Dan Snow's History Hit - Tocqueville: The Search for Liberty, Equality & Democracy

Episode Date: May 3, 2023

In 1831, the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville left the troubled continent of Europe and set sail for America. Travelling in the shadow of the French Revolution, his goal was to learn about the world's largest democracy and work out how France could move forward. He would eventually publish a remarkable account of life and politics in the United States that became one of the best 19th century accounts of the burgeoning democracy. But Tocqueville would go on to travel to a myriad of other places by ship and stagecoach, on horseback and on foot across North America, Europe and North Africa. In this episode, Dan is joined by Jeremy Jennings, author of Travels with Tocqueville Beyond America, to find out more about his little-known travels beyond the United States.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.You can take part in our listener survey here.If you want to get in touch with the podcast, you can email us at [e-mail], we'd love to hear from you!

Hi, buddy. Welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Welcome to this multi-award winning podcast. As of last night, we went to the ARIA Awards, the UK's leading audio awards, and our work from Antarctica, from the Endurance Expedition last year, was recognized by the Academy. So thank you very much to everyone who voted for us and all that kind of stuff. Congratulations in particular to the people who make this podcast happen. That is Mariana Day-Forge, the producer, Dougal Patmore, the editor, who is receiving tangled bits of audio on WhatsApp and various other satellite communications at all hours of the night and day during the endurance exhibition of me just monologuing, screaming into my phone in the wilderness, going slowly mad.

Thank you to them for working so hard, and Hannah Ward for being an assistant producer as well, together with the team behind the podcast, and they deserve all the credit for the awards. This episode of the podcast has absolutely nothing to do with the Antarctic, nothing at all. We're talking about Alexis de Tocqueville, the French 19th century aristocrat, the political theorist, the commentator, but who's most famous for his travels. He traveled to the USA, in which he delivered a series of smoking hot takes on the young American republic. In this episode, we're going to talk about his travels more widely.

I'm talking to Jeremy Jennings. He's a professor of political theory at King's College, London. We had a wonderful chat about de Tocqueville's travels beyond America, which happily is the subject of a new book written by Jeremy Jennings as well. He didn't just go to America. He was in Britain. He was in North Africa, Germany, and France. And in this conversation, Jeremy tells me how all that affected his

world view. Enjoy T-minus 10 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima God save the king no black white unity till there is first and black unity never to go to war with one another again and lift off

and the shuttle has cleared the tower Jeremy, great to shuttle has cleared the tower. Jeremy, great to have you on the podcast. Great to be here. Thank you very much. For someone with such a famous name, I realise I don't actually know anything about his life at all. Who was Alexis de Tocqueville? Well, he was a French aristocrat. Quite a few of his members of the family were executed in the French Revolution,

so that he was born is something of a miracle. Came from a very aristocratic family of a traditional political kind, in a sense very much attached to the Bourbon monarchy. So he was born in 1804, I think, and he starts a legal career in the 1820s. That's where he meets his great friend, Gustave de Beaumont, with whom he travels a lot subsequently. As you probably know, in 1830, there was another revolution in France, and the Bourbon monarchs were kicked out, and the Orleanist family became the royal family. Now, this might seem a trivial matter from a distance, but at the time, it was a big thing. And the family divided, and about what were they going to do?

Because they had to swear oath of loyalty to the family divided. And about what were they going to do? Because they had to swear oath of loyalty to the new regime. And most of his family said no and went off into the countryside and would not see it again. Tocqueville said he was a young man, his career mattered, so he signed the oath of loyalty. But he was in a very embarrassing position. So he thought, what can I do? I'll go to America. And quite literally, it was a way of getting out of the country. And so in the early 1830s, he goes to America with Gustave de Beaumont. And he's there from 1831 to 1832. And then he writes the great book, Democracy in America.

