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{{Short description|French diplomat, political philosopher and historian (1805–1859)}}
{{redirect|Tocqueville}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2021}}
{{Infobox officeholder
| name                = Alexis de Tocqueville
| image               = Alexis de Tocqueville (Théodore Chassériau - Versailles).jpg
| caption             = ''[[Portrait of Alexis de Tocqueville]]'' by [[Théodore Chassériau]], 1850
| office              = [[Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (France)|Minister of Foreign Affairs]]
| primeminister       = [[Odilon Barrot]]
| term_start          = 2 June 1849
| term_end            = 30 October 1849
| predecessor         = [[Édouard Drouyn de Lhuys]]
| successor           = [[Alphonse de Rayneval]]
| office1             = [[List of presidents of departmental councils (France)|President of the General Council]] of [[Manche]]
| term_start1         = 27 August 1849
| term_end1           = 29 April 1852
| predecessor1        = [[Léonor-Joseph Havin]]
| successor1          = [[Urbain Le Verrier]]
| office2             = Member of the [[National Assembly (France)|National Assembly]]<br />for [[Manche]]
| term_start2         = 25 April 1848
| term_end2           = 3 December 1851
| predecessor2        = [[Léonor-Joseph Havin]]
| successor2          = Hervé de Kergorlay
| constituency2       = [[Sainte-Mère-Église]]
| office3             = Member of the [[Chamber of Deputies (France)|Chamber of Deputies]]<br />for [[Manche]]
| term_start3         = 7 March 1839
| term_end3           = 23 April 1848
| predecessor3        = Jules Polydore Le Marois
| successor3          = Gabriel-Joseph Laumondais
| constituency3       = [[Valognes]]
| birth_name          = Alexis Charles Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
| birth_date          = {{birth date|df=yes|1805|7|29}}
| birth_place         = [[Paris]], France
| death_date          = {{death date and age|df=yes|1859|4|16|1805|7|29}}
| death_place         = [[Cannes]], France
| resting_place       = [[Tocqueville, Manche]]
| party               = [[Movement Party (France)|Movement Party]]<ref>{{cite book|last1=Boucaud-Victoire|first1=Kévin|title=La guerre des gauches|date=2017|publisher=Editions du Cerf}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Véricour|first1=Louis Raymond|title=Modern French Literature|url=https://archive.org/details/modernfrenchlite00vruoft|date=1848|publisher=Gould, Kendall and Lincoln|page=[https://archive.org/details/modernfrenchlite00vruoft/page/104 104]}}</ref><br />(1839–1848)<br />[[Party of Order]]<br />(1848–1851)
| spouse              = {{marriage|Mary Mottley|1835}}
| signature           = Signature d’Alexis de Tocqueville.png
| alma_mater          = [[University of Paris]]
| profession          = [[Historian]], [[magistrate]], [[jurist]]
| module              = {{Infobox philosopher|embed=yes
| region           = [[Western philosophy]]
| era              = [[19th-century philosophy]]
| school_tradition = [[Liberalism]]<ref name="Jaume" /><ref name="Kahan2" /><ref name="Sankar" /><br>[[Liberal conservatism]]<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lakoff|first=Sanford|date=1998|title=Tocqueville, Burke, and the Origins of Liberal Conservatism|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-politics/article/abs/tocqueville-burke-and-the-origins-of-liberal-conservatism/EA0357FB7B4F9113F665B865C8AB5830|journal=The Review of Politics|language=en|volume=60|issue=3|pages=435–464|doi=10.1017/S003467050002742X|s2cid=145118465 |issn=1748-6858|url-access=subscription}}</ref>
| main_interests   = [[History]], [[political philosophy]], [[sociology]]
| notable_works    = ''[[Democracy in America]]'' (1835)<br />''[[The Old Regime and the Revolution]]'' (1856)
| notable_ideas    = [[Voluntary association]], [[mutual liberty]], [[soft despotism]], [[soft tyranny]], [[Tocqueville effect]]
}}
}}

'''Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, comte de Tocqueville'''{{efn|{{IPAc-en|ˈ|t|ɒ|k|v|ɪ|l|,_|ˈ|t|oʊ|k|v|ɪ|l}} {{respell|TO(H)K|vil}}; {{IPA|fr|alɛksi də tɔkvil|lang}}}} (29 July 1805{{snd}}16 April 1859),<ref name="EB1911" /> was a French diplomat, political philosopher and historian. He is best known for his works ''[[Democracy in America]]'' (appearing in two volumes, 1835 and 1840) and ''[[The Old Regime and the Revolution]]'' (1856). In both, he analyzed the [[living standards]] and social conditions of individuals as well as their relationship to the market and state in Western societies. ''Democracy in America'' was published after Tocqueville's travels in the United States and is today considered an early work of [[sociology]] and [[political science]].

Tocqueville was active in French politics, first under the [[July Monarchy]] (1830–1848) and then during the [[Second French Republic|Second Republic]] (1849–1851) which succeeded the [[French Revolution of 1848|February 1848 Revolution]]. He retired from political life after [[Napoleon III|Louis Napoléon Bonaparte]]'s [[1851 French coup d'état|2 December 1851 coup]] and thereafter began work on ''The Old Regime and the Revolution''.<ref name="Paul R Hansen 2009 p 3">{{cite book|first=Paul R.|last=Hansen|title=Contesting the French Revolution|year=2009|page=3|isbn=978-1405160841|publisher=Wiley-Blackwell}}</ref> Tocqueville argued the importance of the [[French Revolution]] was to continue the process of modernizing and centralizing the French state which had begun under King [[Louis XIV]]. He believed the failure of the Revolution came from the inexperience of the deputies who were too wedded to abstract [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] ideals.

Tocqueville was a [[classical liberal]] who advocated [[parliamentary government]] and was sceptical of the extremes of [[majoritarianism]].<ref name="Paul R Hansen 2009 p 3"/> During his time in parliament, he was first a member of the [[centre-left]] before moving to the [[centre-right]],<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jennings |first1=Jeremy |title=Revolution and the Republic: A History of Political Thought in France Since the Eighteenth Century |url=https://archive.org/details/revolutionrepubl00jenn |url-access=limited |date=2011 |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=[https://archive.org/details/revolutionrepubl00jenn/page/n198 188]|isbn=978-0198203131 }}</ref> and the complex and restless nature of his liberalism has led to contrasting interpretations and admirers across the political spectrum.<ref name="Jaume">{{cite book |last1=Jaume |first1=Lucien |title=Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty |date=2013 |publisher=Princeton University Press |page=6 |quote=The 'liberal' label is not misplaced, because Tocqueville described himself as a liberal.}}</ref><ref name="Kahan2">{{cite book |last1=Kahan |first1=Alan S. |title=Alexis de Tocqueville |date=2010 |publisher=A&C Black |pages=112–122}}</ref><ref name="Sankar">{{cite book |last1=Muthu |first1=Sankar |title=Empire and Modern Political Thought |date=2012 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |pages=261–291 |chapter=Republicanism, Liberalism, and Empire in Postrevolutionary France}}</ref><ref name="Richter">{{cite journal |last1=Richter |first1=Melvin |title=Tocqueville and Guizot on democracy: from a type of society to a political regime |journal=History of European Ideas |date=2004 |volume=30 |issue=1 |pages=61–82|doi=10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2003.08.006 |s2cid=143728735 }}</ref> For example, ''Democracy in America'' was interpreted differently across national contexts. In France and the United States, Tocqueville's work was seen as liberal, whereas both progressives and conservatives in the British Isles interpreted his work as supporting their own positions.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Bonin|first=Hugo|date=2021|title=Friend or foe? British receptions of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, 1835–1885|url=https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-021-00182-8|journal=British Politics|volume=19 |issue=4 |pages=590–608 |access-date=15 January 2025|doi=10.1057/s41293-021-00182-8|s2cid=236226826|issn=1746-9198|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

