Alexis de Tocqueville - Ancien Regime 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
1

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

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ISBN: 9781101489208

978-0-14-191973-7

Contents

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

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.