Alexis de Tocqueville

Biography

Alexis de Tocqueville belongs has an aristocratic big family Norman. He is thus back grandson of Malesherbes and nephew of the brother of Chateaubriand. Its ancestors took part in the Bataille of Hastings in 1066. His/her parents, Herve Louis François Jean Bonaventure Clérel, count de Tocqueville, soldier of the constitutional Guard of the King Louis XVI, and Louise Madeleine the Furrier of Rosanbo, avoid the Guillotine thanks to the Chute of Robespierre in year II (1794). After an exile in England, they return to France during the Empire, and Herve de Tocqueville becomes Pair of France and prefect under the Restauration.

Laid off of right, Alexis de Tocqueville is named judge listener with the court of Versailles where it meets Gustave de Beaumont, substitute, which will collaborate in several of its works. All two are sent to the United States to study the penitentiary system there, from where they return with Of the penitentiary system to the United States and its application (1832). It is registered then as lawyer, and publishes in 1835 democracy in America , work founder of its political thought. Thanks to its success, it is named chevalier of the Legion of Honor (1837) and is elected with the Academy of Science morals and political (1838), then with the French Academy (1841).

At the same time it starts a political career, while becoming in 1839 deputy of the English Channel (Valognes), seat which it will preserve until 1851. It will defend at the Parliament its positions abolitionists and free-traders, and will wonder about colonization, in particular in Algeria. He is also elected general adviser of the Manche (canton of Holy-Mother-Church) in 1842. He represents this canton until 1852 and becomes president of the general advice between 1849 and 1851.

After the fall of the Monarchy of July, he is elected with the constituent Assembly of 1848. He is an eminent personality of the " Left the Order ". He is member of the Charged commission of the drafting of the constitution. He defends there the Bicamérisme and the election of the President of the Republic to the Vote for all. He is elected with the legislative Assemblée of which he becomes vice-president.

Hostile with the candidature of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte for the presidency, preferring Cavaignac to him, it however accepts the Ministry for Foreign Affairs between June and October 1849 within the Second government Odilon Barrot. Opposed to the Coup d'etat of December 2nd, 1851, it belongs to the members of Parliament who meet in the town hall of Xe district. Imprisoned in slackened Vincennes then, it leaves the political life. Withdrawing itself in its castle of Tocqueville, it starts the writing of the Old Mode and the Revolution , appeared in 1856. The second part will remain unfinished.

He is regarded as one of the historical defenders of the Liberté and of the Démocratie, he was anti collectivist and is one of the references of the Libéraux. Theorist of the Colonialism, legitimating the French expansion in North Africa (1841-1846), it fustigates nevertheless the cruelty of the French Armies in Africa, is opposed to the application of the military regime in Algeria (1848), and defends among the first the Abolition of slavery in the colonies (1839).

The thought of Tocqueville

Its work based on its voyages to the the United States is an essential base to include/understand this country and in particular at the time of the 19th century.

The Democracy for Tocqueville

During its stay with the the United States, Tocqueville wonders about the bases of the Démocratie. Contrary to Guizot, which sees the French history like a long emancipation of the middle-classes, he thinks that the general tendency and inevitable of the people is the democracy. According to him, this one should not only be heard in its etymological direction and Politique (to be able of the people) but more especially in a social direction.

The equalization of the conditions

Thus the first characteristic of the democratic society is the equality of the conditions. This one is not rigorously defined at Tocqueville. It is at the same time a principle and a fact and what it recovers evolve/move with the democratic society. Tocqueville wrote that the equality of the conditions implied the absence of Caste S and classes while indicating that this one was not equivalent to the removal of the social hierarchy. Contrary to the aristocratic company, none the members of the democratic society undergoes his destiny because of social position which it occupies and the social hierarchy does not return any more to one preestablished social order which assigns with each one a place, rights and duties clean.
The equality of the conditions constitutes another apprehension of the social structure: the positions are certainly not equivalent but they do not crystallize the totality of the social existence of the individuals. What constitutes the social condition evolves/moves with the democratic society (fortune or the property sees their role changing). The equality of the conditions is redefined unceasingly and cannot dissociate itself from social dynamics. But more than of equality, it is necessary to speak about equalization from the point of view of the democratic social order.