== Early life ==
Tocqueville came from an old aristocratic [[Normans|Norman]] family, the great-grandson of the statesman [[Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes|Malesherbes]], who was guillotined in 1793. He was the third son of Hervé Louis François Jean Bonaventure Clérel, Count of Tocqueville, an officer of the [[Constitutional Guard]] of King [[Louis XVI]], and Louise Madeleine Le Peletier de Rosanbo who, themselves, might have faced the [[guillotine]] but for the [[fall of Maximilien Robespierre|fall in 1794 of Maximilien Robespierre]].<ref name="KahanThinkers">{{cite book|last1=Kahan|first1=Alan S.|editor1-last=Meadowcroft|editor1-first=John|title=Major conservative and libertarian thinkers|publisher=Bloomsbury|date=2013|chapter=Alexis de Tocqueville|volume=7|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XZi9FlQLoM4C|access-date=25 May 2017|isbn=978-1441176998}}</ref> Under the [[Bourbon Restoration in France|Bourbon Restoration]], Tocqueville's father became a noble [[Peerage|peer]] and [[Prefect (France)|prefect]].<ref name="KahanThinkers" /> Tocqueville attended the [[Lycée Fabert]] in [[Metz]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lycee-fabert.com/histoire/index.html|title=Le lycée Fabert: 1000 ans d'histoire|language=fr|website=Lycée Fabert|access-date=18 September 2010|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100708125530/http://www.lycee-fabert.com/histoire/index.html|archive-date=8 July 2010}}</ref>

== Political career ==
[[File:Cloître sainte Constance (lycée Fabert de Metz).JPG|thumb|240px|left|The Fabert School in [[Metz]], where Tocqueville was a student between 1817 and 1823]]

Tocqueville, who despised the [[July Monarchy]] (1830–1848), began his political career in 1839. From 1839 to 1851, he served as member of the lower house of parliament for the [[Manche]] [[Departments of France|department]] ([[Valognes]]). He sat on the [[Centre-left politics|centre-left]],<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jardin|first1=Andre |title=Tocqueville: A Biography |date=1989|publisher=Macmillan|pages=386–387}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=Liberty and democracy: It took a Frenchman |url=https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2006/11/23/it-took-a-frenchman|newspaper=[[The Economist]]|date=23 November 2006|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250324202353/https://www.economist.com/culture/2006/11/23/it-took-a-frenchman|archive-date=24 March 2025|url-access=subscription|url-status=live}}</ref> defended [[Abolitionism|abolitionist]] views and upheld [[free trade]] while supporting the [[French rule in Algeria|colonisation of Algeria]] carried on by [[Louis-Philippe I]]'s regime. In 1842, he was elected as a member of the [[American Philosophical Society]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=APS Member History|url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=1842&year-max=1842&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced|access-date=12 April 2021|website=[[American Philosophical Society]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250123212442/https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=1842&year-max=1842&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced|archive-date=23 January 2025}}</ref>

In 1847, Tocqueville sought to found a Young Left (''Jeune Gauche'') party which would advocate wage increases, a [[progressive tax]],<ref>{{cite book|last1=Kahan|first1=Alan S.|title=Alexis de Tocqueville|date=2010|publisher=A&C Black |page=101}}</ref> and other labor concerns in order to undermine the appeal of the socialists.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Jaume|first1=Lucien|title=Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty|date=2013|publisher=Princeton University Press|page=84}}</ref>

=== In the Second Republic ===
After the fall of the July Monarchy in the [[French Revolution of 1848|Revolution of 1848]], Tocqueville was [[1848 French Constituent Assembly election|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 [[French Second Republic|Second Republic]] (1848–1851). He defended [[bicameralism]] and the election of the [[President of France|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.<ref name="Paris, 1999">"Regularization" is a term used by Tocqueville himself, see {{lang|fr|Souvenirs}}, Third part, pp. 289–290 French ed. (Paris, [[Éditions Gallimard|Gallimard]], 1999).</ref>

Led by [[Louis Eugène Cavaignac|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.<ref name="Paris, 1999" /> 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.<ref>Coutant Arnaud, ''Tocqueville et la constitution democratique'', Paris, Mare et Martin, 2008, 680 p. See also [http://www.arnaud-coutant.fr/ "Le blog de arnaud.coutant.over-blog.com"].</ref>[[File:Commission révision Constitution 1851.JPG|thumb|250px|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 [[Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (France)|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]].<ref name="Tocqueville 2006">{{cite book|last1=Epstein|first1=Joseph|author-link1=Joseph Epstein (writer)|date=2006|title=Alexis De Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide|publisher=[[HarperCollins]]|isbn=0060598980|page=148}}</ref>

This active support in favour of laws restricting political freedoms stands in contrast of his defence of freedoms in ''Democracy in America''. According to Tocqueville, he favoured 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″.<ref name="Tocqueville 2006" />

=== Opposition to Louis Napoleon ===
Tocqueville had supported Cavaignac against [[Napoleon III|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 [[Bourbon Restoration in France|Restoration]] of the [[Bourbons]] against Napoleon III's [[Second French Empire|Second Empire]] (1851–1871), quit political life and retreated to his castle ({{lang|fr|[https://www.chateaudetocqueville.com/ Château de Tocqueville]}}).<ref name="ReferenceA">Epstein, ''Alexis De Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide'' (2006), p. 160.</ref>

Against this image of Tocqueville, biographer Joseph Epstein 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."<ref name="ReferenceA" /> There, he began the draft of {{lang|fr|L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution}}, publishing the first tome in 1856 but leaving the second one unfinished.

