The Tocqueville Reader A Life in Letters and Politics

by Zunz, Olivier; Kahan, Alan S.

• ISBN13: 9780631215462
• ISBN10: 0631215468
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-10-11
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

The Tocqueville Reader includes not only Tocqueville's major writing but also travel letters, conversations with ministers and politicians, and diary entries not originally intended for the public. It includes twenty-nine pieces never before translated into English, and a wide-ranging editorial introduction that gives an account of Tocqueville's life as a politician and inspirations as a writer.

Author Biography

Olivier Zunz is Commonwealth Professor of History at the University of Virginia and president of the Tocqueville Society. He is the author of The Changing Face of Inequality (1982), Making America Corporate (1990), and Why the American Century? (1998). He is also the editor of Reliving the Past (1985), and co-editor of The Landscape of Modernity (1992) and Social Contracts under Stress (2002).

Alan S. Kahan is Associate Professor of History at Florida International University. He is the author of Aristocratic Liberalism, The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de Tocqueville (1992, 2001), and the translator of Tocqueville's The Old Regime and the Revolution (vol. 1: 1998, vol. 2: 2001).

Table of Contents

Note on Sources and Translations	xv
Introduction	1	(32)
Chronology of Alexis de Tocqueville's Life and Some of the Principal Events which Affected it	33	(4)
PART I The Discovery of Democracy in America
Preliminary Note	37	(2)
Map of the American Voyage	39	(1)
Travel Letters: First Impressions of America and Important Sketches of Democracy in America, 1831	40	(11)
To Ernest de Chabrol, from New York, June 9, 1831	40	(2)
To Louis de Kergorlay, from Yonkers and Calwell, June 29, 1831	42	(7)
To Tocqueville's Mother, from Philadelphia, October 24, 1831	49	(2)
Excerpts from American Notebooks: Tocqueville's Conversations with his American Informants; Travel Impressions on the Road	51	(13)
General Questions: Contrast of Ancient Republics as Virtuous vs. the United States as Based on Enlightened Self-Interest, Sing Sing, May 29, 1831	51	(1)
Conversation with Jared Sparks, on the Tyranny of the Majority, September 29, 1831	52	(1)
The Three Great Human Miseries, October 14, 1831	53	(1)
Conversation with Mr. John H. B. Latrobe, a Very Distinguished Lawyer from Baltimore, on Slavery and Sectionalism, October 31, 1831	53	(6)
On Davy Crockett, Memphis, December 31, 1831	59	(1)
Conversation with Mr. Sam Houston, on Indians, December 31, 1831	59	(3)
On Common Law, on the Mississippi, December 20, 1831	62	(2)
Volume One of Democracy in America, 1835	64	(78)
Part I	64	(34)
Introduction	64	(11)
``On the Joint of Origin and its Importance for the Future of the Anglo-Americans''	75	(1)
``Social Condition of the Anglo-Americans''	75	(14)
``Necessity of Examining the Condition of the States Before that of the Union at Large''	89	(9)
Part II	98	(38)
``Unlimited Power of the Majority in the United States, and Its Consequences''	98	(11)
``That Which Tempers the Tyranny of the Majority in the United States''	109	(1)
``Principal Causes Which Tend to Maintain the Democratic Republic in the United States''	110	(4)
``The Present and probable Future Condition of the Three Races that Inhabit the Territory of the United States''	114	(22)
To Francisque de Corcelle, Reactions to Corcelle's Review of Volume One of Democracy in America, April 12, 1835	136	(5)
PART II Great Britain, France, and the United States
Preliminary Note	141	(1)
Discovery of England, Poverty, Pauperism, and Social Policy, 1835--1837	142	(9)
First Memoir on Pauperism, 1835	142	(6)