For Tocqueville, there is quasi equivalence between the democracy (with the political direction) and the equality of the conditions. Tocqueville considers that all the men have like attribute freedom natural i.e. the potentiality to freely act. The Liberté is translated in the city by the equality of the civil laws and civic. One refers here to freedom i.e. not to be obliged to make such or such thing, but also freedom to take share with the public life. The equality of the conditions returns to the Citoyenneté.

For example Tocqueville exposes the relation which is established between a Master and its servant in the democratic society compared to that which reigns in the aristocratic company. In both cases there is Inégalité but in the old company it is final whereas in the modern society it is Libre and temporary. Free because it is a voluntary agreement, which the servant accepts the authority of the Master and which it finds there an interest. Temporary because there is the feeling from now on shared between the Master and the servant who they are basically equal. The work the dregs by contract and once finished, as members of the social body, they are similar. The social situations can be uneven, but they are not attached to the individuals. What counts it is the opinion that the members of the company have some: they feel and are represented like equal, and are it like contractors.
The equality of the conditions is thus a cultural fact, a social construction, a representation. It is this mental attitude which makes of the democratic man a new man whose acts are marked by what takes the form of an obviousness.
The equality of the conditions for Tocqueville articulates what is about the principle: absence of juridically founded social distinctions, equal rights, collective feeling of the equality.

Characteristics of the democratic society

The new business is mobile, Matérialiste and differently ensures the integration of its membres.
In the aristocratic company, the social positions are fixed. However for Tocqueville, as from the moment when there does not exist any more any legal or cultural obstacle with the change of social position, the social mobility (ascending or downward) becomes the rule. the transmission of the heritage is not enough any more to maintain a social status and the possibility of growing rich arises to all. The democratic society appears as a company where the social positions are constantly redistributed .
This open company allows a transformation of the social stratification, standards and values. In a company where the social positions are hereditary, each class could develop common features sufficiently marked to allow him to affirm clean Valeurs. On the other hand, in the democratic society the cultural features of each class grow blurred with the profit of a common taste for the good being. This Matérialisme is affirmed when the access to the richness becomes possible for the poor and that impoverishment threatens the rich person.

The dynamic ones of the democratic society

Tocqueville will show the mechanisms by which one tends towards the state of the company: the equality is a principle, equalization a process. the question is to know how and why the democratic society has to follow such a movement.

For Tocqueville if the equality is out of reach, it is for two reasons: on the one hand the men are naturally unequal, on the other hand, the operation of the democratic society is him even at the origin of uneven movements.
The natural inequality of the individuals makes that some have certain intellectual or physical assets. However in democracy it is the intelligence which is the first source of the social differences. There is a naturalization of the inequalities based on the merit, one thus speaks about méritocratie . If the intellectual provisions are not equivalent, it is possible by the Instruction to equalize the means of their implementation .

As it was known as higher the democratic society is characterized by the social mobility and the research of the material wellbeing . For various reasons like the natural inequalities, some will succeed better than of others. There is thus a paradox since the equality of the conditions results in feeding the economic inequalities. If the members of the democratic society seek to grow rich, it is also to socially be different . There is thus the conjunction of two movements: a levelling aspiration (collective conscience) and an uneven aspiration (individual conscience). The democratic man wishes the equality in the general and the distinction in the private individual. The democratic society is in this way crossed by divergent forces. On the one hand an irreversible ideological movement which push towards always more equality and other of the socio-economic tendencies which make that the inequalities are reconstituted unceasingly.

