The Ancien Régime and the Revolution

by Alexis de Tocqueville, Gerald Bevan (Introduction)

The Ancien Régime and the Revolution is a powerful comparison of revolutionary France and the despotic rule it toppled. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) is an objective commentator of both periods – providing a merciless critique of the ancien régime, with its venality, oppression and inequality, yet acknowledging the reforms introduced under Louis XVI, and claiming that the post-Revolution state was in many ways as tyrannical as that of the King; its once lofty and egalitarian ideals corrupted and forgotten. Writing in the 1850s, Tocqueville wished to expose the return to despotism he witnessed in his own time under Napoleon III, by illuminating the grand, but ultimately doomed, call to liberty made by the French people in 1789. His eloquent and instructive study raises questions about liberty, nationalism and justice that remain urgent today.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, France, Philosophy, French Revolution, Classics

307 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1856

About the author

Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, comte de Tocqueville, usually known as just Tocqueville, was a French aristocrat, diplomat, sociologist, political scientist, political philosopher, and historian. He is best known for his works Democracy in America (appearing in two volumes, 1835 and 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). In both, he analyzed the living standards and social conditions of individuals as well as their relationship to the market and state in Western societies. Democracy in America was published after Tocqueville's travels in the United States and is today considered an early work of sociology and political science.
Tocqueville was active in French politics, first under the July Monarchy (1830–1848) and then during the Second Republic (1849–1851) which succeeded the February 1848 Revolution. He retired from political life after Louis Napoléon Bonaparte's 2 December 1851 coup and thereafter began work on The Old Regime and the Revolution. Tocqueville argued the importance of the French Revolution was to continue the process of modernizing and centralizing the French state which had begun under Louis XIV. He believed the failure of the Revolution came from the inexperience of the deputies who were too wedded to abstract Enlightenment ideals.
Tocqueville was a classical liberal who advocated parliamentary government and was skeptical of the extremes of majoritarianism. During his time in parliament, he was first a member of the centre-left before moving to the centre-right, and the complex and restless nature of his liberalism has led to contrasting interpretations and admirers across the political spectrum.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

To those who study it as an isolated phenomenon the French Revolution can but seem a dark and sinister enigma; only when we view it in the light of the events preceding it can we grasp its true significance. And, similarly, without a clear idea of the old order, its laws, its vices, its prejudices, its shortcomings, and its greatness, it is impossible to comprehend the history of the sixty years following its fall. (p227)

The Old Regime and the French Revolution, written in 1856, is a short book (just 206 pages in this edition plus an appendix and endnotes) with a contemporary audience in mind. Despite this Tocqueville's insights and understanding mean that the book is still interesting and provides a model for thinking about revolutions as a whole.

Part of his intention was to take issue with interpretations of the revolution current in his own time and also to address what he felt were short comings in French political life. Primarily the lack of political liberties and the absence of an aristocracy or something very like it, some powerful, self-confident group, not dependant on the central authority of the government and able to resist it in the interests of the locality in which they lived and so guarantee liberty.

Tocquevilles view was not that these deficiencies were the result of the Revolution, but rather that they and the Revolution itself were the result of long term trends in French history. Tocqueville was interested in the longue duree long before the annales school. His final conclusion is that given the long term tendencies in French history the Revolution was not a “sinister enigma” but a “foregone conclusion”. Tocqueville's key to understanding this was to grasp the mentalite of the pre-revolutionary generations. Once you are in tune with the Zeitgeist the paradoxes of the pre-revolutionary period are resolved. This is why the book is valuable. What Tocqueville is doing is taking down and smashing a simple mental model to explain revolutions in their social and historical context.

Revolutions don't occur because the living conditions of people are harsh – quite the contrary. They occur in his view in times when living conditions have been improving (p196). Countries in which serfdom was a complete system did not have revolutions, it was the very fact that there were only nonsensical remnants that rankled the peasantry (pp52-61). It is not the extent of arbitrary power that is resented, but its inconsistency. It is not that the state is hated, but rather that the idea is wide spread that its power can be used more effectively. When Tocqueville read through the cahiers of complaints submitted to the Estates General what he found was that cumulatively if you followed all the advice and recommendations then the whole of the Old Regime would be swept away.

In other words from Tocqueville's perspective it was no surprise that the Soviet Union collapsed under Gorbachev when living conditions were reasonably good but the government made clear through its actions that the way it had been running things was deeply flawed and invited public criticism while it stood firm under Stalin whose government was harsh, brutal and did not admit to shortcomings.