And it becomes one of the most remarkable and important commentaries on American life and sort of democracy loosely defined. But before we talk about it, what are his politics? As he's going to this young harem, scarem republic on the other side of the Atlantic? Is he going with the slight superciliousness of a sort of ancien regime aristocrat? Or what's his mindset? That's very interesting because, again, remember that anyone of that generation thinking about

politics at the time was doing so in the shadow of the French Revolution, in the shadow of Napoleon Bonaparte, in these 25 years of mayhem and so on and so forth. And then trying to think about, well, how can France move forward from that situation? So in a sense, that was the question that he was fascinated by, and most of his generation were fascinated by that question. How can we respond to these traumatic events,

which has shaken France and its foundations? In actual fact, when he goes to America, the ploy is that he manages to convince the French government that he should write a book on prison reform, which he does, incidentally, which he actually doesn't. He's remained interested in prison reform the rest of his life. What is not clear, and it's impossible to decide conclusively,

is when the idea of writing a book about America appeared to him. Some people say he actually had the idea before he went. I don't think that's true. I think it sort of steadily came to him because it was one of the things that made him a great traveler. He was a great observer.

And can read the letters of his journey across the Atlantic, his immediate arrival, and straight away, immediately, he sees a society the like of which he's simply been incapable of imagining before. It's the newness of it, or part of the newness of it, remember he's a young French aristocrat, is what's missing. There's no aristocracy in America. So when he starts talking about democracy, he doesn't just mean people voting.

He means democracy is a social form, and that form, he thinks, is equality. And then he starts thinking very quickly, ah, that's the future, not just for America, but for all of us. And so he's partly writing a book about America, but also with France in mind, because he's partly writing a book about America, but also with France in mind, because he says, sooner or later, fellow French citizens, you've got to deal

with this problem. We all talk about how bad we are at the moment at changing our minds. You know, we talk about ourselves as very polarised societies in the US, whether it's obviously famously around your party label in the UK perhaps it's around Brexit are we saying that this young French aristocrat as you say great traveller great writer but was he a great traveller because he allowed himself to be convinced by the things that he saw on did his attitude change towards democracy towards the common man on this great journey I mean it's one reason writing a book about Charles de Tocqueville because I begin the book by talking about how people travel why they they travel, what do they see, do they see anything?

A lot of people travel without seeing anything at all. They come back exactly the same. That wasn't the case. They download their shows from Netflix, so they can just watch their phones as they travel. Yeah, that's right. But he wasn't like that. But when he comes to America, there's some really long letters, you know, he'd be writing 10, 15 page letters or something. But often at that point, the early stages, they're questions. He's observing something. And he will say about America, you know, I've never seen anything like this before. Imagine a society with no past, which is composed of a multitude of nations, etc, etc, etc. And then he starts thinking about, well, what's the glue which holds it all together? They're all so different. And he realizes, actually, it's making money and all of those

sorts of things. He's thinking hard all the time. He's taking notes all the time, seeing as many people as he possibly can. He'll write back to his mother, his father, say, keep this letter because I will use it when I get back. So there's those first thoughts on it. Of course, then he comes back and like all great travelers, he doesn't just publish a memoir of his travels, he then starts thinking about America. And that's why the book comes out in 1835, because he doesn't stop thinking about America when he comes back in 1832.

And one thing to point out is, the first volume of Democracy in America, 1835, is published when he's still only 29 years old. And by general agreement, it's the greatest book ever written about America. He was 29. Truly remarkable. We're here to talk about the rest of his travels as well, but just quickly, and this is going to make your head fall off because you're a great expert on him, but what are some of the answers he comes up with about America? He becomes rather a believer in the mission of the founders to create a kind of republic in which people are represented, but the kind of dangers of democracy are also held at bay. He's a bit of

a fanboy for the American Constitution, isn't he? He is and he isn't. Of course, it's in writing the book that he formulates a concept of the tyranny of the majority, which is not necessarily just a legal tyranny, it's a tyranny of public opinion and so on. He sees the downside of that. Remember when he does go to America, very unusual moment because Jackson has just become president and Jackson was unlike all the previous presidents, you know, the great Virginians, the Jeffersons and so on. And now we have the backwoodsmen. And a lot of people say, well, that actually colored his view of America because it's a very particular moment. So he sees the dangers of democracy. Everyone was familiar with those dangers because look at the French Revolution, et cetera. But when you reflect about America,

there's a magic here. There's something really special because Americans have almost like accidentally, it's part accidents, part genius, have worked out how to institutionalize democracy. Also remember one of the great questions in all history of political thought is could you have a republic in a large state? The general view, go back to Montesquieu, etc., you can't. Republics only work for Athens and so on and so forth.

