Alexis de Tocqueville - The Old Regime and the French Revolution

PENGUIN CLASSICS

THE ANCIEN REGIME AND
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE was born in 1805 into an aristocratic French family loyal to the exiled House of Bourbon and to the Catholic Church. He acquired liberal sympathies by studying French and English history and observing the folly of the restored Bourbon monarchy; liberty became his central political ideal. Impressive academic achievements and family influence led to a legal career in government service in 1827. It was as a junior magistrate at Versailles that he met Gustave de Beaumont, the man with whom he would travel to America to prepare a study of its penal system for the French government.

After a lengthy journey round the United States, Tocqueville and Beaumont published their report on prisons; then Tocqueville turned his attention to other work. The result of this was his hugely influential two-volume Democracy in America, the first volume of which was published in 1835 (at which point he also married Mary Mottley, an Englishwoman) and the second in 1840. The book secured both his reputation as a writer and thinker, and his election to the celebrated Academie Francaise in 1841.

In 1839 Tocqueville was elected to the Chambre des Deputes, and remained a member of the French assemblies until 1851. He was Foreign Minister for five months in 1849 under Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1850-51 he wrote his Recollections of the 1848 French Revolution.

His last work, The Ancien Regime and the French Revolution, was published in 1856. He meant it to be the first volume of a grand study of the Revolution of 1789, but he did not live to complete it. He died in 1859.

GERALD BEVAN was educated at King Edwards School, Five Ways, in Birmingham, St Johns College, Cambridge, where he studied Modern and Medieval Languages, and Balliol College, Oxford. His career in the teaching of French, Latin and Religious Studies ended in 1993 at St Albans School as Director of Studies and Head of Modern Languages. He specializes in French literature from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Alongside his translation work, he teaches for the Workers Education Association offering courses in Philosophy, Psychology, Politics and Religion as well as Literature in English.

HUGH BROGAN is the author of the Penguin History of the United States of America and Alexis de Tocqueville , a biography published in 2006. A graduate of St Johns College, Cambridge, he has worked at the University of Essex since 1974, and is now a Research Professor of history there.

ALEXIS DE
TOCQUEVILLE

The Ancien Rgime
and the French Revolution

Translated and edited by GERALD BEVAN
With an Introduction by HUGH BROGAN

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN CLASSICS

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First published 1856
This translation first published in Penguin Classics 2008

Translation and editorial matter copyright Gerald Bevan, 2008
Introduction copyright Hugh Brogan, 2008
All rights reserved

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
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ISBN: 9781101489208

978-0-14-191973-7

Chronology

1805 Born in Paris, on 29 July to Herve, Comte de Tocqueville, and Louise-Madeleine, Comtesse de Tocqueville, French Catholic aristocrats

1814 Napoleon falls and the Bourbon monarchy is restored under Louis XVIII

1820-23 Tocqueville studies at the College Royal in Metz, where his father is Prefect

1823-7 Tocqueville studies law in Paris

1824 Charles X succeeds to the French throne

1827 Tocqueville granted an appointment as a minor judicial officer in the Versailles court of law

1830 Charles Xs edicts restricting suffrage and censoring the press spark a revolution on 27 July which brings his reign to an end

1830 The July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe begins on 7 August

1831 Tocqueville and his companion Gustave de Beaumont arrive in Newport, Rhode Island, on 9 May, for their nine-month visit to America

1833 Tocqueville publishes Du Systme pnitentiare aux tats-Unis with co-author Beaumont; first visit to England

1835 January. Publication of Democracy in America Part I Second Visit to England

1835 Marriage to Mary Mottley, an Englishwoman

1836 Journey to Switzerland

1839 Tocqueville elected to the French Chamber of Deputies; writes Report on the Abolition of Slavery

1840 Tocqueville publishes the two volumes of Part II of Democracy in America

1841 Journey to Algeria

1841 Tocqueville elected to the Academie Francaise

1846 Second journey to Algeria

1848 Revolution in Paris: Louis-Philippe abdicates the French throne on 24 February amidst growing popular demands by republican and socialist reformers for change

1848 Tocqueville elected in April to the Constituent Assembly for the Second Republic; later appointed French Foreign Minister by Louis Napoleon

1848 Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon, elected President of the French Second Republic in December

1850-51 Stay in Italy: writes Souvenirs, his unfinished book on the 1848 Revolution

1851 Louis Napoleon forcibly dissolves the Assembly

1851 Tocqueville resists the coup detat of Louis Napoleon, is arrested and briefly imprisoned

1852 Louis Napoleon declares himself Emperor, as Napoleon III

1852 Tocqueville begins LAncien Regime et la Revolution

1853 Studies at the Tours Archives

1854 Journey to Germany

1856 Death of his father

1856 Publication of LAncien Regime et la Revolution

1859 Having moved to Cannes for health reasons, he dies there of tuberculosis. He is buried three weeks later in his chateau in Normandy

Introduction

Classic is a word of treacherous and evasive meaning, whether we apply it to a writer or to a text. It seems to imply that the work in question is undeniably of permanent, universal value; at the very least, that it can make a solid contribution to its readers enlightenment. Yet it is not self-evident that any book can have such universal validity. Charlotte Bronte despised Pride and Prejudice; George III thought that much of Shakespeare was sad stuff, though he admitted that one must not say so. To claim that a book is a classic because vast numbers of people have enjoyed it over a vast number of years simply begs the question, why have they enjoyed it? To call a book a classic is to make a high claim for it without making a case. Hence the need for introductions.

If applied to a work of history the term is even more difficult, for most historical writing is and ought to be perishable. To write history without being content merely to repeat whatever has been said before is to engage in a perpetual argument; and, as times change, as new discoveries are made and new minds come forward, the soundest analyses grow vulnerable. A classic work of history is normally one that is left to gather dust on a high shelf; a classic historian is one who is remembered for having done good work in his day, but is now read only by specialists. In the truest sense of the word, a classic author is one who is perpetually present. With few exceptions, the great historians have left the room.