In Our Time - Tocqueville: Democracy in America

Episode Date: March 22, 2018

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) and his examination of the American democratic system. He wrote De La Démocratie en Amérique in two parts, published in 1835 and 1840, when France was ruled by the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe. Tocqueville was interested in how aspects of American democracy, in the age of President Andrew Jackson, could be applied to Europe as it moved away from rule by monarchs and aristocrats. His work has been revisited by politicians ever since, particularly in America, with its analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of direct democracy and its warnings of mediocrity and the tyranny of the majority.WithRobert Gildea Professor of Modern History at the University of OxfordSusan-Mary Grant Professor of American History at Newcastle Universityand Jeremy Jennings Professor of Political Theory and Head of the School of Politics & Economics at King's College LondonProducer: Simon Tillotson.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Yeah, what'd have it ought to? There's a lot of where to find out. I would say... I'd want to takeouteleneen, maybe Matrix lead, and a certain metal vetted, if I was able to pass out.

Now you're at ayeskoda maulistow $1,500 euro's edun, validsimi's liaising in. Cudda jellemoe and liqueest. This is the BBC. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website,

and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programme. Hello, in 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville sailed from France to America to learn how its democracy worked, and therefore what his own country might expect, when inevitably, as he saw it, democracy spread there. An aristocrat, he was worried that American democracy valued equality more than liberty, that the majority could tyrannize the minority, once a vote had been won,

and that the people could easily elect a despotic, charismatic leader who would undermine democracy. In 1835, Tockville's report, Democracy in America was published, and with this he hoped that France could avoid the same traps, as it moved falteringly onwards from monarchy and aristocracy after revolution and Napoleon. With me to discuss Talkville's democracy in America are Robert Gilday, Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford, Susan Mary Grant, Professor of American History at Newcastle University, and Jeremy Jennings, Professor of Political Theory and Head of the School of Politics and Economics at King's College London.

Robert Gilday, who was Alexis de Tocqueville? Well, as you say, Tockville was a French noble. He could trace his ancestry back to William the Conqueror, but he was a man caught between two worlds, the world of the Ancien regime, before 1789 and the French Revolution. The Ancien regime was a regime based on monarchy, the Catholic Church and the nobility, but all that was swept away by the French Revolution, and Tockville's parents both survived, having their heads chopped off,

but many of their families did not. And as a result, Tockville became obsessed with the idea of how France could establish a regime which combined liberty and equality. The revolution of 1789 established liberty, but then that degraded into the egalitarian repatriane repatriated. public and the terror. Then you had Napoleon who established equality before the law, but despotism. And then in 1815, the restored monarchy brought back some liberty, but also inequality. And he was, he and many of the people around in the 1820s, he himself was a young magistrate

at Valci were wondering about how France and other countries could combine liberty and equality. And one of the things they thought about was with regime, you couldn't just go from one regime to another monarchy to empire to republic without thinking about the social and cultural background, that the social and cultural background of a society determined what you could have. So he said it's impossible for France to go back to absolute monarchy in 1815 because society had become much more democratic, there was much more social equality. And this was made very clear by the 1830 revolution, which overthrew the old monarchy once again.

And you might have thought that Tockville would have said, OK, you know, we've now got a sort of border around monarchy. The new king, Louis-Philic, went around with an umbrella. The middle classes were in power. You might have thought, well, this was a good solution. But unfortunately, Tockville was loyal to the old monarchy, and he could see that his career was going to go nowhere. And so he sort of took a step back and thought about a sabbatical.

I mean, we could see it as a sort of PhD that he thought he was going to do on democracy in America. The idea was, I suppose, that America was seen as the cradle, the cradle, the laboratory of democracy. And if you studied democracy in America, you could see what was going to happen in France and in Europe later down the line. Where did you get the information he had, as you imply, had some information on America? Well, there was a lot of debates. There was a lot of debate about America in this period and a lot of discussion about where it could, where it might go. And, I mean, I think there were different views about what America.

America would look like. I mean, there were, for example, Lafayette, who was the great hero of the American Revolution, had toured America in the 1820s and had stories about how the Americans combined liberty with slavery. But so, Tocqueville, with a young friend of his, took leave of absence from France, and their ostensible project for which they had permission was to do a study of prison reform in America. But his real goal was, as I say, to write this PhD on American democracy.

Is there anything else in his background that you haven't mentioned that might lead us to understand why he was so singularly interested in democracy? Well, I do think it was this idea that France was seen to be unable to construct a regime. There was all this regime change.