Risks of the democratic society

It is in the renouncement of freedom that the major danger to the democratic society is. the first risk is that of the tyranny of the majority: A Political regime is characterized by the rule of the majority which wants that, by the vote, the decision is that of greatest number the. Tocqueville raises that the Démocratie involves the risk of an any power of the majority. Because he is exerted in the name of the democratic principle, a capacity can prove to be oppressive with regard to the minority which is necessarily wrong since she is minority. It is obvious that the Vote translates divergences of interest and convictions within the company. It can be thus made that the continuation of the equality is exerted with the exclusive detriment of part of the population. According to Tocqueville the Démocratie would generate the Conformisme opinions in the company because of the moyennisation of the company. Thus he denounces the absence of and freedom independence of mind of discussion in America. When all the opinions are equal and that it is that of the greatest number which prevails, it is the independence of the mind which is threatened with all the consequences that one can imagine as regards the effective exercise of the political rights.
The power of the majority and the critical absence of retreat of the individuals open the way with the major danger who watch for the democratic society: despotism. Finally the second risk of the democratic society according to Tocqueville is the democratic despotism. The democratic men are dominated by two passions: those of the equality and the wellbeing. They are ready to be given up with a capacity which would guarantee to them to satisfy one and the other even at the price of the abandonment of freedom. The men could be resulted in giving up exerting their freedom to benefit from the equality and the wellbeing. The individuals could give more and more of prerogatives to the State. In the democratic society, it is simpler to rely on the State to ensure an extension of the equality of the conditions in the political arena which is framed by the Lois. It is the State which has as a load their development and their implementation.
From there, the State can gradually put the individuals at the variation of the public affairs. It can unceasingly extend the rules which frame the social life. The despotism takes the form of a control. One arrives thus at the equality without the Liberté.

The democratic society transforms the social link while making emerge an autonomous individual. It is a source of embrittlement which can lead to an attitude of fold on oneself. Tocqueville will show that individualism can be born from the democracy. The democracy breaks the bonds of dependence between individuals and maintains the reasonable hope a rise in the wellbeing what allows each individual or each restricted family not to have to count on others. It becomes perfectly possible for its private existence to stick with his and its close relations.

“ individualism is a considered feeling which lays out each citizen to be isolated from the mass of its similar so that, after being itself created a small firm with his use, it gives up readily the large company with it even ”.

While choosing to fold up itself on what Tocqueville calls " small the société" , the individuals give up exerting their prerogatives of Citoyen. The equalization of the conditions while making possible insulation with respect to others calls into question the exercise of the citizenship. The first danger of the democratic society is to push the citizens to be excluded from the public life. The democratic society can thus lead to the abandonment of their freedom by his members, because they are plugged by the benefits which they await from always more equality directly or indirectly. Tocqueville stresses that the equality without freedom is not to in no case satisfactory. To accept is to place itself in the dependence.

According to Tocqueville, one of the solutions to exceed this Paradox, while respecting these two principles founders of the Democracy, resides in the restoration of the intermediate institutional bodies which occupied a central place in the Ancien Mode (political and civil associations, Corporation S, etc). Only these authorities which encourage with a reinforcement of the social links, can allow the Individu isolated vis-a-vis the being able from State to express its Liberté and to thus resist so that Tocqueville names “ the moral empire of the majorities”.

Social change according to Tocqueville

For Tocqueville, the social Changement results from the aspiration to the equality of the men.

For him, if the Humanité must choose between the Liberté and the equality, it will always slice in favor of the second, even at the price of some Coercition, since the Public power ensures the necessary minimum of standard of living and safety.

The stake, always of topicality, is the Adéquation between this double Revendication of freedom and equality: “ the nations nowadays could not make that in their center the conditions are not equal; but it depends on them that the equality leads them to the constraint or freedom, the lights or cruelty, prosperity or miseries ”.

For Tocqueville, the democratic society characterized by the equality of the conditions is the result of the social change .

French revolution: rupture or institutional continuity?

