I had heard only a little about Alexis de Tocqueville before I listened to this audiobook. I knew that he was from France, and that he had written a famous book about America. I knew a few other things about him. But for all intents and purposes, I consider this audiobook to be my introduction to Tocqueville’s ideas. Since I first listened to this, I undertook to read the book itself in its original French. The book’s title is “De la démocratie en Amérique” (“Democracy in America”), and it took me over three years to finish. Specifically, I read it from March 2019 to July 2022.
The audiobook gives both positive and negative aspects of Tocqueville’s thought. I thought that this audiobook covered them in the right proportions. More to the point, I thought that they correctly identified which of these ideas were good, and which of them were bad. But this audiobook is not just an examination of his ideas. To some degree, it is also a biography of Tocqueville himself. For example, they describe how he was born into an aristocratic family in France. Tocqueville’s ancestors were Norman noblemen, and one of them had fought on the side of William the Conqueror at the earlier Battle of Hastings. They also mention Tocqueville’s Catholic upbringing, and his studying law in school. But he was ill-suited to become a lawyer, even if he enjoyed certain aspects of law. Nonetheless, his legal education would later benefit him, when he wrote about political philosophy in the mid-nineteenth century.
Alexis de Tocqueville
They also discuss Tocqueville’s travels to America, along with his friend Gustave de Beaumont. The two men were visiting on official business for the French government. Their mission was to study America’s prisons, and other American penal institutions. But Tocqueville and Beaumont also made a close study of America’s political and social institutions. In all, the two men spent nine months in the United States, with the exception of a time when they visited nearby Canada. Eventually, though, the French government forced the two men to come home and submit their report on America’s penal system. Gustave de Beaumont would later write a novel about American slavery, which painted the institution in a negative light – as Tocqueville would later do in “Democracy in America.” But it was Tocqueville’s book that was destined to become world-famous. He would gain a wide following for his commentaries on American society.
Gustave de Beaumont, a friend of Tocqueville who traveled with him in America
A significant portion of the audiobook analyzes the ideas of “Democracy in America.” Since I dedicated an entire post to the work itself, I will not duplicate much of that coverage here. But the book’s most important contribution was that it was an outside perspective on American society. To some degree, this compromises Tocqueville’s effectiveness, since his lack of inside knowledge sometimes prevented him from understanding certain features of American society. (More about that here.) But he did talk about the success of American democracy, and the way that the “Anglo-Americans” had protected their own freedoms. He also condemned slavery in America, and further condemned America’s treatment of the native peoples. During his time in America, he was an eyewitness to one of the most tragic episodes in Native American history. Specifically, he witnessed the infamous “Trail of Tears.” There is a paragraph in “Democracy in America” that describes some of the events that he had witnessed. Although he did not use the phrase “Trail of Tears,” it seems clear that this incident is what he was talking about.
The Trail of Tears, an event to which Alexis de Tocqueville was a horrified eyewitness
Overall, my assessment of this work has tended to be positive, although I acknowledge that there are negatives as well. They go into his later political career, and briefly discuss a work that Tocqueville wrote later in life. This was “L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution” (“The Old Regime and the [French] Revolution”), written in 1856. I have not read this other work, and so cannot give any informed commentary about this work. But suffice it to say that this work, although unfinished, spoke to the concerns of many Frenchmen in his generation, and spoke more directly about the problems of France.
Alexis de Tocqueville
I could go on about this audiobook, talking about how it analyzes the work that it’s covering. But suffice it to say that this is the best introduction to the work itself that you’re likely to find for audio. I re-listened to this presentation before writing my review of the work itself, because I wanted this audiobook’s summary to be fresh in my mind when I wrote about the work itself. I highly recommend this three-hour audiobook to anyone interested in Tocqueville. It’s a great summary of the arguments, and is much less of a commitment of time than actually reading the work itself. But as someone who has read the work in its original French, I should testify that reading the book itself is the best route, and that listening to this audiobook is the next best thing.
If you liked this post, you might also like:
Part of the audiobook series
The Giants of Political Thought
Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America
Others to be covered later
See also the audiobook series
The United States Constitution
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