It goes from monarchy to empire to, from monarchy, to, from to Republic to Empire. There's all this regime change. There's all this blood. There's the, there's the, there's the terror of 1793, which nearly kills his parents. There's, there's the white terror in 1815, which, which takes it out on the revolutionists and supports on a parent. It's a very violent society, and I suppose he thought, he was a bit of a sociologist before his time, and he, he and a lot of people around in the 1820s are debating, you know, the, the framework of what we're seeing is the growth of what they call equality of conditions. So

We're living in a society which is more, more equal. And we have to find a political solution which is in tune with that growing equality, but which at the same time can preserve liberty. Thank you very much. Susan Mary Grant, what changes was America undergoing when Talkville arrived at 1831? Well, in 1831, I mean, America is very much on the cusp of a new kind of age. So we've had the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828. and Jackson was very much the start of a new kind of politics,

a new kind of modernity, I suppose, in America. It was the beginning of what is called the second party system. It had been a first party system, and that had kind of collapsed, and the federalists, and they had eventually just, they hadn't won for so long. It was a national Republican party that had won six consecutive elections. And so the federalists basically just disappeared off the scene. But when Jackson is elected,

his supporters go on to form a new democratic party. So it's the start of a new party system, the second party system. But also Jackson, I mean, America with Jackson was on the verge of a new kind of approach. All the presidents before Jackson had come from either what's called the Virginia dynasty. So you had Jefferson, Washington,

that's in the wrong order, Washington, Jefferson. you had many Monroe and Madison, you had Adams, he'd come from Massachusetts. So there was this kind of political elite that Jackson was not part of, but this political elite had dominated America. And of course, they all had ties. They either were or related to or had served with the founding fathers. Some of them had served under revolution. And so by 1831, you know, that generation is quitting the stage.

And so you have this development of a new kind of politics. Because Jackson had tried to get elected in 1824 and he had failed. This was an election where, in fact, he'd won a popular vote, but not enough of it. So the decision was thrown into the House of Representatives for the first time. Eventually, the presidency went to John Quincy Adams. And the charge was, this was a corrupt bargain. And Jackson basically went back to his house in Tennessee and fumed for a while and then tried again in 1828.

So that election really was a turning point, not just a new political individual on the scene and herself made man a military hero. He didn't have all the kind of educational background, you know, of the Virginia elite and the Adamses, who of course were very famous. What's the influence of this man felt immediately? I mean, you're talking about 28.

Our man gets down 31, that's three years. Had the Jackson influence worked through by then? Oh, totally. So Doc Bill was... was able to see that the America he saw was not the America he made to believe existed when he set off. It was very much in America that was in the cusp of change. I mean, there was so many other... What were the main peaks of change?

Well, there was the politics. But then, of course, in 1830, various events, in 1831, of course, you have the Nat Turner uprising in Virginia. When, you know, a slave preacher, you know, rebels and kills many women and children in an attempt to make a stand against slavery, obviously. you have the beginnings of the publication of the Liberator, which is the anti-slavery newspaper. In 1832 is the very last time that in Virginia

they will discuss whether or not they're going to keep slavery. So 1830 is sort of transition year in many ways for the United States. It's moving into the old political generation, as I see leaving the scene, you're moving into a new world with more immigrants, with more reform upheaval, abolition is becoming a much more powerful force. And so Talkville, I think, he would definitely have sensed that

and also the people he was talking to would have told him all about it and he would have got their perspective and what was happening to their country. But was he seeing, briefly, was he seeing in play, a sort of democracy he was expecting to see, he did report in it,

and what he reported on, what he'd been expecting, What did he have to make do with, not make do, not make it up as he went along, but take account of what was going, changing every six months or so? I think he tried to, but I think he failed to. I think that was part of the problem. I think that he listened to the people who had a particular agenda. And so, for example, he totally misunderstood what he was seeing in Andrew Jackson.

He did not realize what a powerful president he was actually looking at. He thought democracy was all about checks and balances, the bicameral legislature. This was all going to work really well. And he fails to realize that. the politics of personality, the so-called age of the common man that Jackson had ushered in. Jeremy Jennings, what was Europe's general view of America at that time? Basically, one way of looking to America is it abandoned Europe.

A lot of the people in Europe had said, we don't like you anymore, we're going to live in America. Many, many fine British persons went. Just a couple things. First of all, Tockel actually met Jackson, and briefly, he was not impressed by Jackson at all. Second thing is, I don't think that Tocqueville actually knew much. about America before he left. He did the sort of thing that we do.

You know, we're going to a conference somewhere and we get on the plane and do a quick bit of reading. Well, he did the same thing. He gets on board boat and starts reading about America when he's on board boat and also starts to try and improve his English. English isn't very good. That didn't help his ability to understand America because often there's lots of little stories

where he completely misunderstands what's being said to him in terms upon the wrong day and those sorts of things. So I think he... Going to America, it was almost like now, sort of like going to the moon. It was a long, long journey. Nevertheless, he got there, and what was the general European view of America before? He gets there.