In its work “ the Old Mode and the Revolution ”, Tocqueville watch that the Révolution of 1789 by no means constitutes a rupture in the French history. According to him, the Ancien Mode fits already in the process of equalization of the conditions which is explained by two complementary evolutions :

on the one hand, on the plan Institution nel, the France pre-revolutionist is marked by the progressive questioning of the to be able of the Noblesse by the State (one attends for example an increase in the capacity of the Intendant S at the expense of the Seigneur S). However, its study on the intendants is based only on the general information of Turns, near to Paris and faithful to the royal capacity. This idea of centralization with the intendance must be moderate. (cf work of Emmanuelli in particular).

In its appendix, it makes activity of the Parliament of Languedoc under the Old Mode an example.

in addition, on the plan of the Value S, Tocqueville gives an account of the rise of the sociological Individualisme which places the individual-citizen and with him the Concept of equality in the center of the concerns Morale S and Politique S (Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “ Speech on the origin of the inequality among the men ”).

It is the convergence of these two logics which makes increasingly unacceptable the inequality of the conditions : “ the desire of equality becomes increasingly more insatiable as the equality is larger ”.

He concludes from it that the progress of the equality preceded the Révolution; he is one of the causes and not one of these consequences: “ all that the Revolution did, had been done, I do not doubt it, without it; it was only one violent and fast process with the help of which one adapted the political state to the social state, the facts with the ideas, laws with manners ”.

Quotations

New despotism

“I want to imagine under which new features the despotism could occur in the world…” (Video-reading)

Freedom

“Which seeks in different freedom thing that itself is done to be useful. ” '' The Old Mode and the Revolution ''

History

“the history is a gallery of tables where there are few originals and much copies. ”

America of its time

“For my part, I could not conceive that a nation can live nor especially to thrive without a strong governmental centralization. But I think that administrative centralization is clean only to irritate the people which submit themselves to it, because it unceasingly tends to decrease among them the spirit of city”. Extract of the Democracy in America vol. I, First part

“Above these rises an immense and guardian capacity, which is only given the responsability to ensure their pleasure and to take care on their fate. It is absolute, far-sighted, regular and soft. It would resemble the parental rights if, like it, it had the aim of preparing the men at the virile age; but he does not seek, on the contrary, that to irrevocably fix them in childhood; he likes that the citizens are delighted provided that they only think of being delighted. He works readily with their happiness; but he wants to be about it the single agent and the only referee; he provides for their safety, envisages and ensures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, leads their principal businesses, directs their industry, regulates their successions, divides their heritages; what can't it entirely remove the disorder to them to think and pains it of living? ”. Extract of the Democracy in America

“I look like irreligious person and hateful this maxim, that as regards government the majority of people has the right to do everything, and yet I place in the wills of the majority the origin of all the capacities. (...) What I reproach more the democratic government, such as one it organized in the United States, it is not, as much of people claim it in Europe, its weakness, but on the contrary its irresistible force”. Extract of the Democracy in America vol. I, Second part, chapter VII;

The citizen and the government

“Democracy and socialism in common do not have anything except a word, the equality. But note the difference: while the democracy seeks the equality in freedom, socialism seeks the equality in the restriction and the constraint”.
“the greatest care of a good government should be to accustom the people little by little to do without him”.
“Our contemporaries are worked without delay by two enemy passions: they feel the need to be led and envies it to remain free. Not being able to destroy neither one nor the other of these contrary instincts, they endeavor to satisfy it at the same time both. They imagine a capacity single, guardian, the Almighty, but elected by the citizens. They combine the centralization and the sovereignty of the people. That gives them some slackening. They are comforted to be in supervision, while thinking which they themselves chose their tutors”.
“I do not fear that they meet tyrants, but rather tutors. ”
“the men want the equality in freedom, and if they cannot obtain it, they still want it in slavery”.

Tocqueville is opposed to the racialism of Gobineau

Tocqueville had read work of Flourens, temporary of Vat to the college of France, and begun again its conclusions, for him, there exists only one humanity, that only one mankind, subjected to historical, climatic, cultural variations: “ the man following Buffon and Flourens, is thus of only one species and the human varieties are produced by three secondary and external causes: climate, food and manner of living” (Correspondence with Gobineau, O.C., IX, p. 197).

