Travels

In 1831, Tocqueville 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 he did visit some prisons, Tocqueville traveled widely in the United States and took extensive notes on his observations and reflections.^[19] He returned within nine months and published a report, but the more well-known result of his tour was De la démocratie en Amérique, which appeared in 1835.^[8] Beaumont also wrote an account of their travels in Jacksonian America: Marie or Slavery in the United States (1835). ^{[20] [21]} During this trip, Tocqueville made a side trip to Montreal and Quebec City in Lower Canada from mid-August to early September 1831.^[22]

Apart from North America, Tocqueville also made an observational tour of England, producing Memoir on Pauperism. In 1841 and 1846, he traveled to the French colony of Algeria. His first travel inspired his Travail sur l'Algérie, in which he criticized the French model of colonisation which emphasized assimilation to Western culture, advocating that the French government instead adopt a form of indirect rule, which avoided mixing different populations together. He went as far as openly advocating racial segregation as a form of consociationalism between European colonists and Arabs through the implementation of two different legislative systems for each ethnic group (a half century before implementation of the 1881 Indigenous code based on religion).

In 1835 Tocqueville journeyed through Ireland. His observations provide one of the best pictures of the state of Ireland before the Great Famine (1845–1849). They chronicle the growing Catholic middle class and the appalling conditions in which most Catholic tenant farmers lived. Tocqueville made clear both his opposition to aristocratic power and his affinity for his Irish co-religionists.^[23]

After the fall of the July Monarchy in the French Revolution of 1848, 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 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, he conceived of universal suffrage as a means to counteract the revolutionary spirit of Paris.

During the Second Republic, Tocqueville sided with the Party of Order against the socialists. A few days after the February 1848 insurrection, he anticipated that a violent clash between the Parisian workers' population led by socialists agitating in favour of a "Democratic and Social Republic" and the conservatives, which included the aristocracy and the rural population, would be inescapable. Indeed, these social tensions eventually exploded in the June Days Uprising of 1848.^[24]

Led by General Cavaignac, the suppression of the uprising 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.^[24] Between May and September, Tocqueville participated in the Constitutional Commission which wrote the new Constitution. His proposals, such as his amendment about the President and his reelection, reflected lessons he drew from his North American experience^[25]

Minister of Foreign Affairs

Tocqueville at the 1851 "Commission de la révision de la Constitution à l'Assemblée nationale"

A supporter of Cavaignac and of the Party of Order, 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 Armand 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.^[26]

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″.^[26]

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).^[27]

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".^[27] 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.^[28] He saw religion as being compatible with both equality and individualism, but felt that religion would be strongest when separated from politics.^[19]

On civil and political society and the individual

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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.^[35] As a critic of individualism, Tocqueville thought that through associating 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.^[19][35]

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 disposes 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".^[19] 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.^[19]

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.^[19] 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.^[19]

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.^[36] 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.^[36]

On democracy and new forms of tyranny

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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.^[37] 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.^[19]

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".^[19] 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".^[19]

On the 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".^[38] 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.^[19]

In contrast, landed elites in the United States 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.^[19] According to Joshua Kaplan's 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.^[19] Overall, hereditary fortunes in the new democracies became exceedingly difficult to secure and more people were forced to struggle for their own living.

A sketch of Tocqueville

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.^[39]

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.^[19]

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. He wrote that he did not know of any country where there was "less independence of mind, and true freedom of discussion, than in America".^[19]

Tocqueville 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".^[19] According to Kaplan's interpretation of Tocqueville, he argued in contrast to previous political thinkers 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".^[19]

On enslavement, black people, and Indigenous communities

Uniquely positioned at a crossroads in American history, Tocqueville's Democracy in America attempted to capture the essence of American culture and values. Although 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.^[40]

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.^[41]

Tocqueville concluded that return of the Black 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, Tocqueville 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.^[42]

French historian of colonialism Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison argues that Tocqueville (along with Jules Michelet) was ahead of his time in his use of the term "extermination" to describe what was happening during the colonization of Western United States and the Indian removal period.^[43]

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).^[44]

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".^[45]

On civil jury service

Tocqueville believed that the American jury system was particularly important in educating citizens in self-government and rule of law.^[46] 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".^[47]

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".^[46]

1841 discourse on the conquest of Algeria

Tocqueville thus expressed himself in a 1841 essay 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, whose aim is to get hold of men or flocks.^[48][49]

Whatever the case, we may say in a general manner that all political freedoms must be suspended in Algeria.^[50][51]

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.^[52] 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".^[53]

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".^[53]

Tocqueville advocated racial segregation as a form of consociationalism in Algeria with two distinct legislations, one for European colonists and one for the Arab population.^[54][55]

Without doubt, it would be as dangerous as it would be useless to try to suggest to them our morals, our ideas, our customs. It is not in the direction of our European civilization that we must now push them, but in the direction of their own civilization; we must ask of them what they desire and not what they despise. Individual property, industry, sedentary living are not contrary to the religion of Mohammed. Arabs have known or know these things elsewhere; they are appreciated and enjoyed by some of them in Algeria itself. Why should we despair of making them familiar to the greatest number? It has already been attempted on some points with success. Islam is not absolutely impenetrable to the Enlightenment; it has often admitted in its bosom certain sciences or certain arts. Why should we not try to make these flourish under our empire? Let us not force the natives to come to our schools, but let us help them to raise theirs, to multiply those who teach there, to train the men of law and the men of religion, of whom the Muslim civilization cannot do without any more than us.^[55]

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 under the Code de l'indigénat. However Tocqueville hoped for an eventual mixing of the French and Arab populations into a single body:

Every day the French are developing clearer and more accurate notions about the inhabitants of Algeria. They learn their languages, become familiar with their customs, and one even sees some who show a kind of unthinking enthusiasm for them. On the other hand, the whole of the young Arab generation in Algiers speaks our language and has already taken on some of our customs. [...] There is therefore no reason to believe that time cannot succeed in amalgamating the two races. God does not prevent it; only the faults of men could impede it.^[55]

Opposition to the invasion of Kabylia

1849 caricature by Honoré Daumier

In opposition to Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, Jean-Louis Benoît said that given the extent of racial prejudices during the colonization of Algeria, Tocqueville was one of its "most moderate supporters". Benoît said 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 Kabylia 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 compared the Berber tribes of Kabylia (in his second of Two Letters on Algeria, 1837) to Rousseau's concept of the "noble savage", stating:

If Rousseau had known the Kabyles [...] he would not have spouted so much nonsense about the Caribbean and other American Indians: He would have looked to the Atlas for his models; there he would have found men who are subject to a kind of social police and yet almost as free as the isolated individual who enjoys his wild independence in the depths of the woods; men who are neither rich nor poor, neither servants nor masters; who appoint their own chiefs, and scarcely notice that they have chiefs, who are content with their state and remain in it^[56]

Tocqueville's views on the matter were complex. Although 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 Kabylia undisturbed and in subsequent speeches and writings he continued to oppose intrusion into Kabylia.^[56]

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.^[57] Tocqueville considered Bugeaud's plan to invade Kabylia despite the opposition of the Assembly as a seditious act in the face of which the government was opting for cowardice.^[58][59]

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.^[60] 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".^[61][62]

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.^[61]

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.^[63]

In 2023 a collection of writings by Alexis de Tocqueville on the Algerian situation was translated into English and released under the name 'Travels in Algeria' by the publishing house Tikhanov Library.^[64]