== Travels ==

=== North America ===
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 they did visit some prisons, Tocqueville and Beaumont traveled widely in the United States: from the east-coast cities to what was then the [[American frontier|north-west frontier]], [[Michigan Territory|Michigan]]; by steamboat down the [[Ohio River|Ohio]] and [[Mississippi River|Mississippi]] to [[New Orleans]]; and by stagecoach across [[The American South|the South]] back toward the east coast and north to [[New York City|New York]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Weingroff |first=Richard F. |date=2023 |title=Alexis de Tocqueville on Transportation in America |url=https://highways.dot.gov/highway-history/general-highway-history/alexis-de-tocqueville-transportation-america#:~:text=Introduction,prisons%20(then%20considered%20progressive). |website=U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration}}</ref> Tocqueville also made a side trip to [[Montreal]] and [[Quebec City]].<ref>[http://www.ameriquefrancaise.org/en/article-466/Alexis_de_Tocqueville%E2%80%99s_visit_to_Lower_Canada_in_1831.html "Alexis de Tocqueville's visit to Lower Canada in 1831"].</ref> Throughout his trip, he took extensive notes on his observations and reflections.<ref name="twsC11r44">{{cite news |author=Joshua Kaplan |year=2005 |title=Political Theory: The Classic Texts and their Continuing Relevance |publisher=The Modern Scholar |quote=14 lectures; (lectures #11 & #12) – see disc 6.}}</ref> He returned within nine months and published a report, ''The Penitentiary System in the United States'', although the more well-known result of his tour was his major work ''Democracy in America'', which appeared in 1835.<ref name="EB1911">{{cite EB1911|wstitle=Tocqueville, Alexis Henri Charles Maurice Clerel, Comte de|volume=26|page=1043}}</ref> Beaumont also wrote an account of their travels in ''Jacksonian America: Marie or Slavery in the United States'' (1835).<ref>Gustave de Beaumont. {{Cite web|title=Marie: ou l'Esclavage aux États-Unis; Online Library of Liberty|url=https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/beaumont-marie-ou-l-esclavage-aux-etats-unis|access-date=28 October 2023|website=oll.libertyfund.org}}</ref><ref>Gustave de Beaumont. [http://www.auxforgesdevulcain.fr/collections/litteratures/marie-ou-lesclavage-aux-etats-unis/ "Marie ou l'Esclavage aux États-Unis"]. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150521212952/http://www.auxforgesdevulcain.fr/collections/litteratures/marie-ou-lesclavage-aux-etats-unis/|date=21 May 2015}}</ref>

=== England and Ireland ===
Tocqueville returned to France in February 1832. Before putting the finishing touches to his reflections on American democracy, he departed for England in 1833. Tocqueville had a private reason for crossing the [[English Channel|Channel]]: to meet the family of Mary Mottley, a young woman he had met at Versailles.<ref name=":0" />{{rp|xiii–xiv}} The couple were married in 1836.<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal |last=Carroll |first=Ross |date=2018 |title=The Hidden Labors of Mary Mottley, Madame de Tocqueville |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/45153720 |journal=Hypatia |volume=33 |issue=4 |pages=(643–662) 644 |doi=10.1111/hypa.12442 |jstor=45153720 |hdl=10871/32784 |issn=0887-5367|hdl-access=free }}</ref> He stayed five weeks in England, eager to observe what many imagined as the dawning of the age of democracy, the passage of the [[Parliamentary Reform Act 1832|Parliamentary Reform Act]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Mayer |first=J. P. |title=Alexis de Tocqueville, Journeys to England and Ireland [1833–35] |publisher=Anchor Books |year=1968 |editor-last= |edition= |location=New York |pages=xiii–xiv |chapter=Introduction}}</ref>{{rp|xiii–xiv}} Tocqueville concluded that there was "a good chance for the English to succeed in modifying the social and political set-up ... without violent convulsions". The [[British nobility]] was open to new recruits. He suggested that the difference with the French was "clear from the use of one word" as "''[[gentleman]]'' in English applies to any well-educated man, regardless of birth, whereas in France ''gentilhomme'' can only be used of a noble by birth".<ref name=":0" />{{rp|xiv}}

In May 1835, Tocqueville returned to England but then in summer with Beaumont travelled on to Ireland,<ref name=":0" />{{rp|xviii}} then part of the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland]]. He described Ireland as having "all the evils of an [[aristocracy]] and none of its advantages". There was "no moral tie between rich and poor; the difference of political opinion of religious belief and the actual distance they live apart make them strangers one to the other, one could almost say enemies".<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=de Tocqueville |first=Alexis. |title=Journeys to England and Ireland [1833–35] |publisher=Anchor Books |year=1968 |location=New York |pages=}}</ref>{{rp|114–115}} In this circumstance he remarked on the "unbelievable unity between the [[Catholic Church in Ireland|Irish clergy]] and the Catholic population". The people looked to the clergy, and the clergy "rebuffed" by the "upper classes" ("[[Protestant Ascendancy|Protestants and enemies]]"), had "turned all its attention to the lower classes; it has the same instincts, the same interests and the same passions as the people; [a] state of affairs altogether peculiar to Ireland".<ref name=":1" />{{rp|127–128}}

Back in England, Tocqueville found confirmation of a close connection between centralisation and democratisation. He observed that in England centralisation took a form less absolute than in France. It was of "legislation and not administration", and co-existed with a "spirit of [civic] association" that in responding to specific and local issues narrowed the range of government intervention.<ref name=":0" />{{rp|xvi}} Tocqueville had intended the joint impressions of their trip to Britain and Ireland would form the basis of a work by Beaumont, just as their common reflections of the United States on had served as him as material for ''Democracy in America''.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Wrynn |first=John F |date=1992 |title=If You Ever Go Across the Sea to Ireland ...", Alexis de Tocqueville's Journey in Ireland: July-August, 1835 Translated and edited by Emmet Larkin Catholic University of America Press, 1990 |url=https://newspapers.bc.edu/?a=d&d=irishliterary19920301-01.2.20&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------- |journal=Irish Literary Supplement |volume=11 |issue=1 |pages=9}}</ref> Beaumont did produce ''L'Irlande sociale, politique et religieuse'' (1839)''.'' Much praised by [[Daniel O'Connell]], the first sentence of its historical introduction read: "The dominion of the English in Ireland, from [[Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland|their invasion of the country in 1169]], to the close of the last century, has been nothing but a tyranny."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Edna |first=O'Doherty |date=2020 |title=The Poor Man At His Gate |url=https://drb.ie/the-poor-man-at-his-gate/ |access-date=2024-12-31 |website=DRB |language=en-US}}</ref>

=== Algeria ===
In 1841 and 1846, Tocqueville traveled to [[French Algeria|Algeria]] which France had invaded and colonised from 1830. Having himself entertained the possibility of settling in Algeria as a colonist, from his election to the [[Chamber of Deputies (France)|Chamber of Deputies]] in 1839 Tocqueville had come to be seen as the parliament's foremost expert on the colony.<ref name=":2" /> In 1837, he had written of his hope for eventual intermarriage between the French and indigenous Arabs and their amalgamation into a distinct whole.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |last=Pitts |first=Jennifer |date=1999 |title=Liberalism and empire: Tocqueville on Algeria |url=http://www.la.utexas.edu/users/chenry/civil/resources/PittsAPSA.htm |access-date=2024-12-30 |website=www.la.utexas.edu}}</ref> Following the first of his two visits to Algeria (again accompanied by Beaumont), his position was reversed. When it came to the French colonists, he "displayed his usual liberalism", as he criticised the "coarseness and violence" of the military rule to which they too were subject.<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal |last=Richter |first=Melvin |date=1963 |title=Tocqueville on Algeria |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1405738 |journal=The Review of Politics |volume=25 |issue=3 |pages=362–398 |doi=10.1017/S0034670500006112 |jstor=1405738 |issn=0034-6705}}</ref>{{rp|376–377}}  Yet from what he observed of Algerian society, including what he understood as "the absence of all political life",<ref name=":3" />{{rp|377}} he was persuaded that not only could its violent subjugation be justified but also that its result could not, and should never, be assimilation of the indigenous people into the civil and political life of France.<ref name=":2" />

