Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, Viscount de Tocqueville was a French diplomat, political scientist and historian. He was best known for his works Democracy in America (appearing in two volumes, 1835 and 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). In both, he analyzed the improved living standards and social conditions of individuals as well as their relationship to the market and state in Western societies. Democracy in America was published after Tocqueville's travels in the United States and is today considered an early work of sociology and political science.
Tocqueville was active 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.
He argued the importance of the French Revolution was to continue the process of modernizing and centralizing the French state which had begun under King Louis XIV. The failure of the Revolution came from the inexperience of the deputies who were too wedded to abstract Enlightenment ideals. Tocqueville was a classical liberal who advocated parliamentary government, but he was skeptical of the extremes of democracy.
Life
Alexis
de Tocqueville came from an old Norman aristocratic family. His
parents, Hervé Louis François Jean Bonaventure Clérel, Count of
Tocqueville, an officer of the Constitutional Guard of King Louis XVI; and Louise Madeleine Le Peletier de Rosanbo narrowly escaped the guillotine due to the fall of Robespierre in 1794.
Under the Bourbon Restoration, Tocqueville's father became a noble peer and prefect. Tocqueville attended the Lycée Fabert in Metz.
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The Fabert School in Metz, where Tocqueville was a student between 1817 and 1823
Tocqueville, who despised the July Monarchy (1830–1848), began his political career in 1839. From 1839 to 1851, he served as deputy of the Manche department (Valognes). In parliament, he sat on the centre-left, defended abolitionist views and upheld free trade while supporting the colonisation of Algeria carried on by Louis-Philippe's regime. In 1847, he sought to found a Young Left (Jeune Gauche) party which would advocate wage increases, a progressive tax, and other labor concerns in order to undermine the appeal of the socialists. 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.
Travels
In
1831, he obtained from the July Monarchy a mission to examine prisons
and penitentiaries in the United States and proceeded there with his
lifelong friend Gustave de Beaumont.
While Tocqueville did visit some prisons, he traveled widely in the
United States and took extensive notes about his observations and
reflections. He returned within nine months and published a report, but the real result of his tour was De la démocratie en Amerique, which appeared in 1835. Beaumont also wrote an account of their travels in Jacksonian America: Marie or Slavery in the United States (1835). During this trip, he made a side trip to Lower Canada to Montreal and Quebec City from mid-August to early September 1831.
Apart from North 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, 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. Tocqueville made clear both his libertarian sympathies and his
affinity for his Irish co-religionists.
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 wisdom 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.
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 suppression 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.
Between May and September, Tocqueville participated in the
Constitutional Commission which wrote the new Constitution. His
proposals underlined the importance of his North American experience as
his amendment about the President and his reelection.
Minister of foreign affairs
Caricature by Honoré Daumier, 1849
Tocqueville at the 1851 "Commission de la révision de la Constitution à l'Assemblée nationale"
A supporter of Cavaignac and of the parti de l'Ordre, Tocqueville accepted an invitation to enter Odilon Barrot's government as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 3 June to 31 October 1849. During the troubled days of June 1849, he pleaded with Interior Minister Jules Dufaure
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. According to Tocqueville, he 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″.
Tocqueville had supported Cavaignac against Louis Napoléon Bonaparte
for the presidential election of 1848. Opposed to Louis Napoléon
Bonaparte'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 Napoleon III'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". There, he began the draft of L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution, publishing the first tome in 1856, but leaving the second one unfinished.
Death
A longtime sufferer from bouts of tuberculosis, Tocqueville would eventually succumb to the disease on 16 April 1859 and was buried in the Tocqueville cemetery in Normandy.
Tocqueville's professed religion was Roman Catholicism.
He saw religion as being compatible with both equality and
individualism, but felt that religion would be strongest when separated
from politics.
Democracy in America
A page from original working manuscript of Democracy in America, c. 1840
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 the
United States in the early 19th century when the Market Revolution, Western expansion and Jacksonian democracy were radically transforming the fabric of American life.
According to Joshua Kaplan, one purpose of writing Democracy in America 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. Tocqueville saw democracy as an equation that balanced liberty and equality, concern for the individual as well as for the community.
Tocqueville was an ardent supporter of liberty. "I have a
passionate love for liberty, law, and respect for rights", he wrote. "I
am neither of the revolutionary party nor of the conservative. [...]
Liberty is my foremost passion". 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".
The above is often misquoted as a slavery quote because of
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, but the text does not contain the words "Americans were so enamored by equality" anywhere.