federal system. So he picks up on that, and that's obviously a way of avoiding despotic, centralized government, and so on and so forth. But he also sees lots of things about America, which in a sense encourage a sense of independence, liberty, and so on. One of the most famous is, of course, what he receives, and it's still true of America, is a rich associational life. You know, the Americans get together. If they want to build a road, they don't say, as the French would do, oh, you know, Mr. Minister and government build us a road. They say, we'll build a road ourselves. If they want to build a hospital or a school or whatever it might be. And he sees that as a transformational process for the individuals concerned. So he's got this vision of a society where people, they want to do well. We know this is true of America today.

People work hard. They want to make money and so on and so forth. Incidentally, Tocqueville coins the word individualism. If it's just that, there's a problem. But somehow or other, this whole process of working with people in associational life produces something which he calls self-interest well understood. And that's one of the things which holds America together. So it's not just the

political institutions. You've got this special form of life where Americans come together to do things like change their perspective. One of the other big things was, of course, he noticed, and it's still true of America, the place of religion in American life. And he was very interested that religion in America tended not to talk about the afterlife. He talked about this life, how you should behave in this life. They saw religion in America as one of its most important institutions, again, for making the thing work. So it wasn't just down to government. I love that. I'd love to ask you all about sort of what modern political traditions claim or cultures claim Tocqueville, but we shouldn't because we're here to talk about his travels.

So let's keep going on that. We can do it another day. His book was an immediate success, was it? So did this mean his subsequent travels were with an eye to continuing that success, building on that brand, we might say, or did he just want to travel for its own sake? Well, you know, he only writes really two books, incidentally, in his entire life. So he writes this book, the two volumes, 1835, 1840, which you should say, volume one in particular was immediately perceived as a classic, both sides of the Atlantic. The Americans themselves, you know, after a review says, no one has written a book about America like this. He sort of made the reference to go to America with that sort of sanctimonious, rather sort of superior attitude, which most European travelers did when they went to America,

be it Charles Dickens or whatever. And the Americans immediately realized this is someone who's actually come to this country and tried to understand this and has done a damn good job of trying to understand this. So it's immediately seen as a classic. He then, this is probably a waste of his talents, decides he'll embark on a political career. And a lot of the subsequent travels are really to do with that political career, wanting to know about what's going on in other countries in the sense to almost like feed that back. And he writes a second book, comes out in 1856, in the sense after he's retired from public life because that's the period of the Second Empire, which he's opposed to and so

he literally goes off to his country estate in Normandy. Probably a great waste of his talents. Puts this aside and then starts. He goes to Algeria, for example. Algeria comes to fascinate him, especially in the 1840s. And most of that is to do with the fact that France is in deep trouble in Algeria. He wants to try to find a policy solution for the French attempt to build a colony in Algeria. So there's different motives, I think, come to play naturally at the travels. You're listening to Dan Snow's history.