== Death ==
A longtime sufferer from bouts of [[tuberculosis]], Tocqueville eventually succumbed to the disease on 16 April 1859 and was buried in the Tocqueville cemetery in [[Normandy]].{{citation needed|date=July 2020}} He was survived by his English wife of 23 years, Mary Mottley. Although she was "too liberal ... too Protestant, too middle-class, and too English" for some in his family, de Tocqueville described Mottley as perhaps his only true friend.<ref name=":5" /> While they had hoped for a family, they had no children.<ref name=":4">{{Cite web |title=Mary Mottley A Remembrance Madame Marie de Tocqueville |url=http://www.stmarysalv.free-online.co.uk/marymottley.htm |access-date=2024-12-31 |website=www.stmarysalv.free-online.co.uk}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Sueur |first=Sheila Le |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u64gjgEACAAJ |title=Open Every Door: Mary Mottley – Mme. Marie de Tocqueville |date=2015 |publisher=Dandelion Books |isbn=978-0996708906 |language=en}}</ref>

In advance of their marriage, Mottley converted to [[Roman Catholicism]],<ref name=":4" /> Tocqueville's professed religion,.<ref>Tocqueville, Alexis de. ''Democracy in America'', Chicago: University of Chicago, 2000, pp. 282–283.</ref> While she appeared to be comparatively devout, Tocqueville's own attitude toward religion has been described as "utilitarian", regarding it as a "social cement, a safety valve for passions that might otherwise feed a revolutionary torrent dangerous to individual liberty".<ref name=":6">{{Cite journal |last=Berlin |first=Isiah |date=1965 |title=The Thought of de Tocqueville: Review of Jack Lively, The Social and Political Thought of Alexis de Tocqueville (Oxford, 1962: Clarendon Press) |url=https://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/published_works/singles/bib101a.pdf |journal=History |issue=50 |pages=(198–206), 205}}</ref> Provided it was separated from state power, Tocqueville did not believe that his church was bound to be anti-democratic.<ref name=":6" />

== ''Democracy in America'' ==
{{main|Democracy in America}}
[[File:Page from original working manuscript of Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville.jpg|thumb|250px|A page from original working [[manuscript]] of ''[[Democracy in America]]'', {{circa|1840}}]]
In ''Democracy in America'', published in 1835, Tocqueville wrote of the [[New World]] and its burgeoning democratic order. Observing from the perspective of a detached social scientist, Tocqueville wrote of his travels through the United States in the early 19th century when the [[Market Revolution]], [[Manifest destiny|Western expansion]] and [[Jacksonian democracy]] were radically transforming the fabric of American life.<ref name=twsC11r44/>

According to [[political scientist]] Joshua Kaplan, one purpose of writing ''Democracy in America'' was to help the people of France get a better understanding of their position between a fading [[Aristocracy|aristocratic order]] and an emerging [[Democracy|democratic order]] and to help them sort out the confusion.<ref name=twsC11r44/> Tocqueville saw democracy as an enterprise that balanced [[liberty]] and [[Egalitarianism|equality]], concern for the individual as well as for the community.<ref name="Lakoff1987">{{cite book |last1=Lakoff |first1=Sanford |chapter=Liberty, Equality, Democracy: Tocqueville's Response to Rousseau |editor1-last=Feaver |editor1-first=George |editor2-last=Rosen |editor2-first=Frederick |title=Lives, Liberties and the Public Good: New Essays in Political Theory for Maurice Cranston |date=1987 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK |isbn=978-1349080069 |pages=104, 113 |chapter-url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-08006-9_6 |doi=10.1007/978-1-349-08006-9_6}}</ref> On a negative note, Tocqueville remarked that "in democracies [[manners]] are never so refined as amongst aristocratic nations."
<ref>{{cite book |last=Tocqueville |first=Alexis de|author-link=Alexis de Tocqueville |translator=Henry Reeve |title=Democracy in America |year=1840 |publisher=Saunders and Otley |location=London |page=[https://archive.org/details/democracyinamer13tocqgoog/page/n130/mode/2up 116] |oclc=1064604970 |title-link=Democracy in America }}</ref>

Tocqueville was an ardent supporter of liberty. He wrote: "I have a passionate love for liberty, law, and respect for rights. I am neither of the revolutionary party nor of the conservative. ... Liberty is my foremost passion." He wrote of "Political Consequences of the Social State of the Anglo-Americans" by saying: "But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom."<ref>Volume One, Part I, Chapter 3. In the original, "Il y a en effet une passion mâle et légitime pour l'égalité qui excite les hommes à vouloir être tous forts et estimés. Cette passion tend à élever les petits au rang des grands, mais il se rencontre aussi dans le cœur humain un goût dépravé pour l'égalité, qui porte les faibles à vouloir attirer les forts à leur niveau, et qui réduit les hommes à préférer l'égalité dans la servitude à l'inégalité dans la liberté."[https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/De_la_démocratie_en_Amérique/Édition_1848/Tome_1/Première_partie/Chapitre_3]</ref>

The above is often misquoted as a slavery quote because of previous translations of the French text. The most recent translation by Arthur Goldhammer in 2004 translates the meaning to be as stated above. Examples of misquoted sources are numerous on the internet such as "Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom",<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.notable-quotes.com/s/slavery_quotes.html|title=Slavery Quotes|publisher=Notable-quotes.com|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120419033033/http://www.notable-quotes.com/s/slavery_quotes.html|access-date=23 June 2012|archive-date=19 April 2012}}</ref> but the text does not contain the words "Americans were so enamored by equality" anywhere.<!--I don't see what's so wrong with this translation, and I think this paragraph can be dropped.-->

His view on government reflects his belief in liberty and the need for individuals to be able to act freely while respecting others' rights. Of centralized government, he wrote that it "excels in preventing, not doing".<ref>Vol. One, Part I, Ch. 5, George Lawrence translation.</ref> Tocqueville continues to comment on equality by saying: "Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power. As none of them is strong enough to fight alone with advantage, the only guarantee of liberty is for everyone to combine forces. But such a combination is not always in evidence".<ref>[[q:Alexis de Tocqueville]].</ref>

Tocqueville explicitly cites inequality as being incentive for the poor to become rich. He observes that it is not often that two generations within a family maintain success, and considers [[inheritance law]]s which divide a person's estate among multiple heirs to cause a constant cycle of churn between the poor and the rich, thereby over generations making the poor rich and the rich poor. He cites protective laws in France at the time that protected an estate from being split apart among heirs, thereby preserving wealth and preventing a churn of wealth such as was perceived by him in 1835 within the United States.<ref name=LRB_article>{{cite magazine |last=Cussen |first=Oliver |title=Bourgeois Stew |volume=45 |number=22 |date=16 November 2023 |magazine=[[London Review of Books]] |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n22/oliver-cussen/bourgeois-stew |url-access=limited |quote=America itself was constantly on the move, due in no small measure to partible inheritance laws which, in contrast to [[primogeniture]], destroyed the bond between family and land.}}</ref>

=== On civil and political society and the individual ===
{{Liberalism in France}}
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]].<ref name=zaleski>{{cite journal|last=Zaleski|first=Pawel|url=http://zaleski.wex.pl/2008%20tocqueville%20on%20civilian%20society.pdf|title=Tocqueville on Civilian Society. A Romantic Vision of the Dichotomic Structure of Social Reality|journal=[[Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte]]|volume=50|publisher=Felix Meiner Verlag|year=2008|issn=0003-8946|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181009053108/http://zaleski.wex.pl/2008%20tocqueville%20on%20civilian%20society.pdf|archive-date=9 October 2018|url-status=dead}}</ref> 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#Modern history|civil society]] functioning according to political and [[civil code|civil laws]] of the [[State (polity)|state]].<ref name=twsC11r44/><ref name=zaleski/>

