In 1839, Tocqueville was elected to serve in the Chamber of Deputies as representative of Valognes, a town near Cherbourg and also adjacent to the Tocqueville chateaux. And he was there in 1852 at the dissolution of the Second Republic and the beginning of the Second Empire with the proclamation of Napoleon III as emperor of France. He saw Louis Philippe abdicate and flee for England in the February 1848 Revolution, and the beginning of the Second Republic.
He witnessed the Bourbon monarchy restored after the fall of Napoleon - then saw it fall again by the workings of Louis Philippe in the July Revolution of 1830. He was born in 1805, the same year that Napoleon scored one of his greatest victories at the battle of Austerlitz. His grandparents and parents were victims of the violence of the French Revolution in the 1790s. And his was a life lived through a remarkable period in French history. Tocqueville never returned to America, but he carried the lessons he learned with him for the rest of his life. He never forgot his trip to the United States. Thus they were able to enjoy liberty and equality simultaneously. Through voluntary associations, vigorous local government, a pursuit of self-interest rightly understood, and laws that were based on an accepted moral structure taught in disestablished church bodies, Americans were able to strike that critical balance between private interests and the interests of the community. Tocqueville noticed that Americans apparently had the singular ability to prevent equality of conditions from yielding democratic despotism. And they were geographically mobile, moving westward from place to place in search of their fortunes. They were politically mobile - an American could rise from obscurity to power in America without having to worry about his parentage. They were mobile socially and economically - they could become entrepreneurs and build their own wealth without much to constrain them. After careful observation of American customs, laws, institutions, and religion, he determined that the one defining factor in the United States was equality of conditions.īy this, Tocqueville meant that since there was no feudal tradition with all its social hierarchies, Americans were a highly mobile people.
He produced the book in two volumes - the first, which came out in 1835 and the second, which came out in 1840 - after taking a tour of the United States with his colleague and friend Gustave de Beaumont in 1831-32. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) is perhaps best known among Americans as the author of the influential work, Democracy in America.
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