of liberalism and joined the Society for Christian Morality, a liberal social group that espoused moral equality and civil liberty.

In October of 1835, while serving as an assistant magistrate, Tocqueville married Marie Mottley, an Englishwoman raised in France. Tocqueville’s family and friends disapproved of his choice; in addition to her English background, Marie was older, a protestant, and a commoner, and was an inferior fit for Tocqueville’s aristocratic status. Despite his family’s reservations, the couple was married on 26 October in Paris, and remained married until his death in Cannes in 1859. The couple had no children.

Work

In 1830, the restored Bourbon King Charles X made significant attempts to re-establish the aristocracy in France. 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. In July of 1830, King Charles X called for prison reform. Tocqueville and his colleague Gustave de Beaumont obtained permission to travel to the United States to inspect a new prison system instituted in the cities of Philadelphia and New York.

The pair arrived in New York City in May of 1831 and were immediately impressed by the absence of social classes in America. 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 act as 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, 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 noted that slavery was the closest institution in the United States to the traditional rule of the aristocracy. Completing their studies, Tocqueville and Beaumont returned to France in 1832.

In 1835 Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America, his most famous work based on the observations he made during his travels throughout the United States. Later the same year, Tocqueville made an observational tour of England, which led to his Memoir on Pauperism. In 1841 and again in 1846, Tocqueville traveled twice to Algeria. His first visit inspired his Work on Algeria, in which he criticized the French model of colonization, which was based on an assimilationist view. Tocqueville 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 Algerians through the creation of two different legislative systems. Tocqueville’s ideas appeared more than half a century before their effective implementation in the 1881 Indigenous Code.

In 1939 Tocqueville left government service and entered politics. He was eventually elected to King Louis Philippe’s Chamber of Deputies. After Louis-Napoleon’s coup d’etat during the Revolution of 1848, an opposed Tocqueville left the King’s chamber to serve as deputy for Valogne of Normandy. In 1849 he served as foreign minister, but retired from public affairs in 1851.

Democracy in America

Alexis de Tocqueville

In 1835 Tocqueville wrote his acclaimed Democracy in America in which he praised the New World of America and the democratic ideals it exemplified. Tocqueville also warned 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, concerned for both the individual as well as the community. He warned that radical social egalitarianism would eventually lead to social isolation, greater government intervention and less individual liberty. A critic of individualism, Tocqueville believed 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. .

As a supporter of colonialism, Tocqueville also endorsed the common racist views of his epoch, and identified the white or European man as superior, and the “Negro” and “Indian” as inherently inferior. 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. Tocqueville also believed Americans of African descent to be inferior to Europeans when it came to their facial and physical features, intelligence, marriages, and families, particularly in their marital and parental relationships. According to Tocqueville, 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.

The French Conquest of Algeria

Tocqueville also made the apology of the brutal techniques employed during the 1830’s conquest of Algeria. Tocqueville stated, "In France I have often heard people 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."

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", and that "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."

Legacy

Much of the writings of Tocqueville have received criticism for blatant biases, errors, omissions and racism. However his significant contributions to both 19th century American and French society revolved around the spread of democracy to ensure the equality of various social conditions. Tocqueville believed that equal property distribution and conservatism would lead to political stability. He also foresaw the emancipation of women, an ultimate change in family structure and the promotion of social morality through the introduction of democracy. He warned against the deteriorating social conditions of 19th century France, believing these conditions, along with the disenfranchisement of the French people, to be conducive to social revolution.

Tocqueville maintained a central concern for liberty, which he defined as the absence of restraint and the availability of choices. He believed the democratic process to be necessary for the fostering of social morality, and an ideal toward which society should aspire. His value of both social and political equity as a measure of civilized progression highlighted his long withstanding commitment to human freedom.

Known as a prophet of modern society, and an astute observer of American democracy, Tocqueville’s perceptive insights are continually quoted. His academic contributions to both French and American literature helped secure his reputation as a writer and his subsequent election into the Academie Francaise, or the French Academy, the leading body of official authorities on the French language.

Famous Quotations

"The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle." (Democracy in America, 1835.)

"Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved." (Democracy in America, 1835.)

"The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization." (Democracy in America, 1835.)

"Despotism may govern without faith, but Liberty cannot." (Democracy in America, 1835.)

"So many of my thoughts and feelings are shared by the English that England has turned into a second native land of the mind for me." (Journeys to England and Ireland, 1835.)

Publications

• De Tocqueville, Alexis. (1831). Journey to America. Greenwood Press Publishers. 1981. ISBN 0313227128.
• De Tocqueville, Alexis. (1833). On the Penitentiary System in the United States. Southern Illinois University Press. 1979. ISBN 0809309130.
• De Tocqueville, Alexis. (1835). Democracy in America. Penguin Classics. 2003. ISBN 0140447601.
• De Tocqueville, Alexis. (1835). Memoir on Pauperism. Cosmino Classics. 2006. ISBN 1596053631.
• De Tocqueville, Alexis. (1841). Work On Algeria. Editions Complexe. 1997. ISBN 2870272626.
• De Tocqueville, Alexis. (1845). Alexis de Tocqueville’s Journey to Ireland. Catholic University Press. 1990. ISBN 0813207193.
• De Tocqueville, Alexis. (1856). Old Regime and the French Revolution. Peter Smith Publisher. 1979. ISBN 0844619736.
• De Tocqueville, Alexis. (1893). The Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville. Kessigner Publishing. 2007. ISBN 1430452366.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• C-SPAN. The Alexis de Tocqueville Tour. C-SPAN.org. Retrieved 4 June 2007.
• French Ministry of Culture. Alexis de Tocqueville. General Council for La Manche. Retrieved 4 June 2007.
• Frederiksen, Robert. Alexis de Tocqueville. Florida State University. Retrieved 4 June 2007.
• Alexis de Tocqueville. Tocqueville Quotations. Quotations Book, 2005. Answers.com 18 Jun. 2007.
• Pierson, George Wilson. 1996. Tocqueville in America. The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801855063
• Drescher, Seymour. 1964. Dilemas of Democracy: Tocqueville and Modernization. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964. ISBN 082293146X.
• Wolin, Sheldon. 2001. Tocqueville Between Two Worlds. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691114544.
• Pierson, George. 1938. Tocqueville and Beaumont in America. Oxford University Press, New-York.

External Links

• Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville. University of Virginia. 4 June 2007.
• Alexis de Tocqueville Great Books Index. 4 June 2007.
• Works by Alexis de Tocqueville. Project Gutenberg. 4 June 2007.
• Mary Mottley Portraits, Alexis de Tocqueville. 18 June 2007.

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