Tocqueville on America After 1840

Tocqueville on America After 1840 PDF Author: Alexis de Tocqueville
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780511650376
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
Tocqueville on America after 1840 provides access to Tocqueville's views on American politics from 1840 to 1859, revealing his shift in thinking and growing disenchantment with America.

Tocqueville on America After 1840

Tocqueville on America After 1840 PDF Author: Alexis de Tocqueville
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780511650376
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
Tocqueville on America after 1840 provides access to Tocqueville's views on American politics from 1840 to 1859, revealing his shift in thinking and growing disenchantment with America.

Tocqueville on America After 1840

Tocqueville on America After 1840 PDF Author: Alexis de Tocqueville
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521859557
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
Tocqueville on America after 1840 provides access to Tocqueville's views on American politics from 1840 to 1859, revealing his shift in thinking and growing disenchantment with America.

Tocqueville on America after 1840

Tocqueville on America after 1840 PDF Author:
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113947829X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America has been recognized as an indispensable starting point for understanding American politics. From the publication of the second volume in 1840 until his death in 1859, Tocqueville continued to monitor political developments in America and committed many of his thoughts to paper in letters to his friends in America. He also made frequent references to America in many articles and speeches. Did Tocqueville change his views on America outlined in the two volumes of Democracy in America published in 1835 and 1840? If so, which of his views changed and why? The texts translated in Tocqueville on America after 1840: Letters and Other Writings answer these questions and offer English-speaking readers the possibility of familiarizing themselves with this unduly neglected part of Tocqueville's work. The book points out a clear shift in emphasis especially after 1852 and documents Tocqueville's growing disenchantment with America, triggered by such issues as political corruption, slavery, expansionism and the encroachment of the economic sphere upon the political.

Democracy in America (Complete)

Democracy in America (Complete) PDF Author: Alexis de Tocqueville
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1613105002
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1320

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Book Description
Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions. I readily discovered the prodigious influence which this primary fact exercises on the whole course of society, by giving a certain direction to public opinion, and a certain tenor to the laws; by imparting new maxims to the governing powers, and peculiar habits to the governed. I speedily perceived that the influence of this fact extends far beyond the political character and the laws of the country, and that it has no less empire over civil society than over the Government; it creates opinions, engenders sentiments, suggests the ordinary practices of life, and modifies whatever it does not produce. The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated. I then turned my thoughts to our own hemisphere, where I imagined that I discerned something analogous to the spectacle which the New World presented to me. I observed that the equality of conditions is daily progressing towards those extreme limits which it seems to have reached in the United States, and that the democracy which governs the American communities appears to be rapidly rising into power in Europe. I hence conceived the idea of the book which is now before the reader. It is evident to all alike that a great democratic revolution is going on amongst us; but there are two opinions as to its nature and consequences. To some it appears to be a novel accident, which as such may still be checked; to others it seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient, and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history. Let us recollect the situation of France seven hundred years ago, when the territory was divided amongst a small number of families, who were the owners of the soil and the rulers of the inhabitants; the right of governing descended with the family inheritance from generation to generation; force was the only means by which man could act on man, and landed property was the sole source of power. Soon, however, the political power of the clergy was founded, and began to exert itself: the clergy opened its ranks to all classes, to the poor and the rich, the villein and the lord; equality penetrated into the Government through the Church, and the being who as a serf must have vegetated in perpetual bondage took his place as a priest in the midst of nobles, and not infrequently above the heads of kings. The different relations of men became more complicated and more numerous as society gradually became more stable and more civilized. Thence the want of civil laws was felt; and the order of legal functionaries soon rose from the obscurity of the tribunals and their dusty chambers, to appear at the court of the monarch, by the side of the feudal barons in their ermine and their mail. Whilst the kings were ruining themselves by their great enterprises, and the nobles exhausting their resources by private wars, the lower orders were enriching themselves by commerce. The influence of money began to be perceptible in State affairs. The transactions of business opened a new road to power, and the financier rose to a station of political influence in which he was at once flattered and despised. Gradually the spread of mental acquirements, and the increasing taste for literature and art, opened chances of success to talent; science became a means of government, intelligence led to social power, and the man of letters took a part in the affairs of the State. The value attached to the privileges of birth decreased in the exact proportion in which new paths were struck out to advancement. In the eleventh century nobility was beyond all price; in the thirteenth it might be purchased; it was conferred for the first time in 1270; and equality was thus introduced into the Government by the aristocracy itself.

