Alexis Tocqueville

In 1831 Tocqueville set out from post-revolutionary France on a journey across America that would take him 9 months and cover 7,000 miles. The result was DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA: a subtle and prescient analysis of the life and institutions of 19th-century America. Tocqueville's study of the strengths and weaknesses of an evolving democratic society has been quoted by every American president since Eisenhower. It remains a key point of reference for any discussion of the American nation or the democratic system.

And Two Essays on America

Democracy in America

De La D�mocratie en Am�rique (published in two volumes, the first in 1835[1] and the second in 1840) is a classic French text by Alexis de Tocqueville. Its title translates as On Democracy in America, but English translations are usually simply entitled Democracy in America. In the book, Tocqueville examines the democratic revolution that he believed had been occurring over the previous seven hundred years.In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont were sent by the French government to study the American prison system. In his later letters Tocqueville indicates that he and Beaumont used their official business as a pretext to study American society instead. They arrived in New York City in May of that year and spent nine months traveling the United States, studying the prisons, and collecting information on American society, including its religious, political, and economic character. The two also briefly visited Canada, spending a few days in the summer of 1831 in what was then Lower Canada (modern-day Quebec) and Upper Canada (modern-day Ontario).After they returned to France in February 1832, Tocqueville and Beaumont submitted their report, Du syst�me p�nitentiaire aux �tats-Unis et de son application en France, in 1833. When the first edition was published, Beaumont, sympathetic to social justice, was working on another book, Marie, ou, L'esclavage aux Etats-Unis (two volumes, 1835), a social critique and novel describing the separation of races in a moral society and the conditions of slaves in the United States. Before finishing Democracy in America, Tocqueville believed that Beaumont's study of the United States would prove more comprehensive and penetrating.

Alexis Tocqueville

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