He must have carried some European views. And one must have been, this is a long way away, these are people who'd left Europe from different countries, and often a lot of very good people for good reasons. I don't think there was a general view. There were a whole series of different views. One was the sort of Americas of philosophical paradise, the sort of yeoman republicans of virtue, simplicity and so on. Another was America of the Great Wilderness, which Toffield quite clearly did have, because, because his cousin was Chateaubriand. The Chateaubriand had been very instrumental

in fabricating the noble, savage myth and so on. There was also the, which was very very prevalent, which you see actually do see in Tocqueville, the notion of Americans as a bunch of Philistines, uncultured and so on, and Tockville certainly repeats that view. And the other thing which was very important in the European imagination was, of course, slavery.

And for all the fact that people said, they're building the world anew. Yes, they're building the world and new, but with slavery, and this is one of the issues which people time and time again had to come back to. How can we explain this? The other thing is to say one of the big debates really was, is this country so different from us?

It's now become your point, as it sort of casts adrift, is it now so different from us that it would be impossible for us to learn anything of use to us? Some people said no. Tockfield said, no, he thought there were things we could learn. But many people just thought it was such a different civilization from ours. That really it was, I mean, there was nothing we could learn. What were the main fault in the French system as it was when Tockville was, say, 1831,

that he wanted to, he thought a good remedy by going to America. Well, I don't really think that's what he was doing. He's quite clear that he says that when I was in America, France was in my thoughts. I think it goes back to what Robert was saying. There's just been a revolution in 1830, a relatively peaceful one. And the thing that Tockville concludes from that is that the movement towards democracy is now unstoppable. It's a providential fact. We've seen the first signs of that in France.

It will come, not necessarily in American form, but it will come to Europe. It will come to all of Europe. It's fascinated by what incident of what's going on in England at the time, which is where there's big changes going on. So it's not just France. It's England as well. So what we've got to do, what we have to do with America

is learn as much as we can from it in order to inform the debates which we will inevitably have about democracy here in France and here in Europe. So I think it's not so much that there are faults in the French system. It's just that what he's got in his head

is that, like it or not, we are now on the way to democracy. It will come. We've got to learn about it, understand it, and make the best job we can of it. And America's the great reservoir of research for this? At the time, America, remember

that America seems to have answered one of the big questions, in standards or a history of political thought, you cannot have a republic in a big state. America through the Constitution has solved that problem. It seems to indicate you can have a large state which will be democratic.

And that's absolutely crucial. That's why America, for a political scientist was a really interesting test case. Robert Gilday, in Tochbiltan, much to admire in America, but much concerned him. He was concerned about what equality in America

might lead to. Can you discuss that? Yes, well, I think he was, as you say, he saw lots of good things. He was fascinated by the township system, by federal government, by the role of the judiciary, but he did see, in political terms, that if you have

everyone having the vote and the sovereignty of the people. He was wired about, for example, the quality of political representatives that you get. He was wired that they wouldn't elect the best people. He was also wired that the general interest would not be regarded.

The interest of the majority would take precedence. And I think it also in material terms, he was fascinated by, again, what he called the equality conditions, which doesn't mean complete social leveling. I think it means the idea that there's a kind of America, it's basically middle class.

You have, you know, you have commercial farmers, you have shopkeepers, you have business people, you know, all of whom have some property, or most of whom have some property, most of whom have some education. There's quite a good deal of social mobility. And this, but this he said, this engenders a kind of sameness, a kind of a uniformity which he didn't like. And I think the other thing that he was worried about, Jeremy has said that, you know, that that America had solved the problem of having a large state that was a republic.

But the other sort of ingrained idea that people had from the 18th century and the idea of the republic and also from ancient republics, is that republics were based on virtue, virtue, not in the sense of private virtue, but public virtue, this idea that in a republic people had to be public-spirited, committed to the common wheel, dedicated to the public good. and this was very clear, for example, in the French Revolution. But in America, Tockville was concerned that there wasn't this public virtue, that there was a kind of individualism that people seemed to be just looking after themselves.

People seemed to be very happy in their own families and their own little worlds without going out to get involved in politics, apart from the sort of mania of elections. And he was also worried about their sort of materialism, that they were just out to, you know, because there was this social, and there was the open frontier and there was lots of possibilities and and you know not a great deal of educational opportunities

that people were going to just people just you know made money and were and were materialistic so that there was that was the downside of of democracy for him Susan Mary Grant to what extent Roberts alluded to this but to what extent

were Tockville's ideas influenced by the places he went to in America? Well, just following up from Robert's point, I think Tockville saw a very clear distinction between the north and the south, between the lands of freedom and the land of slavery. Because of course, by the 1830s,

there were a handful of slaves still in the northern states, but mostly they'd been sold south, because that's how caring northerners were. And he saw a clear distinction, I think. So partly it's where he went. He mainly, you know, he did most of his research for the prison book that was alluded to at the beginning in New York and he went to Boston

and he even went to Canada where just going to your point about how he didn't really know about America he expresses surprise because he's about to get into a boat and this Native American comes up to him and says, oh, be careful, you know, this is quite dangerous

and current here and he's speaking perfect French and he said, I had no idea that there were still French-speaking people in North America. So he didn't really know what he was going to. So, you know, he spends a lot of time in the north, the northeast. He does go across, he does go to Albany. He doesn't spend that much time in the South.

