Sara Wheeler

A new world in the making

Alexis de Tocqueville is a prophet for all seasons, continually reinterpreted as the zeitgeist shifts.

issue 20 August 2011

Alexis de Tocqueville is a prophet for all seasons, continually reinterpreted as the zeitgeist shifts. He sailed to Jacksonian America to compile a report on the prison system, and ended up writing a meditation on the nature of democracy that remains in print after 160 years. In this latest addition to the fertile field of Tocquevillian studies, Arthur Kaledin analyses the Frenchman’s character and thought before, during and after his nine-month tour around the still partially formed USA.

De Tocqueville set off in 1831 in the company of his friend Gustave de Beaumont. Both were 25, and they had a high old time, travelling as widely as they could: the frontier hovered around Ohio then, but they took a steamboat down the Mississippi from Memphis to New Orleans, calling the latter ‘le Midi’.

De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America appeared in two volumes in 1835 and 1840.

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