Journey in Ireland, July-August, 1835	148	(2)
Second Memoir on Pauperism, 1837	150	(1)
Ambitions, Marriage, and Tocqueville's Views of his Own Brand of Liberalism, 1833--1840	151	(10)
To Marie Mottley, on his Ambitions and his Love for his Future Wife, August 2, 1833	151	(1)
To Eugene Stoffels on his Love of Freedom and New Kind of Liberalism, July 24, 1836	152	(1)
To Louis de Kergorlay, on Pleasure and Materialism, August 5, 1836	153	(3)
To Eugene Stoffels, on Revolution and Order, October 5, 1836	156	(2)
To Henry Reeve, on the Parts and the Whole, February 3, 1840	158	(1)
To Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard, on Life in Politics, September 27, 1841	159	(2)
Volume Two of Democracy in America, 1840	161	(57)
Author's Preface to the Second Part	161	(2)
Part I: ``Influence of Democracy on the Action of Intellect in the United States''	163	(9)
``Philosophical Method of the Americans''	163	(4)
``What Causes Democratic Nations to Incline Towards Pantheism''	167	(1)
``How Equality Suggests to the Americans the Idea of the Indefinite Perfectibility of Man''	168	(1)
``Some Characteristics of Historians in Democratic Times''	169	(3)
Part II: ``Influence of Democracy on the Feelings of the Americans''	172	(25)
``Why Democratic Nations Show a More Ardent and Enduring Love of Equality Than of Liberty''	172	(3)
``Of Individualism in Democratic Countries''	175	(2)
``That the Americans Combat the Effects of Individualism with Free Institutions''	177	(3)
``Of the Use Which the Americans Make of Public Associations in Civil Life''	180	(4)
``Of the Relation Between Public Associations and the Newspapers''	184	(3)
``Relation of Civil to Political Associations''	187	(4)
``How the Americans Combat Individualism by the Principle of Self-Interest Rightly Understood''	191	(2)
``Of the Taste for Material Well-Being in America''	193	(2)
``Why some Americans Manifest a Sort of Fanatical Spiritualism''	195	(2)
Part IV: ``Influence of Democratic Ideas and Feelings on Political Society''	197	(16)
``Equality Naturally Gives Men a Taste for Free Institutions''	197	(1)
``That the Opinions of Democratic Nations about Government are Naturally Favorable to the Concentration of Power''	198	(2)
``Of Certain Peculiar and Accidental Causes Which Either Lead a People to Complete the Centralization of Government or Divert Them From it''	200	(5)
``What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear''	205	(5)
``Continuation of the Preceding Chapters''	210	(1)
``General Survey of the Subject''	210	(3)
Letter to John Stuart Mill, Appreciation of His British Friend's Review of Volume Two of Democracy in America, December 30, 1840	213	(4)
PART III The Years in Politics
Preliminary Note	217	(1)
Tocqueville's Political Philosophy	218	(9)
To Odilon Barrot, The French Fear Freedom, September 16, 1842	218	(1)
My Instincts, My Opinions, circa 1841	219	(1)
On the Strategic, Commercial, and Military Importance of Cherbourg, 1846	220	(1)
On the Middle Class and the People, 1847	221	(3)
Fragments for a Social Policy, circa 1847	224	(3)
Tocqueville the Colonialist	227	(5)
On Algeria, 1837, 1840, 1841, 1843	227	(2)
Sketches of a Work on India, 1843	229	(3)
Tocqueville in 1848	232	(23)
Recollections of the 1848 Revolution	232	(1)
Part I Section 1, ``Origins and character of these recollections - General aspects of the period preceding the Revolution of 1848 - First symptoms of the Revolution''	232	(7)
Part II	239	(9)
Section 1, ``My View of the Reasons for the Events of the 24th February, and my Thoughts Concerning its Effects for the Future''	239	(5)
Section 8, ``The Eve of the June Days''	244	(2)
Section 9, ``The June Days''	246	(1)
Section 10, ``The End of the June Days''	246	(2)