We're talking about de Tocqueville. More coming up. From biblical fame to its fabled great walls, Babylon was home to kings, conquerors and wonders of the ancient world. But what do we actually know about this legendary city? And how much is still shrouded in mystery? Join me, Tristan Hughes, every Sunday throughout May on the Ancients as we delve into the story of Babylon. We'll be covering topics varying from the King Nebuchadnezzar II and how he forged a massive Babylonian empire. We'll be exploring

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Let's talk about the travels. I mean, he goes to, well, tell me about some of the places he goes. He sees industrial Britain, he sees Ireland, he sees a very important time in Irish history, Algeria. Where do you want to start? Well, he actually starts, I'll tell you where he starts, his first travel abroad, he takes him to Italy and Sicily. And that's interesting because, of course,

that was part of the Grand Tour tradition. Remember, it's about the aristocrat. Any aristocrat of any value had to know all about Rome and Venice and so on. So he does all that, first of all, very, very much in that tradition and following in the footsteps of many members of his family. And first travels are very different it's subsequent to that in america and the travels are looking at other countries with a view to learning from them and so on so between coming back from america the publication of the first volume democracy in america he comes to england twice on that second journey he goes to to Ireland. And he comes there for a variety of reasons. And again, he was not alone. Lots of people from across Europe were coming to Britain.

Why? Because of the great transformation taking place. So he goes to Manchester, he goes to Birmingham, and so on. But the thing that really intrigues him about Britain, maybe he's got this in his head, democracy is the future. Butland actually appears to be the odd country out because of the aristocracy and so he's fascinated by the fact that his own class in england was still there they were still serious political players and so on and so forth so he's fascinated by that and why that is the case and to what extent it will continue to be the case and so on that's really interesting and that what extent it will continue to be the case and so on. That's really interesting. And if you read Democracy in America, the second volume is less directly concerned with America.

It's more of a general reflection. And in that general reflection, you've got this idea that he sees there, that second one, industrialization. And he recognizes that's going to be a real key to changing the nature of society, politics and so on. And the first glimpse of that he changing the nature of society, politics, and so on. And the first glimpse of that he gets when he goes to Manchester, Birmingham, and so on. So he's interested in that. He goes to Ireland.

It's not quite clear why he goes to Ireland. You know, his elder brother had been to Ireland. But he goes to Ireland, and he's, of course, absolutely horrified by what he sees there. He sees poverty, you know, ignorance, squalor, oppression, et cetera. Remember, he's a Catholic, takes the position, the plight of the Catholic population very, very seriously. And there, of course, he sees, this is interesting here, it's the same aristocracy, of course, the English aristocracy in Mars so much. And the ones who are in Ireland are oppressing the people. So he's absolutely fascinated by that as well.

Doesn't really write much about Ireland, he leaves that to his friend Gustave de Beaumont. But these are test cases, again, about the future of democracy. And he sees the democratic pressures coming from Ireland. They will ultimately actually cause England grave problems, and England will have to deal with them, and he was right about that. Algeria is interesting because he goes to Algeria twice in the 1840s. Now, you know that the French start to build a second empire in 1830 with the French invasion of Algeria.

And that immediately turns into a disaster. He goes to Algeria to look at that and work out why is it going wrong for France? Because although he saw himself as a liberal, you know, John Stuart Mill's a liberal, John Stuart Mill believed in empire too and he believed in empire. He believed in the French empire

and he wanted it to be a success. So he goes to Algeria and writes lots of government reports and so on and so forth. It's controversial, of course, because, you know, although he thinks the French are going about it in the wrong way,

he's still to support the empire and that name, you know, he's prepared to tolerate some empire. And that name, you know, he's prepared to tolerate some pretty tough measures against the indigenous population. And a lot of people feel that almost that position alone is sufficient to dispel anything else he wrote as being worth reading and so on. So, as you would say. David McGeorge was a kind of liberal imperial figure as well later on. I mean, how did Tocqueville and Square off his interest in and belief in sort of representative democracy,

liberal ideas, and also violent subjugation of indigenous people? How does that sort of work? I think, of course, he sees this process in America and he sees it with regard to Native Americans, a massively imperial project. And so he sees that. One occasion, he actually saw an Indian tribe in its forced removal. They're traveling out to wherever the American state proposed to put them in the West somewhere.

