Auteur: Alexis de Toqueville

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) worked first as a magistrate and then as a government administrator, and early in his career he saw how quickly the winds of political change could shift in post-Revolutionary War France. Like his father, who had narrowly escaped execution in 1793, he fell out of political favor, due to his perceived Bourbon sympathies during the July Revolution. As a result, he and his friend Gustave de Beaumont were required to fund their nine-month visit to America themselves, even though they were ostensibly coming to complete a survey of the American penal system, then regarded as one of the most humane in the world, on behalf of the French government. When Tocqueville arrived in America in May of 1831 he was far more interested in his own questions about America’s political future, and Democracy in America is the result of extensive personal research on the subject.