He denies any value with the arguments of Gobineau. If César had reasoned like this one, he would have concluded by invading England, that the wild tribes and primitives which he met were intended to vegetate forever in a world will infra civilized. All the more ironic notation as there does not exist then any more (in 1853) of Roman Empire, not even of Italian State, whereas England is the first power of the world: “It is to be believed that there is at each various family which composes the human race of certain tendencies, certain clean aptitudes being born from thousand different causes. But that these tendencies, that these aptitudes are invincible, not only it is what proven forever, but it is what is, of oneself, unprovable, because it would be necessary to have for its disposal not only the past but still the future. I am sure that Jules César, if it had had the time, would have readily made a book to prove that the savages which it had met in the island of Great Britain were not same human race as the Romans and than while those were intended by nature to dominate the world, the others were it to be vegetated in a corner. What is there of more dubious in the world, no matter what one makes, that the question of knowing by the history or the tradition when, how, in which proportions mixed with the men who do not keep any visible trace of their origin? These events had all place in moved back times, cruel, which left only vague traditions or incomplete written documents. Do you believe that by taking this way to explain the destiny of the various people you cleared up the history much and that the social science gained in certainty to have left the way traversed, since the beginning of the world, by so much of great minds which sought the causes of the events of this world in the influence of certain men, of, certain feelings, certain ideas, certain beliefs? "

For Tocqueville, the Test on the inequality of the races constitutes pernicious and immoral doctrines : “Your doctrines is a kind of fatalism, of predestination if you want; different however from that of saint Augustin, the Jansenists and the calvinists (it is those which resemble to you more by the absolute of the doctrines) in what on your premise there is a very close link between the fact of predestination and the matter. Thus you speak unceasingly about races which is regenerated or worsens, which takes or leaves social capacities that they did not have by an infusion of different blood, I believe that they are your own expressions. This predestination appears to me, I will acknowledge it to you, cousin of the pure materialism. Which interest can it have there to persuade with loose people which live in cruelty, mollesse or the constraint, that being such from nature of their race it does not have nothing there to make to improve their condition, to change their manners or to modify their government? Don't you see that of your doctrines all the evils leave naturally that the permanent inequality gives birth to, pride, violence, contempt of similar, tyranny and abjection in all its forms? What do you speak to me, my dear friend, of distinctions to be made between qualities which make practice the truths morals and what you call the social aptitude? Are these things different? When one saw a little a long time and of a little close the way in which are carried out the public things, you believe that one is not convinced perfectly that they succeed precisely by the same means which make succeed in the private life; what are courage, energy, honesty, the precaution, the good sense the true reasons of the prosperity of the empires like that of the families and which in a word the destiny of the man, either like individual, or like nation, it wants to make? I stop here; allow, I request from you, that we remain about it there of this discussion. We are separated by too a big space so that the discussion can be profitable. There is a intellectual world between your doctrines and mine” ( Correspondance with Gobineau, O.C., IX, p. 202-203 .)

The judgment of the genocide of the Indians of America and slavery

In a letter with his/her mother and the final chapter of the first Democracy, Tocqueville denounces the extermination of the Indians, the programmed genocide which will go, it is persuaded of it, until its term: “it is impossible to doubt that before hundred years it will not remain in North America, not only one nation, but only one man pertaining to most remarkable of the races Indian” ( family Correspondance, O.C., XIV, p. 160 ).

The objective is laid down and all the means are implemented to exterminate all the Indian population in the long term: expropriation, deportation, alcoholic depravity, extermination of game: “ This world belongs to us, say Américainstous the days; the Indian race is destined for a final destruction which one cannot prevent and who it is not to wish to delay. The sky did not make them to be civilized, it is necessary that they die. I will not do anything against them, I will restrict myself to provide them all that must precipitate their loss. With time I will have their grounds and I will be innocent of their death. Satisfied with his reasoning, the American from goes away in the temple where he intends a minister Évangile to repeat it each day that all the men are brothers and that the Being eternal which did everything them on the same model their gave to all the duty to help ” ( Voyage in America, O.C., V, 1, p. 225 ).