He saw that. And incidentally, of course, he wasn't part of that romantic generation of the Capitola. You know, Chateaubriand, the great romantic, was his second cousin. And so Chateaubriand was the one who gave us the idea of the noble savage and the wilderness and America, et cetera. He went with that in his head. Of course, what he finds in America is, one, the wilderness is being destroyed as fast as the Americans can chop it down.

But he also sees the fact that the indigenous population are effectively being eradicated. He says, right, I've seen sites like which I never want to see again. They're so awful and so on and so forth. But his conclusion is, that's almost like the way history is going. There's no way back for that population. To be honest with you, he had a similar view about Algeria. He was not a racist.

I mean, Golbinov, who's a great theorist of racism, was his secretary for a while. And the talk was quite clear. This is absolute rubbish. There's no such thing as racism with a hierarchical order and so on and so forth. He's absolutely clear about that. But he's no doubt about it that he does believe that Christian civilization is superior to Islamic civilization, that the Christian religion is superior

to the Islamic religion. And to that extent, the indigenous Algerian population in a sense are on the wrong side of history. He's aware of the terrible things that might happen to them. He said, we don't want to repeat the terrible things that happened, which the Spanish did in America, which the Americans do. We don't want to repeat that, but you have to be tough-minded about this.

And we've got to get their land, and ideally we buy it off them. But that'll be okay. That can just go a little bit further inland, you know, and so on and so forth. So it's not my sympathy. And ultimately, the indigenous peoples will benefit because they will enjoy the blessings of Christian civilization. Yeah, yeah. That's right. Listen, let me talk about that. He wasn't overly optimistic about, you know, the intermingling of the two cultures, shall we say. I mean, I think he thought that the differences were sufficiently large for them to

remain intact for a long, long time. So I don't think he, let's be frank, he didn't imagine a sort of multicultural Algeria, but he wanted a French Algeria and he wanted the importation of a significant French colonial population. That's what he believed in. And he thought that's what France needed for a whole variety of reasons. Of course, it didn't work like that at all. It was a continuous disaster for the next hundred or so years until until the French eventually pulled out, having failed to secure virtually any of their ambitions. Did he keep being as open to have his mind changed as he was on that trip in his 20s to North America?

Did he remain flexible? Asking for a middle-aged man here, Jeremy. I know, I know. Well, imagine an old man like me. I think his judgment let him down in Algeria. I think that is the case. He goes to Algeria with a firm idea that this needs to be colonized. Although what he sees shocks him, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, he doesn't waver in that commitment. I think he does. What's interesting is there are places he didn't visit. He really wanted to go to Russia. He wanted

to go to India. He thought those two places were absolutely fascinating. But he knew he'd never get there. He wasn't going to write about them apart from notes and things like that so the fascination with other countries went on right to the end his wife incidentally was english originally protestant she converted to catholicism one of the ways in which they would spend their evenings would be to read aloud travel books he was overturning people sending books about siberia and things like this they would read these out to each other and so on so if he couldn't't get there, he remained fascinated about these other countries right to the end. And at the end, he dies of TB. He's very, very sick indeed.

He's very, very weak. But he still wants to read. And difficult things, it's just too tired to read them. He can't do it. So it's back to travel books. So he remains really, really interested in that. The final thing really is, if you can almost say he begins with an interest in America, then he's got the England-Ireland stuff, then he's got Algeria.

The last decade, the country which fascinates him is Germany. There's an interesting dimension to that. He probably, Madame de Stael wrote the second book on Germany, and Germany is the center of culture, philosophy, music, and so on. Any educated French person would have had that idea in their head. The 1856 book on the French Revolution, which again is a classic, is he says, anyone who thinks they can understand the French Revolution without understanding Germany and other countries is mistaken.

You can't. This was not just a purely French event. It's certainly a European event. It's not a world event. So you've got to see it in the speaking picture. So the poor man sets out to learn German. He's up. It was one thing. He thought, you've got to see it in the speaking picture. So the poor man sets out to learn German. He's up. It was one thing.