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."<ref name=twsC11r44/> While Tocqueville saw [[egotism]] and [[selfishness]] as vices, he saw individualism not as 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.<ref name=twsC11r44/>

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.<ref name=twsC11r44/> 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.<ref name=twsC11r44/> 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.<ref name="Daniel Schwindt">{{cite web|url=https://ethikapolitika.org/2014/01/06/refuting-tocqueville-way-tocqueville/|title=Refuting Tocqueville by Way of Tocqueville|author=Daniel Schwindt|date=January 2014|publisher=Ethika Politika|access-date=24 August 2016}}</ref> To make his case, Schwindt provides citations such as the following:<blockquote>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.<ref name="Daniel Schwindt"/></blockquote>

=== On democracy and new forms of tyranny ===
{{Conservatism in France|Intellectuals}}
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.<ref>James Wood. [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/05/17/tocqueville-in-america "Tocqueville In America"]. ''The New Yorker''. 17 May 2010.</ref> 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.<ref name=twsC11r44/>

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".<ref name=twsC11r44/> 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".<ref name=twsC11r44/>

=== 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; however, his conclusions 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.{{citation needed|date=July 2020}}

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."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/DETOC/ch2_18.htm|title=Tocqueville: Book II Chapter 18|publisher=Xroads.virginia.edu|access-date=23 June 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120607070314/http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ch2_18.htm|archive-date=7 June 2012|url-status=dead}}</ref> 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 [[Fee tail|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.<ref name=twsC11r44/>

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.<ref name=twsC11r44/> 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.<ref name=twsC11r44/> Overall, hereditary fortunes in the new democracies became exceedingly difficult to secure and more people were forced to struggle for their own living.{{citation needed|date=July 2020}}

[[File:Alexis de Tocqueville.jpg|thumb|250px|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.{{citation needed|date=July 2020}}

=== 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. Tocqueville argued that this culture promoted a relatively pronounced equality, 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.<ref name=twsC11r44/>

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".<ref name=twsC11r44/>

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."<ref name=twsC11r44/> 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 "swept up in something that they could not control".<ref name=twsC11r44/>

=== 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 observes among the American races: {{blockquote|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.<ref>Beginning of chapter 18 of ''Democracy in America'', "The Present and Probably Future Condition of the Three Races that Inhabit the Territory of the United States".</ref><!-- What edition, whose translation? -->}}

Tocqueville contrasted the settlers of Virginia with the middle class, religious [[Puritans]] who founded [[New England]] and analyzed the debasing influence of slavery: {{blockquote|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.<ref>''Democracy in America'', Vintage Books, 1945, pp. 31–32.</ref>}}

Tocqueville maintained that the friction between races in America was deeper than merely the issue of slavery, even going so far as to say that discrimination against African Americans was worse in states where slavery was outlawed:{{blockquote|Whosoever has inhabited the United States must have perceived that in those parts of the Union in which the negroes are no longer slaves, they have in no wise drawn nearer to the whites. On the contrary, the prejudice of the race appears to be stronger in the States which have abolished slavery, than in those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those States where servitude has never been known.<ref>''Democracy in America'', Alexis de Tocqueville, Henry Reeve; Google Books, 1899, pp. 383. [https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5QadI6HHEE2p6tSZ-oFLByHRJuH-vheuB9P5p3RwLLgGwgxOxbAlv3i6CvoqErvXyBz99HbYgxSyBIbR50SjwbTjzufcWpY8EdIJTQLlN9j4QAbtvMRbFHkWZieFlqc4hyvRNwP2OmYyzrrIwWeQwzCNZKe7PF2Xz996uP6sEoFUI1SDyNmVRRyXvE23kllDJ7kxzmwa8nxSbQI5rNb6OKxM4VQrEtZZqsmktjtfp9ffhAD89YSZKOZgIBfrnO-ddsI0ujy5h]</ref>}}

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'': {{blockquote|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'': {{blockquote|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.<br><br>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.<ref>In {{lang|fr|Oeuvres completes}}, Gallimard, T. VII, pp. 1663–1664.</ref>}}

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 "[[Genocide|extermination]]" to describe what was happening during the colonization of Western United States and the [[Indian removal]] period.<ref name="Negationnism">{{cite news|author=[[Olivier LeCour Grandmaison]]|title=Le négationnisme colonial|work=[[Le Monde]]|date=2 February 2005|url=http://www.ldh-toulon.net/article.php3?id_article=491|language=fr|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060228040334/http://www.ldh-toulon.net/article.php3?id_article=491|archive-date=28 February 2006}}</ref>

=== On policies of assimilation ===
According to Tocqueville, assimilation of black people would be almost impossible, as was already being demonstrated in the Northern states; however, assimilation was the best solution for Native Americans, and since they were too proud to assimilate, they would inevitably become extinct. [[Forced migration|Displacement]] was another part of America's [[Indian Removal|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 opposed [[Arthur de Gobineau]]'s theories as found in ''[[An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races]]'' (1853–1855).<ref>{{lang|fr|Correspondence avec Arthur de Gobineau}} as quoted by [http://www.revue-lebanquet.com/fr/art/2001/299.htm Jean-Louis Benoît]. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060216051008/http://www.revue-lebanquet.com/fr/art/2001/299.htm|date=16 February 2006}}</ref>

=== 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."<ref>Alexis de Tocqueville, ''Democracy in America'', pp. 412–413.</ref>

=== On civil jury service ===
Tocqueville believed that the American jury system was particularly important in educating citizens in self-government and rule of law.<ref name="Civil Jury">Hans, Valerie P.; Gastil, John; and Feller, Traci, [https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub/1328/ "Deliberative Democracy and the American Civil Jury"] (2014). Cornell Law Faculty Publications. Paper 1328.</ref> 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."<ref>Tocqueville, Alexis de ([1835] 1961). [http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ ''Democracy in America''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070109091450/http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7EHYPER/DETOC/ |date=9 January 2007 }}. New York: Schocken.</ref>

Tocqueville believed that jury service not only benefited the society as a whole but also 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."<ref name="Civil Jury"/>

== Views on Algeria ==

Alexis de Tocqueville was an important figure in the colonization of Algeria. A member of French parliament during the [[French conquest of Algeria]] and subsequent [[July Monarchy]], Tocqueville took it upon himself to become an expert on the Algeria question, and to this end penned a number of discourses and letters. He also made a point of studying Islam, the Quran, and the Arabic language, in order to better understand the country.<ref>{{cite journal | url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1405738 | jstor=1405738 | title=Tocqueville on Algeria | last1=Richter | first1=Melvin | journal=The Review of Politics | date=16 March 1963 | volume=25 | issue=3 | pages=362–398 | doi=10.1017/S0034670500006112 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25166254 | jstor=25166254 | title=Empire's Law: Alexis de Tocqueville on Colonialism and the State of Exception | last1=Kohn | first1=Margaret | journal=Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue Canadienne de Science Politique | date=16 March 2024 | volume=41 | issue=2 | pages=255–278 | doi=10.1017/S0008423908080402 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9760.00104 | doi=10.1111/1467-9760.00104 | title=Empire and Democracy: Tocqueville and the Algeria Question | date=2000 | last1=Pitts | first1=Jennifer | journal=Journal of Political Philosophy | volume=8 | issue=3 | pages=295–318 | url-access=subscription }}</ref>

=== 1837 letters on Algeria ===
In a series of letters penned by Alexis de Tocqueville, he describes the situation of France as well as the geography and society of Algeria at the time.