To Madame de Tocqueville, his Love for her, and Some Post-February 1848 Politics 30, 1848	248	(2)
Notes for a Speech on Socialism, 1848	250	(1)
Definition of Democracy, 1848	250	(1)
To Gustave de Beaumont, on Revolutionary Conflict in Germany: The Princes will be Victorious, May 18, 1849	251	(2)
To Francisque de Corcelle, on Roman Affairs, June 15, 1849	253	(2)
Tocqueville Retires from Political Life and Returns to Writing	255	(23)
To Louis de Kergorlay, on the Project of Writing The Old Regime, December 15, 1850	255	(4)
To Francisque de Corcelle, against Louis-Napoleon and Loss of Freedom, February 21, 1851	259	(2)
To his Brother Edouard de Tocqueville, Reaction to Louis-Napoleon's Coup d'Etat, December 7, 1851	261	(2)
To the Comte de Chambord, Plea for a Constitutional Monarchy, January 14, 1852	263	(1)
To Francisque de Corcelle, The New Aristocracy is the Army, May 13, 1852	264	(2)
To Arthur de Gobineau, denouncing the Latter's Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, November 17, 1853	266	(3)
To Francisque de Corcelle, on German Philosophy and Hegel, July 22, 1854	269	(2)
To Madame Swetchine, on his Literary Career, January 7, 1856	271	(2)
To Prosper Duvergier de Hauranne, on Intellectual Autonomy, September 1, 1850	273	(4)
PART IV The Return to The Old Regime and the Revolution
Preliminary Note	277	(1)
The Old Regime and the Revolution Volume One, 1856	278	(42)
Preface	278	(6)
Book One	284	(9)
``Contradictory Opinions about the Revolution at Its Birth''	284	(2)
``That the Fundamental and Final Objective of the Revolution Was Not, as Has Been Thought, to Destroy Religion and Weaken the State''	286	(3)
``How the French Revolution Was a Political Revolution Which Acted Like a Religious Revolution, and Why''	289	(3)
``What Did the French Revolution Really Accomplish?''	292	(1)
Book Two	293	(12)
``How Administrative Centralization Is an Institution of the Old Regime, and Not the Work of Either the Revolution or the Empire, as Is Said''	293	(7)
``How the Destruction of Political Liberty and the Division of Classes Caused Almost All the Ills of Which the Old Regime Perished''	300	(5)
Book Three	305	(12)
``How Around the Middle of the Eighteenth Century Intellectuals Became the Country's Leading Politicians, and the Effects Which Resulted from This''	305	(3)
``How the French Wanted Reforms before They Wanted Freedoms''	308	(4)
``How the Revolution Came Naturally from What Preceded It''	312	(5)
Notes and Variants	317	(3)
To Preface (11a)	317	(1)
To Book One, Chapter 2 (11b2)	318	(1)
To Book Three, Chapter 2	319	(1)
The Old Regime and the Revolution Volume Two	320	(14)
Book One	320	(5)
``Plans'' (November and December 1856)	320	(1)
``How the Revolution's Real Spirit Suddenly Showed Itself as Soon as Absolutism Had Been Defeated''	321	(2)
``How for a Moment, When the National Assembly Was about to Meet, Hearts Were Joined and Spirits Raised''	323	(2)
Book Two: Notes Excerpted from Tocqueville's Papers Concerning the History of the Revolution, Chapter 2: ``From the Fourteenth of July to the End of the Constituent Assembly [General Remarks]''	325	(1)
Book Three: Napoleon	326	(8)
Part I: ``The Convention and the Directory'' - Chapter 1: ``How the Republic Was Ready to Accept a Master''	326	(4)
Part II: ``The Consulate and the Empire'': Section Two: ``Research Notes on the Empire''	330	(4)
The Last days	334	(8)
To Madame Swetchine, on his Loss of Faith, February 26, 1857	334	(3)
To Pierre Freslon, on his Melancholic Outlook Towards the Revolution, September 11, 1857	337	(1)
To his Nephew Hubert de Tocqueville, on Conflict Between France and Germany as a Result of the Napoleonic Wars, February 7, 1858	337	(2)
To Gustave de Beaumont, on Liberty and Despotism, February 27, 1858	339	(3)
Suggestions for Further Reading	342	(3)
Index	345