And I think partly that was deliberate because his traveling companion, Gustav de Beaumont, was going to be writing a book about slavery. But it leads him into some strange assumptions. At one point, he says, everybody, there's nobody in the South, no white person in the South, who doesn't own a slave, which of course just wasn't true at all. Slaveholding was very much, not just an elite,

but there was a huge number of white Southerners who didn't own slaves. So he misunderstood what he was seeing there. And going to Robert's point, he very much saw, you know, the Ohio was a dividing line and on one side everything was industrious. It was traditional Jeffersonian idea that slavery, you know, weakens a society, it weakens its population. So Talkful draws this comparison between on one side of the Ohio.

The crops are thriving, the people are laughing and singing and going about their business. And on the slavery side in Kentucky, it's just misery and slave coughals. So a lot of this, though, I think, will come from the people that he's been talking to. I think it's the people he spoke to, the whigs that he spoke to, the influence to him more than perhaps the places that he went to. Because I'm not really sure he saw what was in front of him sometimes. Jeremy Jennings, the tyranny of the majority is one of the phrases that has left out of his book and used ever since.

What did he mean by that? And what evidence did he have that might be a danger? Well, what he meant by it? Well, he was struck. Obviously, that America was democratic in the sense of adult white males had the vote. And he realized that that gave the majority an enormous power if it chose to use it in certain different ways. Now, I think he accepts it. It's perfectly proper that the majority should govern. What are the dangers of the tier of the majority? Well, they come partly from the nature of American society, which is, which he sees is determined by quality of conditions and so on. So his worry is about the American people, as Robert has said, they're materialistic. The tendency towards mediocrity and so on. Is he saying they're much more materialistic than French people that he knows very well?

Yes. In what way, how are they more materialistic than French people? When he gets there, there's a marvelous letter he writes. He's been there for a very short period of time. He's just left New York. He writes this marvelous letter about American society. and he says, I've never been to a place like this before. This is quite astonishing place.

What holds it together? What holds it together is the fact that Americans want to make money. And the other thing is their self-interest. And I've never seen anything like this point because as Robert said, the republics have been held together by virtue. This is not being held together by virtue. It's being held together by the desire to make money and the pursuit of self-interest. Now, it's therefore his concern is, if that,

becomes in a sense writ large through the will of the majority, that majority in the sense can impose that. You do it in various ways. Most obviously, it can reduce bad government again, as Robert has alluded to. His concern is, at one point he says some of the effect that while Americans disagree on something, conversation, discussion will flourish. Once they've made up their mind, the majority will silence all opinions. So it's beginning that fear about the power of public opinion. The other thing about the majority you really worry is about again, which has been alluded to by already, is the concern in a country which is held together by a desire to make money by self-interest, the primary concern will be a desire for comfort, material well-being. And the majority will impose that, that desire at the expense of liberty. They will place well-being before liberty.

And if there's one thing talk to Stansaw, it should always place liberty above other considerations. In what way, Robert, is he saying that the tyranny majority is so different from the tyranny of many minorities that have disfigured or figured Europe for centuries, including his own country? Why is the tyranny majority so different from the tyranny of minorities that he's seen in France, even in his own lifetime? I suppose in a way because it's sort of bottom-up tyranny. I mean, there are plenty of examples of monarchies and despotisms

and elites persecuting religious minorities but he would say that this is this is a bottom-up tyranny in a sense it's not I mean he is worried about

American the American presidency becoming a bit of a bit of a despotism but his main concern is bottom-up tyranny so if you have everyone who's kind of more or less the same socially, more less the same intellectually and there's a predominance of

Protestantism the danger I think he felt is that these people will impose their views. And he does give examples of Catholic minorities being beaten up. What he doesn't do so much, and you think he might have said a bit more about this, is racial persecution, the persecution of black minorities. He does talk about the way in which he says in the north. It is possible it is legal for a white man to marry a black woman, but he says if he does that,

you know, he's completely lost his honour. So I'm not sure whether he talks about lynching, but I think what he worries about is the bottom-up imposition of conformity by the mass of the people on small minorities. And this is a theme that's also taken up by John Stuart Mill, for example, in Britain at the same time. John Stuart Mill writes very positive reviews of both volumes of democracy in America. but I think it's this idea

that some people like Tochville and Mill saw themselves as kind of intellectuals as aristocrats as people who had their special you know very special gifts intellectual gifts and I think one of their concerns was if you like the sort of Philistine mass would overrule

intellectuals and educated slightly sort of um uh dare I say effeminate minds like like theirs And one of the things he says, for example, he says there are no literary people.