{{blockquote|"Suppose that the Emperor of China, landing in France at the head of an armed power, should make himself master of our largest cities and of our capital. That after having burned all the public registers before suffering to read them, and having destroyed or dispersed all of the civil service without inquiring into their various attributions, he should finally seize every functionary – from the head of the government to the campesino guards, the peers, the deputies, and in general the whole ruling class – and deport them all at once to some distant country. Do you not think that this great prince, in spite of his powerful army, his fortresses and his treasures, will soon find himself extremely unprepared in administering the conquered country; that his new subjects, deprived of all those who conducted or could conduct affairs of state, will be unable to govern themselves, while he, coming from the antipodes, knows neither the religion, nor the language, nor the laws, nor the habits, nor the administrative customs of the country, and who has taken care to remove all those who could have instructed him in them, will be in no state rule them. You will therefore have no difficulty in foreseeing that if the parts of France which are materially occupied by the victor obey him, the rest of the country will soon be given over to an immense anarchy."<ref name="Tocqueville 2023, p.135">Alexis de Tocqueville, ''Travels in Algeria'', ed. Yusuf Ritter, Tikhanov Library, 2023</ref>}}

Despite being initially critical of the French invasion of Algeria, Toccqueville also believed that geopolitical necessities of the time would not allow for a withdrawal of military forces for two reasons: first, his understanding of the international situation and France's position in the world; and second, changes in French society.<ref name="Monde diplomatique">{{cite news|author=Olivier LeCour Grandmaison|title=Torture in Algeria: Past Acts That Haunt France – Liberty, Equality and Colony|work=Le Monde diplomatique|date=June 2001|url=http://mondediplo.com/2001/06/11torture2}}</ref> 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".<ref name="mondediplo806">Alexis de Tocqueville, "Rapports sur l'Algérie", in {{lang|fr|Œuvres complètes}}, Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de [[la Pléiade]], 1991, p. 806, quoted in {{cite news|author=Olivier LeCour Grandmaison|title=Torture in Algeria: Past Acts That Haunt France – Liberty, Equality and Colony|work=Le Monde diplomatique|date=June 2001|url=http://mondediplo.com/2001/06/11torture2}}</ref>

=== 1841 discourse on the conquest of Algeria ===
Tocqueville expressed himself in an 1841 essay concerning the conquest of Algeria in which he called for a dual program of "[[Colonialism|domination]]" and "[[Colony|colonization]]".<ref name="Tocqueville 2023, p.135">Alexis de Tocqueville, ''Travels in Algeria'', ed. Yusuf Ritter, Tikhanov Library, 2023</ref><ref name="Tocqueville 2001, pp. 57–64">Alexis De Tocqueville, ''Writings on Empire and Slavery'', ed. Jennifer Pitts, Johns Hopkins (Baltimore), 2001, pp. 57–64.</ref>

{{blockquote|For my part, I have brought back from Africa the distressing notion that at the moment we are waging war in a much more barbaric manner than the Arabs themselves. At present, theirs is the side of civilization. This way of waging war seems to me as stupid as it is cruel. It can only enter into the crude and brutal mind of a soldier. It was not worth putting displacing the Turks to reproduce that which in them deserved the detestation of the world. That, even from the point of view of interest, is much more harmful than useful; because, as another officer said to me, if we only aim to equal the Turks we will be by the fact in a position much lower than them: barbarians among barbarians, the Turks will always have on us the advantage of being Muslim barbarians. It is thus to a principle superior to theirs that we must appeal.<ref>1841 – Extract of {{lang|fr|Travail sur l'Algérie}}, in {{lang|fr|Œuvres complètes}}, Gallimard, Pléïade, 1991, pp. 704–705.</ref><ref>{{cite news|author=Olivier LeCour Grandmaison |title=Torture in Algeria: Past Acts That Haunt France – Liberty, Equality and Colony|work=[[Le Monde diplomatique]]|date=June 2001|url=http://mondediplo.com/2001/06/11torture2}} (quoting Alexis de Tocqueville, {{lang|fr|Travail sur l'Algérie}} in {{lang|fr|Œuvres complètes}}, Paris, Gallimard, [[Bibliothèque de la Pléiade]], 1991, pp. 704–705).</ref>{{parabreak}}
I have often heard in France men whom I respect, but whom I do not agree with, say that it wrong to burn the harvests, to empty the silos and finally to imprison unarmed men, women and children. These are, in my opinion, unfortunate necessities, but ones to which any people who want to make war on the Arabs will be obliged to submit. And, if I must say what I think, these acts do not revolt me more or even as much as several others which the law of war obviously authorizes and which take place in all the wars of Europe. Why is it more odious to burn harvests and take women and children prisoner than to bombard the harmless population of a besieged city or to seize merchant ships belonging to the subjects of an enemy power at sea? The one is, in my opinion, much crueler and less justifiable than the other.<ref>{{cite web|author=Olivier LeCour Grandmaison|title=Tocqueville et la conquête de l'Algérie|year=2001|publisher=La Mazarine|url=http://perso.wanadoo.fr/felina/doc/alg/olcg.htm|language=fr}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Sanctions as War: Anti-Imperialist Perspectives on American Geo-Economic Strategy |date=2023 |publisher= Haymarket Books|isbn=978-1642598124 |location= |page=52 |oclc=1345216431|last1=Davis |first1=Stuart }}</ref>}}

Applauding the methods of [[Thomas Robert Bugeaud de la Piconnerie|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."<ref name="mondediplo806"/> 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.<ref>{{lang|fr|Travail sur l'Algérie}}, {{lang|la|op.cit.}} p. 752. Quoted in {{cite news|author=Olivier LeCour Grandmaison|title=Torture in Algeria: Past Acts That Haunt France – Liberty, Equality and Colony|work=Le Monde diplomatique|date=June 2001|url=http://mondediplo.com/2001/06/11torture2}}</ref>{{blockquote| 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.<ref name="Tocqueville 2023, p.135">Alexis de Tocqueville, ''Travels in Algeria'', ed. Yusuf Ritter, Tikhanov Library, 2023</ref>}}

Such a two-tier arrangement would be fully realised with the 1870 [[Crémieux Decree|Crémieux decree]] and the [[Indigénat|Indigenousness Code]], which extended [[French nationality law|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:

{{blockquote|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.<ref name="Tocqueville 2023, p.135">Alexis de Tocqueville, ''Travels in Algeria'', ed. Yusuf Ritter, Tikhanov Library, 2023</ref>}}

=== Opposition to the invasion of Kabylia ===
[[File:Tocqueville by Daumier.jpg|thumb|250px|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.{{citation needed|date=July 2020}} Although Tocqueville had favoured retention of distinct traditional law, administrators, schools and so on for [[Arab]]s 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:

<blockquote>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<ref name="Travels in Algeria, Alexis de Tocqueville">{{cite book|author=Alexis de Tocqueville|translator=Yusuf Ritter|title=Travels in Algeria, The United Empire Loyalists|publisher=Tikhanov Library|isbn=978-1777646097|page=17}}</ref></blockquote>

