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Alexis de Tocqueville — (1805-1859)
Writer and French Politician
At age 16 Tocquevile entered the College Royal in Metz to study philosophy. During this time Tocqueville began to have doubts about the role of the aristocracy in French government and suffered a deep religious crisis that would effect him for the rest of his life. After finishing at the College Royal at age 18, Tocqueville moved back to Paris where he studied law.
In 1827, Tocqueville received a position as apprentice magistrate at the Versailles court of law. During this period Tocqueville began to have increasingly liberal sympathies as a result of his belief that the decline of the aristocracy was inevitable.
The July Revolution of 1830, in which Charles X abdicated and Louis-Philippe acceded to the throne, had strong repercussions on Tocqueville's life. As a result of the revolution and the change of power from the Bourbon to the Orleans family, Tocqueville's father lost his peerage and Tocqueville's position in France became precarious. Seeing that France was moving toward increasing democratization, he looked to the United States as a political model. With the pretext of wanting to study prison reforms in America, Tocqueville obtained permission to travel there in order to gain knowledge of American political development, knowledge which he hoped to use in order to influence France's political development. After his trip to America, Tocqueville visited England to study the British system of government.
In 1835, the first part of Democracy in America was published. A highly positive and optimistic account of American government and society, the book was very well received throughout Europe. That same year Tocqueville married Mary Motley, an Englishwoman. The marriage was a scandal to Tocqueville's family because they considered Mary Motley to be of inferior birth.
In 1837 he ran for the Chamber of Deputies but lost, mostly because of his noble background. The following year he was named to the Legion of Honor for Democracy in America, and in 1839 he was elected to the Chamber.
In 1840 the second part of Democracy in America was published. This volume was substantially more pessimistic than the first, warning of the dangers despotism and governmental centralization, and applying his ideas and criticisms more directly to France. As a result, it was not received as well as the first part, except in England where it was acclaimed highly.
Tocqueville was opposed to the French Revolution of 1848, but worked to help form the new government in the revolution's aftermath. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly and helped to write the constitution of the Second Republic. The following year Tocqueville was elected to the Legislative Assembly and became Vice President of the Assembly and Minister of Foreign Affairs.
He was later excluded from political life and focused on writing The Old Regime and the French Revolution in the early 1850s. This work is an account of French history leading up to the French Revolution in 1789 which emphasizes factors which led to the failure of the Revolution and the continual lapses into despotic government which Tocqueville witnessed during his lifetime.
Source: GradeSaver
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