There's no originality. There's no genius in America. He says, and when you think about this, you know, you think about, I know, Weld Emerson or Edgar Allan Poe or Herman Melvin. You think, where did they get this idea that there were no inventive, creative minds in America? But that's what he's worried about.

Yeah. But, sorry, can I come to you and then back to you? The idea, though, that the majority is imposed by, in effect, a despot comes into play as well, that this system, to take it further from where Robert was saying, will throw up a despot. What do you think of that?

A charismatic despot, popular choice despot. I don't think Tollville actually quite understood that. I think that was a fear when Andrew Jackson was elected. Many people, his opponents called to him, you know, King Andrew, and there was this idea of mob rule because he quite deliberately pitched himself at the masses. And again, this is this new idea in politics that somehow you spoke for the people,

which sounds a little bit odd in an American context because sure that's what the Republic was all set up for but because it had been dominated by this Virginia dynasty it was not really seen to reflect the people so with Jackson this was seen to be this new era of populism where the people would have a voice and I think that was a risk that they would throw up a president

who was yes not particularly popular with the elites but I don't think Taupville realized that that's what Jackson was because as we've heard he did not meet him, he was unimpressed. He didn't understand how the second party system, the emergence of political parties, was going to weaken the presidency and it was going to require a strong man like Jackson and then in the future Lincoln and then perhaps Arrogably Roosevelt, you know, really strong individuals who would be able to control that office and not be swamped

by it. But, you know, Jackson very much positioned himself as this kind of man of the people, this military hero, but I don't think Talkful saw quite what Jackson was. I think you asked the question, what's in the sense what was new about this. And I mean, writers of a liberal disposition, we could say, historical are always concerned about the nature of despotism. But despotism, tradition would be described as rule by fear and the rule by one person. That's where you get in Montesquia. What's new here, it's not fear, it's public opinion that is doing the work.

And it's not one person. It's the mass of the people. And I think Toffield really is just about the first person. to identify this as a very, very serious threat to liberty. In the past, it's always been keep the modic under control and so on. And now for the first time, we've got the people, which in the face of it is a good thing. Of course the people should rule, but what Tockville is trying to say is, but be very careful because within the rule of the people, there's a new danger about which we have to be very, very concerned.

And that is a power of public opinion. And once public opinion comes into play, you're silenced, as Rob said. You might wish to marry African-American and so on. It might be perfectly legal, but you can't, because the weight of public opinion will deter you from doing so. So he is identifying something very, very new upon which later writers like John Stuart Millward to build. What did you think might strengthen the American democracy against this?

Well, in a way, that's the great Tockvillian project. this is the nature of democracy that I'm describing to you. We have to learn to live with it. How can we live with it? Well, the thing that the Americans loved about the book was that, of course, Totfield gave a description of a whole series of mechanisms in the American

Constitution, which would protect liberty, things like judicial review, the decentralisation of power and so on. So they're... He was very taken with that. Very, very taken with that. The last thing that Topville ever wrote in his life was actually an article about judicial review

in America. He was very, very interested in that idea. So there were institutional, basically federalism. So, you know, the classic liberal argument of dividing at power. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's the, that's the institutional side of it. But the thing that Tockville identified

that he thought was really interesting about America, were there, there were other factors in American society which were militated against this despotism. One was religion and that's very, it's a very interesting thing to say about religion, and the other one was what he called the sort of association

life and that's another way in which Toquil has been very, very important subsequently. Americans live and thrive through associations and that teaches them the habits of liberty. Religion stops people doing nasty things.

Yeah, just to pick up, I mean, I think as Jeremy said, there were two ways in which he thought the system could be improved or some of the dangers mitigated. Some of them were institutional. but some were to do with what he called morse or mores or customs or I suppose what we would call culture. And it's very interesting that he has that when he looks at, we said that on the downside you have individualism and materialism. But he then goes through certain character traits that he thinks the Americans have which kind of mitigate those.

So he says, for example, the Americans have a kind of open, honest, you know, relationship with each other. He says they are, you know, they may be materialistic, but they're also generous and philanthropic, and they're into mutual aid. As Jeremy said, they're religious, and whereas in Europe, religion was often connected to the dominance of a particular religion and persecution in religious minorities. In America, religion was founded on liberty. A lot of people came to America to flee religious persecution and to set up. So he points out that freedom and religion are very much connected. One thing he doesn't really talk about so much is education. You might have think he'd say more about how education can help with the construction of liberty.