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 [[Abdelkader El Djezairi|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.<ref name="Travels in Algeria, Alexis de Tocqueville"/> 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.<ref>Tocqueville, {{lang|fr|Oeuvres completes}}, III, 1, Gallimard, 1962, pp. 299–300.</ref> 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.<ref>Tocqueville, {{lang|fr|Oeuvres completes}}, III, 1, Gallimard, 1962, p. 303.</ref><ref>Tocqueville, {{lang|fr|Œuvres complètes}}, III, 1, Gallimard, 1962, pp. 299–306.</ref>

=== 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.<ref>{{in lang|fr}} Jean-Louis Benoît. [http://www.revue-lebanquet.com/fr/art/2001/299.htm "Arguments in favor of Tocqueville"]. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060216051008/http://www.revue-lebanquet.com/fr/art/2001/299.htm|date=16 February 2006}}.</ref> 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 [[Abdelkader El Djezairi|Abd-el-Kader]]. 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.<ref name="Tocqueville 2001, pp. 57–64" />

Tocqueville argued that although unpleasant, domination via violent means is necessary for colonization and justified by the laws of war. Such laws are not discussed in detail; however, 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. Furthermore, 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 (law)|proportionality]] and discrimination.<ref>De Tocqueville. ''Writings on Empire and Slavery'', ed. Jennifer Pitts (2001), pp. 57–64, 70–78.</ref>

== ''The Old Regime and the Revolution'' ==
{{main|The Old Regime and the Revolution}}
In 1856, Tocqueville published ''The Old Regime and the Revolution''. The book analyzes French society before the [[French Revolution]]—the ''[[ancien régime]]''—and investigates the forces that caused the Revolution.<ref>Alexis de Tocqueville. ''The Old Regime and the French Revolution''. New York: Anchor Books (1955).</ref>

== References in popular literature ==
Tocqueville was quoted in several chapters of [[Toby Young]]'s memoirs ''[[How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (memoir)|How to Lose Friends and Alienate People]]'' to explain his observation of widespread homogeneity of thought even amongst intellectual elites at [[Harvard University]] during his time spent there. He is frequently quoted and studied in American history classes. Tocqueville is the inspiration for Australian novelist [[Peter Carey (novelist)|Peter Carey]] in his 2009 novel ''[[Parrot and Olivier in America]]''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://petercareybooks.com/Parrot-Olivier-America |title=Parrot and Olivier in America|date=28 April 2012|publisher=Petercareybooks.com|access-date=23 June 2012}}</ref> Tocqueville and his memoir ''Recollections'' are mentioned in [[Ada Palmer]]'s novel ''[[Too Like the Lightning]]'' to describe someone with divided loyalty.

== Works ==
* Ritter, Yusuf. ''Travels in Algeria, United Empire Loyalists''. Tikhanov Library, 2023. [https://tikhanovlibrary.com/product/travels-in-algeria-2/ "Travels in Algeria, United Empire Loyalists"]
* ''Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America: Their Friendship and Their Travels'', edited by [[Olivier Zunz]], translated by Arthur Goldhammer (University of Virginia Press, 2011, {{ISBN|978-0813930626}}), 698 pages. Includes previously unpublished letters, essays, and other writings.
* [https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k4627724.image {{lang|fr|Du système pénitentaire aux États-Unis et de son application en France}}] (1833) – ''On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application to France,'' with [[Gustave de Beaumont]].
* {{lang|fr|De la démocratie en Amérique}} (1835/1840) – ''[[Democracy in America]]''. It was published in two volumes, the first in 1835, the second in 1840. English language versions: Tocqueville, ''[[Democracy in America]]'', trans. and eds, Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, University of Chicago Press, 2000; Tocqueville, ''Democracy in America'' (Arthur Goldhammer, trans.; [[Olivier Zunz]], ed.) (The Library of America, 2004) {{ISBN|978-1931082549}}.
* {{lang|fr|L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution }} (1856) – ''[[The Old Regime and the Revolution]]''. It is Tocqueville's second most famous work.
* [https://archive.org/details/recollectionsofa00tocquoft ''Recollections''] (1893) – This work was a private journal of the Revolution of 1848. He never intended to publish this during his lifetime; it was published by his wife and his friend Gustave de Beaumont after his death.
* ''Journey to America'' (1831–1832) – Alexis de Tocqueville's travel diary of his visit to America; translated into English by George Lawrence, edited by [[J.-P. Mayer]], Yale University Press, 1960; based on vol. V, 1 of the {{lang|fr|[[s:Œuvres complètes d'Alexis de Tocqueville, Lévy/Mélanges, fragments historiques et notes|Œuvres Complètes]]}} of Tocqueville.
* ''L'État social et politique de la France avant et depuis 1789'' – Alexis de Tocqueville
* [http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/Tocqueville_rr2.pdf ''Memoir on Pauperism: Does public charity produce an idle and dependant class of society?''] (1835) originally published by Ivan R. Dee. Inspired by a trip to England. One of Tocqueville's more obscure works.
* [https://archive.org/details/journeystoenglan013498mbp ''Journeys to England and Ireland''], 1835.

== See also ==
{{Portal|France|Liberalism|Biography}}
* ''[[The Alexis de Tocqueville Tour: Exploring Democracy in America]]''
* [[Alexis de Tocqueville Institution]]
* [[Benjamin Constant]], author of ''Liberty of the Ancients and the Moderns''
* [[Ferdinand de Lesseps]], French diplomat and developer of Suez Canal
* [[Prix Alexis de Tocqueville]]

===General===
* [[Contributions to liberal theory]]
* [[List of historians of the French Revolution]]