He thought, you've got to learn the language. He hated German. He spends two or three excruciating years trying to learn German. At one point, writes to a friend and says, do you think you can say sweet nothings to a woman? He said, in German, I don't think you can. He thought it was a grotesque language. But he goes to Germany and with a view to try and find out a lot about German history.

But of course, in being there, he doesn't just, he says, oh, the German I know is a dead Germany. But it's not true because he's, again, because he's watching all the time. He also learns a lot about the new Germany, the new Germany which is emerging. So the end, this Germany that becomes the absolute fascination for him, that's not generally well known. Because if you read the 1856 book, all that's in the footnotes, it's in the endnotes, and it's in the letters and so on. But believe me, it is there, and I think I show that in the book. So he moves along from country to country to country, but still with the same questions in his head. Is he a philosopher? What answers does he come up with by the end of his life or through

his life? And are they valuable today? today well i think they are valuable today a lot of the questions he's seeking to answer are questions which lots of educated french people were seeking to answer at the same time and so he's very very much he becomes a part of something which the french themselves don't really know about which is a french liberal tradition which is as i began by saying is rooted in an analysis of what went wrong with french is rooted in an analysis of what went wrong with French revolution, rooted in an analysis of what then subsequently occurs with the rise of the Napoleonic Empire. It's that whole tradition, which we know, again, is still alive and well in France,

of centralization and destroying the intermediary bodies. This is where associational life comes in. Destroy the intermediary bodies in French society, so you just have the state and the individual. And this tradition tells us if you've got a situation where it's just the state and the individual, the individual is always going to lose. They have no way of defending themselves against the state. Now, some people are not concerned about that because they think states are all good things and states do things for the benefit of everyone. But Toffold didn't take that view he said hang on just look what states do on the whole they do bad things they kill lots of people they fight wars and all of that sort of stuff

so that's the tradition which which emerges which he builds upon really right up benjamin colston people like that he builds upon that so he's a key element in this continuing french liberal tradition which wants to defend individual liberty. He takes the view that a life without individual liberty is simply not worth living. To say, well, I'll let the state provide for this and the state provide for that. He thinks that's a demeaning form of existence. We as individuals, and he recognizes that the life of liberty is tough. Being responsible for your own decisions, et cetera, it means a lot of thought and hard work and all that sort of stuff. But he thinks that's the only life worth living.

And so it's to try and produce a society which has that free individual at its heart and is undertaking this analysis of the despotic power of states in the Napoleonic form. As I said, also, he thinks that despotism, as he puts it, is actually sort of at the heart of industrialization, the creation of mass society and so on and so forth. Again, I think he's fundamentally right about that. So it's that tradition of having a vigorous associational life, freedom of the individual is protected, and combine that then with a deep suspicion of governments and the abuse

of power by governments. And that's why he pops up all over the place, even today. I can tell you, I mean, the story in that is, it's a long while ago now, but with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, I mean, Tocqueville was red. These poor souls who'd been sort of entrapped in Czechoslovakia and so on and so forth, with no freedom of thought possible, suddenly they're all reading Tocqueville. Tocqueville's the man, this is the man who answers our questions. And of course, one of the answers that he gives them and gave the people who suffered that tyranny for so long was the importance of an associational life, of civic life, of civil society as that key intermediary between the state and the individual. Sadly, it's failed in the former Eastern Bloc,

so they took that on board. It comes around again, a version of that, you know, Putnam says, you know, I think it describes Tocqueville as a patron saint of social capital. So it lives on in that tradition. And its starting point is that analysis of American society. And personally, I hope we can all learn from his desire to travel and learn and observe as well. Travel well.

Travel well is the thing, isn't it is i mean we can all travel we don't like railways of course because railways are too fast far better to travel slowly i think this is his maxim i think he's right about that you're right sail everywhere folks sail everywhere take rivers and sail everywhere that's my rule um thank you very much jeremy for coming on the podcast. You've written a wonderful book about this. What is it called? It's called Travels with Tocqueville Beyond America.

Well done, Jeremy Jennings. Thank you for coming on. you