And he's also interested in the role of women in the United States. He says that women in the United States are much less under sort of patriarchal control. They're much more confident. They're much more outward going. They're protected by the law in matters of rape. So he says that I think the influence of women is also. quite important in America. Susan, can you contrast his treatment of slavery

and his treatment of Native Americans, which seems rather on from our perspective now? Yeah, I mean, in some respects, Topville, you can excuse him away and say he was a man of his time, but fundamentally, he has this aristotally idea about the noble savage, which we've referred to before, and so fundamentally, and he never really spells it out, what he's talking about is all the things that Robert was saying,

Americans associate, they form societies. One of the societies, of course, they form as a colonization society in an attempt to get African Americans to move back to Liberia. And that so much of what stabilizes white society and what stabilizes this new democracy, what stabilizes a country of immigrants who don't know each other, is racial division, whether it's African Americans who are slaves or Native Americans. Native Americans, he has this enlightened,

idea of the noble savage, but he fundamentally sees them that they're going to die out. And of course, again, he comes to America and the Presidents of Andrew Jackson, who was no great friend of the Native American, but we mustn't exaggerate that. Jackson gets, and then a lot of stick for this quite rightly, but every president since Washington had been fussing about what to do with Native Americans because they wanted the land. So Jackson's name is forever associated with the Trail of Tears that moved the Cherokee, you know, to Indian land, which is now Oklahoma. away from Georgia. But talkful sees this is natural. It's normal. This is what's going to happen. These people cannot assimilate. You know, whites and Native Americans cannot assimilate together. And it is the... Did you have an explanation for the fact

that they could not assimilate together? Yes, he was quite bad about this. I mean, he basically said Native Americans, phraseology was basically he said they were too proud. He basically drew a distinction between African Americans who were slaves and Native Americans. African Americans were too servile, and according to Talkville, certainly towards the end of the first volume of democracy in America,

he waxes quite lyrical about the civility and how happy they are. I mean, he virtually portrays them as singing spirituals in the fields. So they're too subservient to stand up for themselves, and Native Americans are too proud to see that the white man's way is best. He basically describes them as going off and almost a huff into the woods to die. It's a really strange juxtaposition. So do you think he was wrong on both counts? Well, yes, of course, I think he was.

I think you see this perhaps, you know, we're talking about democracy in America, but of course, Tockville, he goes back to France and then he gets involved with, because he 1830, France invades Algeria, and he gets involved in that, and he visits and he writes about that. And he's very harsh about what's going to happen to the Arab population, and he sees no possibility there of assimilation either. And you can track that right back to what he says about Native Americans and democracy in America. It's the same idea that you have two, you know, oil and water, will not mix, and that was basically his rather strange argument. Despite the fact, as I said earlier,

he had met this fluent French-speaking Native American in Canada with whom he was very, very impressed. But, you know, in the round, he just thought the role of the Native American was to fade from the scene, the role of the African-American was to be enslaved, and the role of the white man was to eventually, you know, stabilise this marvelous republic. Jeremy, is there anything you want to develop from that about things which we might say Tochby, he got a lot right, but but Tochapov got wrong. Just on the Native Americans, of course, he did actually see

one tribe being forcibly moved, which was a horrid sight for him. At the time, I mean, first first of the book was published to immediate acclaim. Everyone thought this was the greatest

book. It was the first volume. 1835, 1840 was less successful. 1835, immediate acclaim. This was by general agreement, the best book that had ever been written about the United States. Incidentally, the first sentence was going to be, this is not a travelogue, and I think the dangers we treat it as a travelogue, it was not a travelogue, it's an analysis of democracy in America, of democracy in America. But at the time, people said, yes, this is a great book,

but it did get certain things wrong, and we've been actually addressing some of those things. The general view of Americans, who thought to say it was a marvelous book, was that he had certainly overestimated the power of the tyranny majority, and he'd got it wrong primary because he'd been there at the time of Jackson. Another view was that, which is one of his key ideas of the equality of conditions, that he'd overestimated the extent of the equality of conditions in America, therefore he'd been blind to the dangers of plutocracy in America, as has already been mentioned,

that he actually fundamentally misconceived the American political system, role of parties and things like that. Likewise, it's stuff about America's being philosophies, lines, no great literature, precisely at the point where America is producing great literature. So he gets that wrong as well. At which point you might say, well, let's just throw the book into the rubbish bin. Now, the reason we don't do that is because, of course, it is actually a very, very good book about what we would now describe as the pathologies of democracy. And that remembers his subject. His subject is not Native Americans. It's not slavery.

That's in one big chapter. But that's not his subject. His subject is democracy in America. And it's what he has to say about democracy in America, or the nature of democracy, then in his sense, is the reason why we still read the book. Robert Gilday, did he or others apply what he learned in America when he got back to France? Yes, I mean, in a way,

in a way he did. I mean, so he went to America to study democracy, and you'd think that when he got back to France, he would be able to apply some of these ideas quite well. But what happens, the big thing that happens when he,

after he gets back, is the 1848 revolution in France, which does bring democracy to France. And there is a wonderful moment where he talks about it. So everyone has got, all males have got the vote down to the lowest peasant. And he's a landowner, Senor in Normandy. And he goes with his peasant farmers to the polling station,

and it's about a five-mile walk. And he says, I didn't put myself at the head, because this is now democracy. They were in Elfedelberg, Lauder, and I put myself under tea towards the back. and then he said, well, we did get to this grassy knoll, and I did feel that I had to make a speech to them. So I gave a speech and I said, you know, when you get to the town to vote, make sure you vote first and go to the pub later. And that seemed to be a kind of moment of sort of Tory democracy where, you know, the landed gentleman, you know, takes his faithful peasants to the polling station and everything is going to work out fine.