== Notes ==
{{notelist}}

== References ==
{{reflist|30em}}

== Further reading ==
* Allen, Barbara. ''Tocqueville, Covenant, and the Democratic Revolution: Harmonizing Earth with Heaven''. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005.
* Allen, James Sloan. "Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America." ''Worldly Wisdom: Great Books and the Meanings of Life''. Savannah, GA: Frederic C. Beil, 2008.
* Benoît, Jean-Louis. ''Comprendre Tocqueville''. Paris: Armand Colin/Cursus, 2004.
* Benoît, Jean-Louis, and Eric Keslassy. ''Alexis de Tocqueville: Textes économiques Anthologie critique''. Paris: Pocket/Agora, 2005. See [http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/benoit_jean_louis/benoit_jean_louis.html "Jean-Louis Benoit"].
* Benoît, Jean-Louis. ''Tocqueville, Notes sur le Coran et autres textes sur les religions''. Paris: Bayard, 2005. See also [http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/benoit_jean_louis/relectures_de_tocqueville/relectures_de_tocqueville.html "Relectures de Tocqueville"] and [http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/benoit_jean_louis/tocqueville_trouve_ses_juges/tocqueville_trouve_ses_juges.html "Tocqueville aurait-il enfin trouvé ses juges ? Ôter son masque au parangon de la vertu démocratique"].
* [[Boesche, Roger]]. ''The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville''. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987.
* Boesche, Roger. ''Tocqueville's Road Map: Methodology, Liberalism, Revolution, and Despotism''. Lnahma, MD: Lexington Books, 2006.
* Brogan, Hugh. ''Alexis De Tocqueville''. London: Profile Books, and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.
* Cossu-Beaumont, Laurence. ''Marie ou l'esclavage aux Etats-Unis'' de Gustave de Beaumont (1835). Paris: Forges de Vulcain, 2014. {{ISBN|978-2919176526}}.
* Coutant, Arnaud. ''Tocqueville et la Constitution democratique''. Mare et Martin, 2008.
* Coutant, Arnaud. ''Une Critique républicaine de la démocratie libérale, de la démocratie en Amérique de Tocqueville''. Mare et Martin, 2007.
* Craiutu, Aurelian, and Jeremy Jennings, eds. ''Tocqueville on America after 1840: Letters and Other Writings''. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 560 pp. {{ISBN|978-0521859554}}.
* Damrosch, Leo. ''Tocqueville's Discovery of America''. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2010.
* Drescher Seymour. ''Tocqueville and England''. Cambridge, MA: Harward University Press, 1964.
* Drescher, Seymour. ''Dilemmas of Democracy: Tocqueville and Modernization''. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1968.
* Epstein, Joseph. ''Alexis De Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide''. New York: Atlas Books, 2006.
* Feldman, Jean-Philippe. "Alexis de Tocqueville et le fédéralisme américain". ''Revue du droit public et de la science politique en France et à l'Étranger'', n° 4 (20 June 2006): 879–901.
* Galbo, Joseph. "Ethnographies of empire and resistance: 'wilderness' and the 'vanishing Indian' in Alexis de Tocqueville's 'A Fortnight in the Wilderness' and John Tanner's ''Narrative of Captivity''". ''The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences''. Vol. 4 (5) 2009: 197–212. ([https://www.academia.edu/12711554/Ethnographies_of_empire_and_resistance_wilderness_and_the_vanishing_Indian_in_Alexis_de_Tocquevilles_A_Fortnight_in_the_Wilderness_and_John_Tanners_Narrative_of_Captivity Academia])
* Gannett, Robert T. ''Tocqueville Unveiled: The Historian and His Sources for the Old Regime and the Revolution''. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
* Geenens, Raf and [[Annelien De Dijn]] (eds), ''Reading Tocqueville: From Oracle to Actor''. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 2007.
* Hein, David. "Christianity and Honor." ''The Living Church'', 18 August 2013, pp.&nbsp;8–10.
* Herr, Richard. ''Tocqueville and the Old Regime''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962.
* Jardin, Andre. ''Tocqueville''. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1989.
* Jaume, Lucien, ''Tocqueville''. Bayard, 2008.
* Kahan, Alan S. ''Aristocratic Liberalism: The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhardt, Johns Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville''. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992; Transaction, 2001.
* Kahan, Alan S. ''Alexis de Tocqueville''. New York: Continuum, 2010.
* {{cite encyclopedia|last=Kuznicki|first=Jason|editor-first=Ronald|editor-last=Hamowy|editor-link=Ronald Hamowy|encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism|title=Tocqueville, Alexis de (1805–1859)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC|year=2008|publisher=[[SAGE Publishing|Sage]]; [[Cato Institute]]|location=Thousand Oaks, CA|doi=10.4135/9781412965811.n310|isbn=978-1412965804|oclc=750831024|lccn=2008009151|pages=507–509}}
* [[Jack Lively (political scientist)|Lively, Jack]]. ''The Social and Political Thought of Alexis De Tocqueville''. Oxford: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 1962.
* Mansfield, Harvey C. ''Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction''. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
* Mélonio, Françoise. ''Tocqueville and the French''. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998.
* Mitchell, Harvey. ''Individual Choice and the Structures of History – Alexis de Tocqueville as an historian reappraised''. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
* Mitchell, Joshua. ''The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and the American Future''. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
* Pierson, George. ''Tocqueville and Beaumont in America''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1938. Reissued as ''Tocqueville in America''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
* Pitts, Jennifer. ''A Turn to Empire''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
* Ritter, Yusuf. [https://tikhanovlibrary.com/travels-in-algeria.html ''Travels in Algeria, United Empire Loyalists'']. Tikhanov Library, 2023.
* Sanders, Luk. "The Strange Belief of Alexis de Tocqueville: Christianity as Philosophy". ''International Journal of Philosophy and Theology'', 74:1 (2013): 33–53.
* Schuettinger, Robert. "Tocqueville and the Bland Leviathan". ''New Individualist Review'', Volume 1, Number 2 (Summer 1961): 12–17.
* Schleifer, James T. ''The Chicago Companion to Tocqueville's'' Democracy in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. {{ISBN|978-0226737034}}.
* Schleifer, James T. ''The Making of Tocqueville's Democracy in America''. Chapell Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980; 2nd ed., Indianapolis, IN: [[Liberty Fund]], 1999.
* Shiner, L.E. ''The Secret Mirror: Literary Form and History in Tocqueville's Recollections'' Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988.
* Swedberg, Richard ''Tocqueville's Political Economy'' Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
* Welch, Cheryl. ''De Tocqueville''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
* Welch, Cheryl. ''The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville''. Cambridge, Eng., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
* Williams, Roger L., "Tocqueville on Religion," ''Journal of the Historical Society'', 8:4 (2008): 585–600.
* [[Sheldon Wolin|Wolin, Sheldon]]. ''Tocqueville Between Two Worlds''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.

== External links ==
{{wikisource|works=or}}
{{Wikiquote}}
{{Commons|Charles Alexis Henri Clérel de Tocqueville|Alexis de Tocqueville}}
* {{gutenberg author|id=424|name=Alexis de Tocqueville}}
* {{Internet Archive author|sname=Alexis de Tocqueville}}
* {{Librivox author|id=4312}}
* {{cite web|url=https://tikhanovlibrary.substack.com/p/alexis-de-tocquevilles-first-letter|title=Alexis de Tocqueville's First Letter on Algeria|date=4 June 2023 |access-date=21 October 2023}}
* {{cite web|url=http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/sycomore/fiche.asp?num_dept=11091|title=Alexis, Charles, Henri Clérel de Tocqueville (1805–1859)|language=fr|work=Assemblée nationale|access-date=14 May 2012}}
* {{cite web|url=http://www.tocqueville.culture.fr/en/|title=Alexis de Tocqueville|access-date=14 May 2012}}
* {{cite web|url=http://www.academie-francaise.fr/immortels/base/academiciens/fiche.asp?param=379|title=Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)|language=fr|work=Académie française|access-date=14 May 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101213061159/http://academie-francaise.fr/immortels/base/academiciens/fiche.asp?param=379|archive-date=13 December 2010}}
* {{cite web|url=http://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/personnage/Tocqueville/146951|title=Charles Alexis Henri Clérel de Tocqueville|language=fr|work=Encyclopédie Larousse|access-date=14 May 2012}}
* [http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/De_tocqueville_alexis/de_tocqueville.html {{lang|fr|Les classiques des sciences sociales}}] Works in the original French.
* [[hdl:10079/fa/beinecke.tocque|Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts]]. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
* {{Official website|url=https://www.chateaudetocqueville.com/en?origin_locale=fr|name=The Tocqueville castle in the footsteps of Alexis de Tocqueville}}

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{{succession box|title=[[Minister of Foreign Affairs (France)|Minister of Foreign Affairs]]|before=[[Édouard Drouyn de Lhuys]]|after=[[Alphonse de Rayneval]]|years=2 June 1849{{snd}}31 October 1849}}
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