In this final chapter - little read and hardly commented on, although it makes one the third of the book - Tocqueville also denounces slavery, as it will make it when it will try to obtain its abolition in the French West Indies ( O.C., III, 1 p. 41-126 ). In 1856, it makes publish a text in Liberty Bell of which here translation: “ It is not, I think, with me, a foreigner, to indicate to the United States when, how and by which slavery will be aboli."

" Nevertheless, as a persevering enemy of the despotism everywhere and in all his forms, I am painfully astonished that the freest people of the world are now almost only among the nations civilized and Christian to still maintain the constraint personal. And this while serfdom even is close disappearing where it is still done, of the most degraded nations Europe . "

" Old friend sincere of America, I worry about see slavery delaying his progress, tarnishing his glory, providing weapons to his detractors, compromising the career to come from the Union which guarantees its safety and its size, and showing in advance with all his enemies where they must strike. Like man also, I am moved by the spectacle of the degradation of the man by the man, and I hope to be born when the law will guarantee a civil liberty equal to all the inhabitants of the same empire, as God the free will without distinction grants to all those which remain on ground ” ( O.C., VII, pp. 163-164 ).

He will still say in 1850: " The United States managed to exterminate the Indian race without violating only one principle of morals to the eyes of the world . "

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The denunciation of slavery and the fight for abolition

In Dunoyer, liberal economist, who had affirmed that, although slavery is condemnable, it had to be admitted that it had had his utility in Antiquity, in particular to give the taste of work (!), he answers on April 20th, 1839 the Academy of Science morals and policies:

I thus do not believe that at any time slavery was useful for the life and the social wellbeing. I IE would believe, that I would not go yet until concluding from it that at any time the institution of slavery was good and legitimate.

I will not admit that an act unjust, immoral, attentatoire with the most crowned rights Humanité, can never be justified by a Raison of utility. It would be to admit the maxim that The end justifies the means, and it is a maxim which I always hated, and which I will always hate.

slavery, it had indeed contributed to save the life of some men and increased the richness of some people, which I deny, does not remain about it less in my eyes a horrible abuse of the force, a contempt of all the divine and human laws, which defend us to deprive of the Liberté our similar and to make it be used for in spite of him to our good ‑ being.

These facts are odious nowadays, they were not it less three thousand years ago. '

Reference: Complete works, vol. XVI, pp. 166-167

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Tocqueville thus concludes its speech with the Room to defend abolition on May 30th, 1845: “ has my eyes, the question of abolition of slavery is not only one question of interest for France, but still a question of honor. It was said much that one owed only with Christianity only the abolition of slavery. God keeps me to draw aside me from the respect which I owe has these holy doctrines, but it is well however necessary that I say it, Sirs, the emancipation such as we see it even in the English islands, is the product of a French idea. I say that it is us who, by destroying in everyone the principle of the castes, the classes, while finding, as one said, the titles of mankind which were lost, it is us who, by spreading in all the universe the notion of the equality of all the men in front of the law, as Christianity had created the idea of the equality of all the men in front of God, I say that it is we who are the true authors of the abolition of slavery.
Christianity, twelve hundred years ago, that is true, destroyed the constraint in the world, but since it had let it reappear. Fifty years ago still, Christianity slept beside slavery, and it left without claiming slavery to weigh on part of the mankind. It is us, Sirs, who awoke it; it is movement of our ideas that this admirable movement left the religious zeal, of which we see the effects in the English colonies; it is we who showed with the religious men what there was the horrible one and at the same time what one could destroy in slavery; it is us who showed them that slavery was not only contrary with the laws of God, but who it was to disappear from the human laws. It is us, in a word, who created the thought that the religious philanthropy of the English so noblement so fortunately carried out.