Democracy in America

Democracy in America PDF Author: Alexis de Tocqueville
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101076143
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
French nobleman Alexis de Tocqueville's classic treatise on the American way of life. Over 175 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville, an astute political scientist, came to the United States to evaluate the meaning and actual functioning of democracy. Here, Tocqueville discusses the advantages and dangers of majority rule—which he thought could be as tyrannical as the rule of a monarchy. He analyzes the influence of political parties and the press on the government and the effect of equality on the social, political, and economic life of the American people. He also offers some startling predictions about world politics, which history has borne out. So brilliant and penetrating are his comments and criticisms, they have vital meaning today for all who are interested in democracy. Abridged and with an Introduction by Richard D. Heffner and an Afterword by Vartan Gregorian

Letters from America

Letters from America PDF Author: Alexis de Tocqueville
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030015383X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
A remarkable collection of charming and eloquent letters that contain the seeds of Tocqueville’s later masterful account of American democracy Young Alexis de Tocqueville arrived in the United States for the first time in May 1831, commissioned by the French government to study the American prison system. For the next nine months he and his companion, Gustave de Beaumont, traveled and observed not only prisons but also the political, economic, and social systems of the early republic. Along the way, they frequently reported back to friends and family members in France. This book presents the first translation of the complete letters Tocqueville wrote during that seminal journey, accompanied by excerpts from Beaumont’s correspondence that provide details or different perspectives on the places, people, and American life and attitudes the travelers encountered. These delightful letters provide an intimate portrait of the complicated, talented Tocqueville, who opened himself without prejudice to the world of Jacksonian America. Moreover, they contain many of the impressions and ideas that served as preliminary sketches for Democracy in America, his classic account of the American democratic system that remains an important reference work to this day. Accessible, witty, and charming, the letters Tocqueville penned while in America are of major interest to general readers, scholars, and students alike.

Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction

Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Harvey C. Mansfield
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199746316
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
No one has ever described American democracy with more accurate insight or more profoundly than Alexis de Tocqueville. After meeting with Americans on extensive travels in the United States, and intense study of documents and authorities, he authored the landmark Democracy in America, publishing its two volumes in 1835 and 1840. Ever since, this book has been the best source for every serious attempt to understand America and democracy itself. Yet Tocqueville himself remains a mystery behind the elegance of his style. Now one of our leading authorities on Tocqueville explains him in this splendid new entry in Oxford's acclaimed Very Short Introduction series. Harvey Mansfield addresses his subject as a thinker, clearly and incisively exploring Tocqueville's writings--not only his masterpiece, but also his secret Recollections, intended for posterity alone, and his unfinished work on his native France, The Old Regime and the Revolution. Tocqueville was a liberal, Mansfield writes, but not of the usual sort. The many elements of his life found expression in his thought: his aristocratic ancestry, his ventures in politics, his voyages abroad, his hopes and fears for America, and his disappointment with France. All his writings show a passion for political liberty and insistence on human greatness. Perhaps most important, he saw liberty not in theories, but in the practice of self-government in America. Ever an opponent of abstraction, he offered an analysis that forces us to consider what we actually do in our politics--suggesting that theory itself may be an enemy of freedom. And that, Mansfield writes, makes him a vitally important thinker for today. Translator of an authoritative edition of Democracy in America, Harvey Mansfield here offers the fruit of decades of research and reflection in a clear, insightful, and marvelously compact introduction.

Democracy In America

Democracy In America PDF Author: Alexis De Tocqueville
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 596

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Book Description
The Americans live in a democratic state of society, which has naturally suggested to them certain laws and a certain political character. This same state of society has, moreover, engendered amongst them a multitude of feelings and opinions which were unknown amongst the elder aristocratic communities of Europe: it has destroyed or modified all the relations which before existed, and established others of a novel kind. The-aspect of civil society has been no less affected by these changes than that of the political world. The former subject has been treated of in the work on the Democracy of America, which I published five years ago; to examine the latter is the object of the present book; but these two parts complete each other, and form one and the same work.

Tocqueville

Tocqueville PDF Author: Andre Jardin
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374521905
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 566

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Book Description
In the first full-scale biography of Tocqueville after his death. Andre Jardin condensed the vast array of information on this intriguing figure into an indispensable resource. Tocqueville: A Biography provides an insightful account that explores the complex factors that shaped Tocqueville's writing, opinions, political career, and personal life. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

The Old Regime and the Revolution

The Old Regime and the Revolution PDF Author: Alexis de Tocqueville
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description