But I think the trouble with France, democracy always came with the French Revolution, the Republic and the Napoleonic regime. And so, for example, when he gets elected to the National Assembly, which convenes in the sort of spring of 1848, 15th of May, the Assembly is invaded by a bunch of Paris radicals who are demanding various things, including an army to go to Poland to support the Poles against the Russians and the Germans. that terrifies him he sort of hides behind a bench. And then, of course, in 1848, in June of 1848, you have the so-called June days. A lot of unemployment in Paris, people employed by these national workshops, then the workshops are closed down. There's a rising in parents which he calls a servile war, a sort of class war, which is almost as if a sort of slave war has come to France,

and he can't cope with that. And then the other thing, finally, that he can't cope with, is the advent of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. I mean, he's actually on a constitutional commission, which makes the Constitution of 1848, which says the French president will be elected by universal suffrage for a four-year term, and that's what happens.

But then, of course, New Napoleon then turns around and has a coup d'etat against the regime. Topps was briefly in prison, and we get democratic despotism in France. Susan, what... What lessons were, therefore, the larger Europe in this book? Well, I think we have to put Talkville in context, just following on from what's been said,

that it was very popular. And partly because it was a serious study of democracy, but also partly because Americans, people were fascinated by America, so Tockville is not the first person to go and visit it. And a lot of British people came across. You had Francis Trollope, you had Harriet B, Martinot, they were very critical, very, very critical of America. They found nothing to say that was positive about it.

And there was an element of, you know, Shadenfreude and that, where the British were standing back and saying, so, thought you'd get rid of us, thought you'd go off on your own. And they were waiting for this American experiment in democracy to fall on its face. But then other people in Britain, and later the Chartists, I mean, they saw in America this great hope for a new kind of society, kind of equality and new kind of liberty. So that was the lesson that they wanted to take from it.

But of course the relationships within Europe are very different. So, you know, when Talkville does come back and he's talking about, you know, Algeria, he's thinking about France in relation to Britain. When he's in America, he's thinking more of America something 3,000 miles away. And it is this experiment, not perhaps a laboratory, but an experiment in democracy that can, you know, Europe can learn from. But Britain wasn't going to learn from it. We weren't going to get rid of a monority.

just because of that book. Jeremy, finally, what's the chief influence in wanting to pick out one main drift of influence that comes from this book? I think over the long term, it's the argument about the importance of civil society.

You know, the fear, written in the book is the fear of you'll just have the people and the state. And you need that middle ground, and that's the life of associations, of religion, and so on. It's a social, it's a social, argument. Tofield is often seen as the patron saint of social capital.

Thank you very much. Thanks to you. Jeremy Jennings to Susan Mary Grant and Robert Gilder next week, a year before Brexit. In Our Time, we'll take a pause for a special day of programming on Radio 4 on Britain at the Crossroads. We're back in a fortnight with Roman slavery. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. I suppose for me, I think one of the things that Talkville gets a glimpse of and doesn't, because he's not there long enough, doesn't grasp, is how it's the speed of growth in America that he sees as being an issue. It's so fast and it's moving west and that is very much happening in the 1830s that you have, in a previous decade, a couple of decades, you've had a whole tranche of new states, Mississippi, Illinois, coming in with white suffrage. and I think that he senses this is important but I think that is fundamental aspect of this change in 1830

is this move west but he does fear that it's just all happening too quickly and towards the end of the first volume he says what will hold union together and he talks about the importance of religion the importance of association but fundamentally I think he thinks it will eventually fall apart because he says it's a voluntary union

and as soon as the people don't want it anymore you know, it will fall apart. And then, of course, you have that bit at the very, very end of the first volume where he actually discusses a nullification crisis where Jackson sends the troops into Charleston Harbour and basically says to South Carolina, you will pay this tariff.

And that's perhaps not what they were expecting. So Tockville discusses that. But I think that's more important. The union is more important than any state. It takes head on. Union liberty. Yeah. Now and forever. I mean, that was Jackson's idea. And I think a lot of Southerners

hadn't perhaps seen that one. coming, but it is this, it's the rapidity of the growth of this democracy, you know, compared to how European nations grow, that I think he thinks it's going to be a real, a real issue. And I think it was a real issue. But that was a real issue with the, whether the states had any sort of autonomy. Totally. He does talk about that, the balance, you know, we didn't have time to look at that, but the balance between the federal government and the states. And, you know, he talks about patriotism or love of country. And he, he does talk about patriotism or love of country.

in the state and not in the federal government. This is not something that, you know, federal government's just there to conduct foreign affairs, to set taxes, you know, for diplomacy. But essentially, Americans are focused on the state. But, and that's where the North-South division has come in, because I think that's the most interesting thing for me when I'm teaching Talkville is how he very clearly sees in the South, he thinks there's going to be this idea of virtue, predicated on slavery, so it's not a very virtuous virtue,

but this idea that will allow people to think and read. Whereas in the north it is all a hard scrabble for money and a hard scrabble for material success. So he feeds into that kind of myth that dominates 19th century America that southerners are aristocratic and refined. Northerners are morally better, but frankly quite greedy and materialistic.