His view on government reflects his belief in liberty and the
need for individuals to be able to act freely while respecting others'
rights. Of centralized government, he wrote that it "excels in
preventing, not doing".
He continues to comment 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".
Tocqueville explicitly cites inequality as being incentive for
poor to become rich and notes that it is not often that 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
among heirs, thereby preserving wealth and preventing a churn of wealth
such as was perceived by him in 1835 within the United States.
On civil and political society and the individual
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 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, civil society was a sphere of private entrepreneurship and civilian affairs regulated by civil code. 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 according to political and civil laws of the state.
According to political scientist
Joshua Kaplan, Tocqueville did not originate the concept of
individualism, instead he 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 [...]. [W]ith this little society formed to his taste, he gladly
leaves the greater society to look for itself". 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.
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.
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.
Others, such as the Catholic writer Daniel Schwindt,
disagree with Kaplan's interpretation, arguing instead that Tocqueville
saw individualism as just another form of egotism and not an
improvement over it. To make his case, Schwindt provides citations such as the following:
Egoism springs from a blind instinct; individualism from wrong-headed thinking rather than from depraved feelings. It originates as much from defects of intelligence as from the mistakes of the heart. Egoism blights the seeds of every virtue; individualism at first dries up only the source of public virtue. In the longer term it attacks and destroys all the others and will finally merge with egoism.
On democracy and new forms of tyranny
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 might become so enamored with 'a relaxed love of present
enjoyments' that we lose interest in the future of our descendants...and
meekly allow ourselves to be led in ignorance by a despotic force all
the more powerful because it does not resemble one", wrote The New Yorker's James Wood. 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".
Tocqueville compared a potentially despotic democratic government to a
protective parent who wants to keep its citizens (children) as
"perpetual children" and which does not 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".
On American social contract
Tocqueville's
penetrating analysis sought to understand the peculiar nature of
American political life. In describing the American, 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 the United States was so different from Europe
in the last throes of aristocracy.
In contrast to the aristocratic ethic, the United States 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 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".
A sketch of 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 contrast, in the United States 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.
According to Joshua Kaplan's interpretation of Tocqueville, it was not
always a negative development since bonds of affection and shared
experience between children often replaced the more formal relation
between the eldest child and the siblings, characteristic of the
previous aristocratic pattern.
Overall, in the new democracies hereditary fortunes became exceedingly
difficult to secure and more people were forced to struggle for their
own living.
As Tocqueville understood it, this rapidly democratizing society
had a population devoted to "middling" values which wanted to amass
through hard work vast fortunes. In Tocqueville's mind, this explained
why the United States 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 and many were virtually guaranteed wealth and took it
for granted. At the same time in the United States, 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.
Despite maintaining that the balance of property determined the
balance of power, Tocqueville argued that as the United States showed,
equitable property holdings did not ensure the rule of the best men. In
fact, it did quite the opposite as the widespread, relatively equitable
property ownership which distinguished the United States and determined
its mores and values also explained why the United States masses held
elites in such contempt.
On majority rule and mediocrity
Beyond
the eradication of old-world aristocracy, ordinary Americans also
refused to defer to those possessing, as Tocqueville put it, superior
talent and intelligence and these natural elites could not enjoy much
share in political power as a result. Ordinary Americans enjoyed too
much power and 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 mediocrity. Those who possessed true
virtue and talent were left with limited choices.
Tocqueville said that those with the most education and
intelligence were left with two choices. They could join limited
intellectual circles to explore the weighty and complex problems facing
society, or they could use their superior talents to 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".
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".
In contrast to previous political thinkers, Tocqueville argued that a
serious problem in political life was not that people were too strong,
but that people were "too weak" and felt powerless as the danger is that
people felt "swept up in something that they could not control",
according to Kaplan's interpretation of Tocqueville.
On slavery, blacks and Indians
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 black people and natives had been subjected to in the United
States. Tocqueville devoted the last chapter of the first volume of Democracy in America
to the question while his travel companion Gustave de Beaumont wholly
focused on slavery and its fallouts for the American nation in Marie or Slavery in America. Tocqueville notes among the American races:
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.
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.
Tocqueville concluded that return of the Negro population to Africa could not resolve the problem as he writes at the end of Democracy in America:
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.
On policies of assimilation
According
to Tocqueville, assimilation of black people 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 black people.
However, assimilation was the best solution for Native Americans
and 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 theories as found in The Inequality of Human Races (1853–1855).
On the United States and Russia as future global powers
In his Democracy in America,
Tocqueville also forecast 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".
On civil jury service
Tocqueville
believed that the American jury system was particularly important in
educating citizens in self-government and rule of law.
