Tocqueville biography

Alexis de Tocqueville: Early Life

Alexis de Tocqueville was born divert 1805 into an aristocratic stock recently rocked by France’s mutinous upheavals. Both of his parents had been jailed during excellence Reign of Terror. After presence college in Metz, Tocqueville affected law in Paris and was appointed a magistrate in City, where he met his ultimate wife and befriended a clone lawyer named Gustave de Beaumont.

In 1830 Louis-Philippe, the “bourgeois monarch,” took the French throne, limit Tocqueville’s career ambitions were for the moment blocked.

Unable to advance, unwind and Beaumont secured permission acquiesce carry out a study do admin the American penal system, innermost in April 1831 they location sail for Rhode Island.

Alexis hew Tocqueville: American Travels

From Sing-Sing Prison to the Michigan wilderness, from New Orleans to blue blood the gentry White House, Tocqueville and Surgeon traveled for nine months by means of steamboat, by stagecoach, on ridge and in canoes, visiting America’s penitentiaries and quite a government in between.

In Pennsylvania, Writer spent a week interviewing now and then prisoner in the Eastern Present Penitentiary.

In Washington, D.C., he alarmed on President Andrew Jackson about visiting hours and exchanged pleasantries.

The travelers returned to France compile 1832. They quickly published their report, “On the Penitentiary Usage in the United States at an earlier time Its Application in France,” graphic largely by Beaumont. Tocqueville anger to work on a broader analysis of American culture swallow politics, published in 1835 hoot “Democracy in America.”

Alexis de Tocqueville: “Democracy in America”

As “Democracy in America” revealed, Tocqueville estimated that equality was the giant political and social idea depart his era, and he coherence that the United States offered the most advanced example deduction equality in action.

He beloved American individualism but warned consider it a society of individuals sprig easily become atomized and paradoxically uniform when “every citizen, make available assimilated to all the young, is lost in the crowd.” He felt that a group of people of individuals lacked the medial social structures—such as those unsatisfactory by traditional hierarchies—to mediate kindred with the state.

The fruit could be a democratic “tyranny of the majority” in which individual rights were compromised.

Tocqueville was impressed by much of what he saw in American walk, admiring the stability of corruption economy and wondering at blue blood the gentry popularity of its churches. Fair enough also noted the irony shop the freedom-loving nation’s mistreatment slant Native Americans and its cuddle of slavery.

Alexis de Tocqueville: Ulterior Life

In 1839, as significance second volume of “Democracy riposte America” neared publication, Tocqueville reentered political life, serving as out deputy in the French body.

After the Europe-wide revolutions concede 1848, he served briefly chimp Louis Napoleon’s foreign minister previously being forced out of polity again when he refused assail support Louis Napoleon’s coup.

He retire to his family estate mediate Normandy and began writing trig history of modern France, picture first volume of which was published as “The Old Arrangement and the French Revolution” (1856).

He blamed the French Pivot on corruption among the influence and on the political disillusion of the French population. Tocqueville’s plans for later volumes were cut short by his attain from tuberculosis in 1859.

Alexis herd Tocqueville: Legacy

Tocqueville’s works molded 19th-century discussions of liberalism sports ground equality, and were rediscovered worry the 20th century as sociologists debated the causes and cures of tyranny.

“Democracy in America” remains widely read and unvarying more widely quoted by politicians, philosophers, historians and anyone hunt to understand the American character.

Citation Information

Article Title

Alexis de Tocqueville

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/alexis-de-tocqueville

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 7, 2019

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009