Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, comte de Tocqueville entered the world on the 29th of July 1805. He descended from an old Norman family that had produced statesmen for generations. His great-grandfather Malesherbes met a violent end when he was guillotined in 1793 during the French Revolution. Alexis's father Hervé Louis François Jean Bonaventure Clérel served as an officer in the Constitutional Guard of King Louis XVI. The elder Tocqueville and his wife Louise Madeleine Le Peletier de Rosanbo narrowly escaped execution themselves due to the fall of Maximilien Robespierre in 1794. Under the Bourbon Restoration, his father became a noble peer and prefect. Alexis attended the Lycée Fabert in Metz between 1817 and 1823. This education shaped his early intellectual development before he entered public life.
In 1831, Tocqueville obtained official permission from the July Monarchy to examine prisons and penitentiaries in the United States. He traveled across the Atlantic with his lifelong friend Gustave de Beaumont. Their journey took them from east-coast cities to the north-west frontier of Michigan. They traveled by steamboat down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. Stagecoaches carried them back across the South toward the east coast and north to New York. A side trip brought them to Montreal and Quebec City. Throughout their travels they took extensive notes on observations and reflections. They returned within nine months and published a report called The Penitentiary System in the United States. The more famous result of this tour was Democracy in America which appeared in 1835. Beaumont also wrote an account titled Marie or Slavery in the United States that same year.
Tocqueville despised the July Monarchy yet began his political career in 1839. From 1839 to 1851 he served as a member of the lower house of parliament for the Manche department representing Valognes. He sat on the centre-left while defending abolitionist views and upholding free trade. At the same time he supported the colonization of Algeria carried out by Louis-Philippe I's regime. In 1842 he was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society. In 1847 Tocqueville sought to found a Young Left party advocating wage increases and progressive taxation. This effort aimed to undermine the appeal of socialists among working-class voters. His complex liberalism led to contrasting interpretations across the political spectrum. Democracy in America was seen as liberal in France and the United States but interpreted differently in the British Isles where both progressives and conservatives claimed him as their own.
After the fall of the July Monarchy in the Revolution of 1848, Tocqueville became a member of the Constituent Assembly. He joined the commission charged with drafting the new Constitution of the Second Republic which lasted from 1848 to 1851. He defended bicameralism and universal suffrage for electing the President of the Republic. Tocqueville conceived universal suffrage as a means to counteract the revolutionary spirit of Paris since the countryside remained more conservative than laboring populations. During the Second Republic he sided with the Party of Order against socialists. A few days after the February 1848 insurrection he anticipated an inevitable violent clash between Parisian workers and conservatives. These tensions exploded in the June Days Uprising of 1848. Led by General Cavaignac, the suppression of this uprising received his support. He advocated regularization of the state of siege declared by Cavaignac and measures promoting suspension of constitutional order. Between May and September he participated in writing the new Constitution while proposing amendments about presidential reelection reflecting lessons drawn from North America.
Tocqueville had supported Cavaignac against Louis Napoléon Bonaparte during the presidential election of 1848. He opposed the coup d'état on the 2nd of December 1851 that followed Napoleon's election. Among deputies who gathered at the 10th arrondissement of Paris to resist the coup, Tocqueville sought to have Napoleon III judged for high treason. He claimed Napoleon violated constitutional limits on terms of office. Detained at Vincennes and then released, Tocqueville quit political life entirely. He retreated to his castle and supported the Restoration of the Bourbons against Napoleon III's Second Empire which lasted from 1851 to 1871. Biographer Joseph Epstein concluded that Tocqueville could never serve a man he considered a usurper and despot. He fought as best he could for political liberty over thirteen years before spending remaining days fighting from libraries archives and his own desk. There he began drafting The Old Regime and the Revolution publishing the first tome in 1856 but leaving the second unfinished.