He often expressed how the civil jury system was one of the most
effective showcases of democracy because it connected citizens with the
true spirit of the justice system. In his 1835 treatise Democracy in America,
he explained: "The jury, and more especially the civil jury, serves to
communicate the spirit of the judges to the minds of all the citizens;
and this spirit, with the habits which attend it, is the soundest
preparation for free institutions. [...] It invests each citizen with a
kind of magistracy; it makes them all feel the duties which they are
bound to discharge toward society; and the part which they take in the
Government".
Tocqueville believed that jury service not only benefited the
society as a whole, but enhanced jurors' qualities as citizens. Because
of the jury system, "they were better informed about the rule of law,
and they were more closely connected to the state. Thus, quite
independently of what the jury contributed to dispute resolution,
participation on the jury had salutary effects on the jurors
themselves".
1841 discourse on the Conquest of Algeria
French historian of colonialism Olivier LeCour Grandmaison has underlined how Tocqueville (as well as Jules Michelet) used the term "extermination" to describe what was happening during the colonization of Western United States and the Indian removal period. 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.
Whatever the case, we may say in a general manner that all political freedoms must be suspended in Algeria.
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 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 so far to claim that "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".
Tocqueville advocated racial segregation in Algeria with two distinct legislations, one for European colonists and one for the Arab population. Such a two-tier arrangement would be fully realised with the 1870 Crémieux decree and the Indigenousness Code, which extended French citizenship
to European settlers and Algerian Jews whereas Muslim Algerians would
be governed by Muslim law and restricted to a second-class citizenship.
Tocqueville's opposition to the invasion of Kabylie
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
modified his views after his second visit to Algeria in 1846 as he
criticized Bugeaud's desire to invade Kabylie in an 1847 speech to the Assembly.
Although Tocqueville had favoured retention of distinct traditional law, administrators, schools and so on for Arabs who had come under French control, he judged the Berber tribes of Kabylie (in his second of Two Letters on Algeria,
1837) as "savages" not suited for this arrangement because he argued
they would best be managed not by force of arms, but by the pacifying
influences of commerce and cultural interaction.
Tocqueville's views on the matter were complex. Even though in
his 1841 report on Algeria he applauded Bugeaud for making war in a way
that defeated Abd-el-Kader's resistance, he had advocated in the Two Letters
that the French military advance leave Kabylie undisturbed and in
subsequent speeches and writings he continued to oppose intrusion into
Kabylie.
In the debate about the 1846 extraordinary funds, Tocqueville
denounced Bugeaud's conduct of military operations and succeeded in
convincing the Assembly not to vote funds in support of Bugeaud's
military columns.
Tocqueville considered Bugeaud's plan to invade Kabylie despite the
opposition of the Assembly as a seditious act in the face of which the
government was opting for cowardice.
1847 Report on Algeria
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.
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.
Tocqueville includes in his report on Algeria that the fate of
their soldiers and finances depended on how the French government treats
the various native populations of Algeria, including the various Arab
tribes, independent Kabyles living in the Atlas Mountains and the powerful political leader Abd-el-Kader.
In his various letters and essays on Algeria, Tocqueville discusses
contrasting strategies by which a European country can approach
imperialism. In particular, the author differentiates between what he
terms "dominance" and a particular version of "colonization".
The latter stresses the obtainment and protection of land and
passageways that promise commercial wealth. In the case of Algeria, the
Port of Algiers and the control over the Strait of Gibraltar
were considered by Tocqueville to be particularly valuable whereas
direct control of the political operations of the entirety of Algeria
was not. Thus, the author stresses domination over only certain points
of political influence as a means to colonization of commercially
valuable areas.
Tocqueville argued that though unpleasant, domination via violent
means is necessary for colonization and justified by the laws of war.
Such laws are not discussed in detail, but given that the goal of the
French mission in Algeria was to obtain commercial and military interest
as opposed to self-defense, it can be deduced that Tocqueville would
not concur with just war theory's jus ad bellum criteria of just cause.
Further, given that Tocqueville approved of the use of force to
eliminate civilian housing in enemy territory, his approach does not
accord with just war theory's jus in bello criteria of proportionality and discrimination.
The Old Regime and the Revolution
In 1856, Tocqueville published The Old Regime and the Revolution. The book analyzes French society before the French Revolution—the so-called Ancien Régime—and investigates the forces that caused the Revolution.
References in popular literature
Tocqueville was quoted in several chapters of 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.
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 Amérique (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 Tocqueville's more obscure works.
- Journeys to England and Ireland, 1835.
