De la démocratie en Amérique (published in two volumes, the first in 1835 and the second in 1840) is a
classicThe term Western canon denotes a canon of books and, more broadly, music and art that have been the most important and influential in shaping Western culture. As such, it includes the "greatest works of artistic merit." Such a canon is important to the theory of educational perennialism and the...
French text by
Alexis de TocquevilleAlexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution . In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in...
. A "literal" translation of its title is
Of Democracy in America, but the usual translation of the title is simply
Democracy in America. In the book, Tocqueville examines the democratic revolution that he believed had been occurring over the past seven-hundred years.
In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville and
Gustave de BeaumontGustave de Beaumont was a French magistrate, prison reformer, and travel companion to the famed philosopher and politician Alexis de Tocqueville...
were sent by the French government to study the American
prisonA prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
system. In his later letters, Tocqueville indicates, however, that he and Beaumont used this as a pretext to study American society instead. They arrived in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
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 CanadaThe Province of Lower Canada was a British colony on the lower Saint Lawrence River and the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence...
(modern-day
QuebecQuebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
) and
Upper CanadaThe Province of Upper Canada was a political division in British Canada established in 1791 by the British Empire to govern the central third of the lands in British North America and to accommodate Loyalist refugees from the United States of America after the American Revolution...
(modern-day
OntarioOntario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
).
After they returned to France in February 1832, Tocqueville and Beaumont submitted their report,
Du système pénitentiaire aux États-Unis et de son application en France, in 1833. When the first edition was published, Beaumont, sympathetic to social injustice, 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 America. Before finishing
Democracy in America, Tocqueville believed that Beaumont's study of America would prove more comprehensive and penetrating.
Purpose of Democracy in America
Tocqueville begins his book by describing the change in social conditions taking place. He observed that over the previous seven-hundred years the social and economic conditions of men had become more equal. The
aristocracyAristocracy , is a form of government in which a few elite citizens rule. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best". In origin in Ancient Greece, it was conceived of as rule by the best qualified citizens, and contrasted with monarchy...
, Tocqueville believed, was gradually disappearing as the modern world experienced the beneficial effects of equality. Tocqueville traced the development of equality to a number of factors: allowing all men enter the
clergyClergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. A clergyman, churchman or cleric is a member of the clergy, especially one who is a priest, preacher, pastor, or other religious professional....
, trading and commerce gave economic opportunity to men everywhere, kings would sell titles of nobility to raise money, and the abolishment of
primogeniturePrimogeniture is the right, by law or custom, of the firstborn to inherit the entire estate, to the exclusion of younger siblings . Historically, the term implied male primogeniture, to the exclusion of females...
, to name a few. Tocqueville described this revolution as a "providential fact" of an "irresistible revolution," leading some to criticize the
determinismDeterminism is the general philosophical thesis that states that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen. There are many versions of this thesis. Each of them rests upon various alleged connections, and interdependencies of things and...
found in the book. However, based on his correspondences with friends and colleagues, Marvin Zetterbaum, Professor Emeritus at University of California Davis, concludes that Tocqueville never accepted democracy as determined or inevitable. He did, however, consider equality more just and therefore found himself among its partisans.
Given the social state that was emerging, Tocqueville believed that a "new political science" would be needed. According to him, it would:
. . . instruct democracy, if possible to reanimate its beliefs, to purify its mores, to regulate its movements, to substitute little by little the science of affairs for its inexperience, and knowledge of its true instincts for its blind instincts; to adapt its government to time and place; to modify it according to circumstances and men: such is the first duty imposed on those who direct society in our day.
The remainder the book can be interpreted as an attempt to accomplish this goal thereby giving advice to those people who would experience this change in social states.
The Puritan Founding
Tocqueville begins his study of America by explaining the contribution of the Puritans. According to him, the Puritans established Americas democratic social state of equality. They arrived equals in education and were all middle class. In addition, Tocqueville observed that they contributed a synthesis of religion and political liberty in America that was uncommon in Europe, particularly in France. He calls the Puritan Founding the "seed" of his entire work.