Can I just say a word about his later work, the Ancien regime and the Revolution? Because I just touched on democratic despotism as it comes to France. with Louis Napoleon, who makes himself Napoleon the third, and rules this very... Tockville sees him as ruling a very sort of flat, equal society through despotism, and liberty disappears,

and Tockville has a complete meltdown, but at the same time he writes this wonderful book called The Ancian Regime of the Revolution, which is not really about the revolution, or why the revolution happens, is where how did we how did france get into this mess where you know it is now under democratic despotism and he sort of traces back he traces back he traces back institutionally the fact that you know france has this centralized bureaucracy which is very unlike the sort of decentralized

system in in america it's a very divided society whether you look at individual peasant proprietors or whether you look at the fact that this is the answer regime society may becoming more people who get becoming richer and there's a sort of fusion between no and bourgeoisie, but they're divided by privilege. And then he says that all the enlightened thinkers are much more interested in equality than they are in freedom. So he says all these things combine

so that when the French Revolution happens, the French revolution doesn't actually manage to establish liberty. And we finish up with the first Napoleonic dictatorship and then the second Napoleonic dictatorship. So in a sense, he demonstrates that in France all the safeguards, the institutional

and the kind of cultural safeguards against democracy, have failed, of course he dies before the end of the Second Empire. And you could say the Third Republic, you know, which starts in 1870, you know, does actually get these things more or less right, but it's too late for him. I mean, in terms of what we might have brought out more, I don't think we really emphasized enough that when Toffield talks about democracy, it's not just politics. It's democracy's democracy fame is above all else, a social state. It is the absence of aristocracy. And again, that's all part of its newness.

And it's aristocracy. It's aristocracy. This is stuff like virtue, the arts. Who's embodied virtue? It's the aristocracy. Wherever the arts has been generated through the aristocracy and so on. And again, he's an aristocracy. He goes to this society and realize he's the past.

There's no place for someone like him in this new society. So I think that is, and that's a thing, a really important dimension of the argument, which we should have emphasized more. I'm intrigued by, again, these comments which come at the end of Volume 1 about the future of the Union, where, you know, you have this long section on Native Americans, which we were right about this. He basically says they're finished. I mean, he sees no way back for Native Americans. The slavery issue, I would probably take a slightly different line on that.

I think his view was, and it turned out to be incorrect, his view was, in effect, that slavery would almost die on the vine. that as America went westward, the slave economy of the South would become increasingly irrelevant, and therefore over time he was always consistent in his opposition to slavery, it would die out in that way. What we obviously had no opportunity to talk about, so that we hinted at it was his views of what subsequently happens to America. And of course, to his great horror, and it is horror, slavery does not die on the vine. In slavery, in fact, the South doesn't give up, and the South, in fact, are determined to take... You should have brought in the fact that 1833 here

and the Americans just went to sort of internal slavery after that, didn't they? Yeah, that's right. But the South, the South seeks to push slavery westward. I mean, they don't give up, and he follows this very, very closely. He keeps in contact with a lot of these Americans he met and mixed in new ones and so on, continues writing about this. And he becomes, by the 1850s, Whereas in the 1835, he effectively says,

the Americans would not be so stupid to have a civil war about this. By the 1850s, the Americans are going to be that stupid. And he's writing to his friends in America saying things like, all of us who look to America as a country of liberty are now in despair because this great beacon which we look towards is clearly not going to deliver. And his final remarks on America in long private correspondence, are very, very pessimistic about America indeed. And of course, he dies before, just before the Civil War.

Now, I'm just going to say it's difficult to me, we'll bring this out in the natural program, but I think it's, I think Tockville is very relevant today. I mean, partly because of, if you link together democracy in America with his reports in Algeria, because I think too often he's become an American product. Americans have taken him, the American Academy has taken Tockville to himself, and every historian dips into Tockford for a nice juicy,

quote, and I am guilty of that. My writings are peppered with thoughtful quotes. But I think there is a danger that now when Americans, sometimes some of them, I stress some of them, write about talkful and democracy in America. It's almost as if that is the only country would understand democracy in America, the only one,

only they would read it. And I think it would be good, I think, for Europeans at this juncture to read talkful. But I think he's very relevant and I think we can look at him from a different angle and not just use them as a source of quotes. for this new strange republic across the Atlantic. I think we're going to be interrupted by a strange Englishman.

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