And notice it, Sirs, not only the abolition of slavery, the idea of the abolition of slavery, this large and holy idea left the bottom even of the French modern spirit; but much more, you see it seizing spirit of the nation more or less, according to whether the nation itself more or less feels to revive or die out in its heart the great principles of the Revolution ( O.C. III, 1, pp.124-125 ).

In spite of this speech, Tocqueville could not obtain a favorable vote of the Room to the abolition which it defended since 1839. One would need the shock of the revolution of 1848 so that Schoelcher could succeed where Tocqueville had failed, but the work of the abolitionists had created the requirements with success.

Individualism

" It is a considered feeling which lays out each citizen to be isolated from the mass of its similar so that after being itself created a company with his use it gives up readily the large company with itself ".

Colonial wars and conflicts

“For my part, I reported of Africa the afflicting concept that in this moment we make the war in a way much more barbarian than the Arabs themselves. It is, as for present, on their side which civilization meets. This manner of carrying out the war appears as inintelligente to me as it is cruel. It can enter only the coarse and brutal spirit of a soldier. It was not the sorrow indeed to put to us at the place Turks to reproduce what in them deserved the detestation of the world. That, even from the point of view of the interest, is much more harmful than useful; because, as me another officer said it, if us minks that to equalize the Turks we will be by the fact in a position quite lower than them: barbarians for barbarians, the Turks will always have on us the advantage of being Moslem barbarians. I often heard in France of the men that I respect, but that I do not approve, to find bad that the harvests were burned, that one emptied the silos and finally that one seized the men without weapons, the women and the children. It is there, following me, of the annoying needs, but to which any people which will want to make the war with the Arabs will be obliged to submit itself” (...) For me, I think that all the means of afflicting the tribes must be employed. I exclude only those which the humanity and the right of the nations reject. I believe that the right of the war authorizes us to devastate the country and that we must do it either by destroying the harvests at the time of harvest, or in all times by making these fast incursions that one names raids and who have as an aim to seize the men or the herds. ” 1841 - Extract of Work on Algeria , in complete Works , Gallimard, Pleiad, 1991, p. 704 & 705.
Chronic of an announced catastrophe:

In 1847, Tocqueville makes appear in his report/ratio on Algeria this premonitory warning: “The commission is convinced that on our manner of treating the natives depends especially the future on our domination in Africa, the manpower of our army and the fate of our finances; because, in this matter, the questions of humanity and budget are touched and merge. She believes that to long good government can bring the real pacification of the country and a very notable reduction in our army.
That if, on the contrary, without it to say, because these things were sometimes done, but never acknowledged themselves, we act so as to show that in our eyes the former inhabitants of Algeria are only one obstacle which it is necessary to draw aside or press with the feet; if we wrap their populations, not to raise them in our arms towards the wellbeing and the light, but for there the étreindre and to choke there, the question of life or dead would arise between the two races. Algeria would become, early or late, believe it, a closed field, a walled arena, where, the two people should fight without mercy, and where one of both should die. God draws aside from us, Sirs, such a destiny! ”

Faire of Tocqueville a “theorist of colonialism” raises, at least to some extent, of the anachronism. For the loss of Canada and the sale of Louisiana, it is necessary to await IIIe République to see in theory political set up colonization, in particular by Jules Ferry Tocqueville - JL Benoît - Course, Armand Colin, p140 à142. Whereas the colonizers propose the civilizing mission of France, the matter of Tocqueville is more complex. He affirms in his ratio of 1841: “We made the company Moslem much more miserable, more disordered and more barbarian who it was not before knowing us. Let us not force the natives to come in our schools, but help ‑les to raise their, to multiply those which teach there, to train the men of law and the men of religion, whose Moslem civilization cannot do without more that ours” (Ratio 1841. , O.C., p. 325).