The Federal Constitution
Tocqueville believed that the Puritans established the principle of sovereignty of the people in the
Fundamental Orders of ConnecticutThe Fundamental Orders were adopted by the Connecticut Colony council on January 14, 1638/39 OS . The orders describe the government set up by the Connecticut River towns, setting its structure and powers....
. The
American RevolutionThe American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
then popularized this principle, followed by the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which developed institutions to manage popular will. While Tocqueville speaks highly of the America's Constitution, he believes that the mores, or "habits of mind" of the American people play a more prominent role in the protection of freedom.
- Mores, Laws, and Circumstances
- Self-Interest Rightly Understood
Importance
Democracy in America was published in two volumes, the first in 1835 and the other in 1840. It was immediately popular in both Europe and the United States, while also having a profound impact on the French population. By the twentieth century, it had become a classic work of
political sciencePolitical Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
, social science, and
historyHistory is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
. It is a commonly assigned reading for undergraduates of American universities
majoringIn the United States and Canada, an academic major or major concentration is the academic discipline to which an undergraduate student formally commits....
in the political or social sciences, and part of the introductory political theory syllabus at Oxford and other institutions. In the introduction to his translation of the book, Harvey C. Mansfield called it "at once the best book ever written on democracy and the best book ever written on America.
Tocqueville's work is often acclaimed for making a number of correct predictions. Tocqueville correctly anticipates the potential of the debate over the
abolitionAbolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
of
slaverySlavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
to tear apart the United States (as it indeed did in the
American Civil WarThe American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
) and the rise of the United States and Russia as rival
superpowerA superpower is a state with a dominant position in the international system which has the ability to influence events and its own interests and project power on a worldwide scale to protect those interests...
s, which they did become after World War II, with
RussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
as the central component of the Soviet Union. Noting the rise of the industrial sector in the American economy, some scholars have argued that Tocqueville also correctly predicted that an industrial aristocracy will rise from the ownership of labor, warning that '...friends of democracy must keep an anxious eye peeled in this direction at all times', saying further that the route of industry was the gate by which a new found wealthy class may potentially dominate. However, Tocqueville believed that an industrial aristocracy would differ from the formal aristocracy of the past. Tocqueville also explained the alienation and isolation that many have come to experience in modern life. On the other hand, Tocqueville notes that a democracy's equality of conditions stifles literary development, spending numerous chapters lamenting the state of the arts; written just prior to America's own literary Renaissance (due in large part to writers such as Edgar Allen Poe,
Henry David ThoreauHenry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
,
Ralph Waldo EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
,
Herman MelvilleHerman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
,
Nathaniel HawthorneNathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
and
Walt WhitmanWalter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
). Also mentioning the employment of science for the sole purpose of streamlining production of material goods, he also failed to properly assess America's capabilities on the stage of scientific endeavor.
According to Tocqueville, democracy had some unfavorable consequences: the tyranny of the majority over thought, a preoccupation with material goods, and isolated individuals.
Democracy in America predicted the violence of party spirit and the judgment of the wise subordinated to the prejudices of the ignorant.
See also
- Economic sociology
Economic sociology studies both the social effects and the social causes of various economic phenomena. The field can be broadly divided into a classical period and a contemporary one. The classical period was concerned particularly with modernity and its constituent aspects...
- Tocqueville, Democracy in America
External links
- Democracy in America, complete, at The University of Adelaide Library
- 1831 Notes of Alexis de Tocqueville in Lower Canada
- Democracy in America, the full book text (Note: this is public domain)
- Booknotes, February 26, 1995 - Interview with Alan Ryan
Alan James Ryan, FBA was Warden of New College, Oxford, and Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford and currently a lecturer at Princeton University....
on the writing of the introduction to the 1994 version of Democracy in America
- Booknotes, December 17, 2000 - Interview with Harvey Mansfield
Harvey Claflin Mansfield, Jr. is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1962. He has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships and has been a Fellow at the National Humanities Center; he also received the National Humanities Medal in 2004 and...
on the 2000 University of Chicago PressThe University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, dozens of academic journals, including Critical Inquiry, and a wide array of...
edition of Democracy in America, which he and his wife, Delba Winthrop, translated and edited. (Audio plays upon load; page includes transcript)