In Democracy in America published in 1835, Tocqueville wrote about the New World and its burgeoning democratic order. Observing from the perspective of a detached social scientist, he described travels through the United States during the early 19th century when Market Revolution Western expansion and Jacksonian democracy were transforming American life. One purpose was helping France understand their position between fading aristocratic orders and emerging democracies. Tocqueville saw democracy as balancing liberty and equality while considering both individual and community concerns. He remarked that manners are never so refined amongst aristocratic nations compared to democracies. He expressed passionate love for liberty law and respect for rights stating he belonged neither to revolutionary nor conservative parties. Liberty remained his foremost passion. He noted human hearts contain depraved tastes for equality impelling weak men to bring strong ones down to their level. This reduces people to preferring equality in servitude rather than inequality in freedom. Centralized government excels at preventing things not doing them. When citizens are almost equal it becomes difficult to defend independence against power's aggressions since no single person is strong enough to fight alone.
Tocqueville became an important figure in the colonization of Algeria after France invaded and colonized it starting in 1830. As a member of French parliament during the conquest he took upon himself becoming the chamber's foremost expert on the colony. In 1841 and 1846 he traveled to Algeria again accompanied by Beaumont. Initially critical of invasion, he later believed geopolitical necessities prevented withdrawal of military forces. War and colonization would restore national pride threatened by gradual softening of social mores among middle classes. His taste for material pleasures spread throughout society giving examples of weakness and egotism. In an 1841 essay concerning conquest he called for dual programs of domination and colonization. Applauding methods of General Bugeaud, Tocqueville claimed war in Africa was a science everyone could apply with near certainty of success. He advocated racial segregation as consociationalism with two distinct legislations for European colonists and Arab populations. Such arrangements fully realized with the 1870 Crémieux decree extending citizenship to settlers and Algerian Jews while Muslims governed under Code de l'indigénat. Yet from what he observed including absence of political life he persuaded himself violent subjugation justified but assimilation impossible.
A longtime sufferer from bouts of tuberculosis, Tocqueville succumbed to disease on the 16th of April 1859. Buried in the Tocqueville cemetery in Normandy, he survived by his English wife Mary Mottley who had been married to him for twenty-three years. Though too liberal Protestant middle-class and English for some family members, she remained perhaps his only true friend. They hoped for children but had none. Before marriage Mottley converted to Roman Catholicism, Tocqueville's professed religion. While appearing comparatively devout, Tocqueville viewed religion utilitarianly as social cement or safety valve for passions feeding revolutionary torrents dangerous to individual liberty. In 1856 he published The Old Regime and the Revolution analyzing French society before the revolution investigating forces causing it. He argued importance of continuing modernizing centralizing state begun under King Louis XIV believing failure came from deputies wedded to abstract Enlightenment ideals. His work remains considered early sociology and political science today. Democracy in America appeared in two volumes first in 1835 second in 1840 while Recollections published posthumously in 1893 served as private journal of 1848 Revolution.
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Common questions
When was Alexis de Tocqueville born and where did he die?
Alexis de Tocqueville entered the world on the 29th of July 1805. He succumbed to tuberculosis on the 16th of April 1859.
What major books did Alexis de Tocqueville publish during his lifetime?
Democracy in America appeared in two volumes first in 1835 second in 1840 while Recollections published posthumously in 1893 served as private journal of 1848 Revolution. The Old Regime and the Revolution analyzing French society before the revolution investigating forces causing it appeared in 1856 with a second tome left unfinished.
How long did Alexis de Tocqueville serve in the lower house of parliament for the Manche department representing Valognes?
From 1839 to 1851 he served as a member of the lower house of parliament for the Manche department representing Valognes. He sat on the centre-left while defending abolitionist views and upholding free trade.
Why did Alexis de Tocqueville oppose the coup d'état on the 2nd of December 1851?
Alexis de Tocqueville opposed the coup d'état on the 2nd of December 1851 that followed Napoleon's election because he claimed Napoleon violated constitutional limits on terms of office. Among deputies who gathered at the 10th arrondissement of Paris to resist the coup, Tocqueville sought to have Napoleon III judged for high treason.
What was Alexis de Tocqueville's position on the colonization of Algeria after France invaded starting in 1830?
Tocqueville became an important figure in the colonization of Algeria after France invaded and colonized it starting in 1830. In 1841 and 1846 he traveled to Algeria again accompanied by Beaumont and advocated racial segregation as consociationalism with two distinct legislations for European colonists and Arab populations.