Rather than a theorist of colonialism, Tocqueville was a “colonist” for primarily geopolitical or geostrategic reasons which it is necessary to replace in the spirit and the values of the time. It is also advisable to forget only one the third of the first edition " Of the Democracy in Amérique" denounces racism, the genocide of the Indians and who it was one of most active abolitionists the.

* Tocqueville against Bugeaud, the question of the Kabylie.

If Tocqueville admits, in his Report/ratio on Algeria, that Bugeaud knew to develop the shape of war making it possible to overcome Abd el-Kader, he was opposed violently to the whole of his action and his projects.
In its first Letter on Algeria (1837) Tocqueville wanted that France and its army leave with the variation Kabylie to safeguard a peace zone and to try to develop commercial links. It did not cease then, in all its interventions and all its texts, to be opposed to any attempt at intrusion in Kabylie. In 1846, in the debate on the extraordinary funds of 1846, not only it makes reject the applications for credit for the expensive military colonies with Bugeaud, but still, it denounces its control of military operations, its practices, the actions which it carries out against the opinion even government. “ Thus, I fully recognize great military qualities of Mr. Bugeaud marshal; but this said, it will be allowed to me to add that Mr. Bugeaud marshal did not do anything, anything, it harmed. It did not thus do anything, and often it prevented from making ” ( Tocqueville, complete Œuvres, III, 1, Gallimard, 1962, pp. 299-300 ).

Tocqueville judges the will of Bugeaud then to enter in Kabylie, in spite of the opposition of the Room, as one carried out factious in front of which the government chose by cowardice, already, “ the party of resignation, One did not repudiate the marshal Bugeaud, one did not point out it ” ( Tocqueville, complete Œuvres, III, 1, Gallimard, 1962, p. 303 ). He concludes his intervention thus: “ When I hear that a resignation was offered by the Bugeaud marshal and was not accepted, I then to prevent me from supposing only what makes maintain the Bugeaud marshal in Africa is much less it there although him for France is awaited, that the evil which one could fear of him here, to Paris ( Tocqueville, complete Œuvres, III, 1, Gallimard, 1962, pp. 299-306 ) ”.

Revolution of 1848

“I had always believed that it did not have to be hoped to regulate per degrees and in peace the movement of the Revolution of February and that it would not be stopped that by a great battle delivered in Paris. I had said it as of the shortly after on February 24th; what I live then persuaded me that not only this battle was inevitable but that the moment of it was close and that it was to be wished that one seizes the first occasion to deliver it. ” (Quoted by Sartre in the Critical of the dialectical reason, p 708)

Reception of the work of Tocqueville

Forsaken in France during several decades, the work of Tocqueville was given to the honor by Raymond Aron (in particular in its Essai on freedoms ) which could recognize in Tocqueville a precursor. Thereafter, the historian François Pipe cleaner and the philosopher Pierre Manent contributed to include/understand the richness of the work of Tocqueville.

Often badly included/understood and badly interprêté, the contribution of Tocqueville was often tiny room to some expressions (of the " type; Freedom is more important than the égalité") who betray it. In addition, its quality of liberal often disqualified it with the eyes of many intellectuals, Raymond Aron and François Furet having themselves be the object of critical sharp (for example as for their depreciation of Communism).

Works

Of the democracy in America , Schoenhofs Foreign Books (May 23rd, 1986), collection Folio,
the Old Mode and the Revolution . Paris, Garnier-Flammarion, n° 500 (edition F. Mélonio).
Selected Letters and Memories (1814-1859). Gallimard, collection Fourthly (edition: Francoise Mélonio and Laurence Guellec). 2003.
Of the democracy in America , Memories , the Old Mode and the Revolution . Paris, Books . Editions Robert Laffont, 1986. 1 volume.
Complete Works . Paris, Gallimard, 1951-2002 (29 published volumes).
On Algeria , GF Flammarion, presentation of Seloua Luste Boulbina.
Memory on pauperism 1835, Memory presented to the academic Company cherbourgeoise and published in 1835 by this one in the Memories of the academic Company of Cherbourg, 1835, pp. 293-344

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