That is perhaps one of Tocquevilles central paradoxes, that the way that the government itself tried to change and reform undermined faith and confidence in the regime. The limits of its effective power were unclear. In his image it groped forward until it met opposition before which it would withdraw (p133).

Tocqueville is surprised that the writers on economic issues under the Old Regime looked to China as their model of an ideal state. But taking into account that impressionistic image of an uncertain, hesitant government this makes sense as China was, at least in how educated opinion in Eighteenth Century France understood it, a uniquely self assured and stable authority, wisely governed thanks to a class of civil servants selected through competitive examinations. There an articulate body of opinion that did not seek to increase political liberty but instead “sought to increase the power and jurisdiction of the central authority" (p.50) and so we should not be taken aback to find that one of the results of the breakdown of the authority of the Old Regime was the creation of a stronger regime that built on the existing centralising tendencies with the result that "since '89 the administrative system has always stood firm and amid the debacles of political systems...The same duties were performed by the same civil servants, whose practical experience kept the nation on an even keel through the worst political storms" (pp219-220). His key point being that the new regime is built out of the material of the old regime and was not an complete and absolute break with the past.

What strikes Tocqueville as new and different about the French revolution is that it was not restricted to France. "The French Revolution, though ostensibly political in origin, functioned on the lines, and assumed many of the aspects, of a religious revolution" (p.42). It looked abroad and sought converts beyond its boarders. It had a gospel, based on 'natural' and 'universal' principles in his words and sought to propagate it. Perhaps this is his final paradox and one that he doesn't fully explore in this exploration of the causes of the collapse of the Old Regime, how the ideas developed in a specific local context were assumed to be transformative beyond the limits of France.

[Markus · Rating 3 out of 5]

L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

The “Old Regime” published in 1856 is a study of the Governance of France from the dark Middle ages up to Louis XVI.

And further to understand and explain why and how the terrible and violent Revolution of 1789 came to happen.

Alexis de Tocqueville is best known for his “Democracy in America.”(1835) a book that I appreciated and that should be read by every European and American who wants to understand the differences in understanding democracy in Europe at the time and America.

In his study of the Old Regime, in order to produce a credible backup, Tocqueville undertook a comprehensive reading over several years of ancient documents available throughout France concerning the functioning of administration at all levels from basic villages to small towns and provincial cities and finally of Paris.

From St. Louis (1226-1270) to Louis XVI, oppression, serfdom and heavy taxation of the
peasants were the usual practice ever since centuries.

Aristocrats, however, historically providing armed protection for the king and governing and administrating their provinces were taking care of their farming and village communities. They were exempt from any taxation.

Things changed when governance was concentrated as from Louis XIV and onwards to Paris and administration, justice and taxation organised by the king's council.

Social classes were strictly separated into aristocrats, bourgeois and illiterate peasants.
There was no communication between these classes, rather enmity.
This situation, of course, facilitated despotic and tyrannic ruling

By the time of Louis XVI the aristocratic cast had lost all their political and administrative power and had no longer any contact with their rural communities. They had left their castles, selling their land little by little and moved to Paris and became courtesans.
They had kept their immunity from taxation and held on to and even increased all their privileges.

This situation was the first and most incomprehensible for the lower population. This is where hatred between social classes had started and kept burning for generations.

Philosophers and writers of a new kind appeared and published political brochures proposing new governing systems to replace the old constitution thus preparing the readers for possible emerging changes in the country.

Tocqueville never mentioned the name of Chateaubriand, like he rarely mentioned any other name, but it seems likely that he pointed at him when he mentioned this as one of the causes of the coming revolution.

The Church is another stepping stone that seemed to have led to unrest.
Exempt from taxes, implicated in all local politics and administrations, rich land and farm owners, providers of local judicial decisions.

It was not against the Christian Religion the revolution attacked and destroyed churches and
Monasteries but because the church occupied the strongest most privileged position in the old regime.

Tocqueville wants to show in this work that the revolution was necessary, even taking into account the excessive violence, according to his conclusion it was the only way to shake off the tyranny of the despotic ruling of the monarchy.

Tocqueville wrote this work at the time of a new despot ruling France. Napoleon Bonaparte.
He never mentioned his name. He was serving as a minister in Bonaparte’s government.

The book ends with the sad conclusion that the revolution had only led to the government of another despot and that the French population was not worthy of liberty.

I had chosen to read this work after having read “Memoires d’Outre Tombe” by Chateaubriand in order to get a complete picture of this important period of French History.

I would only recommend it to readers very interested in the period of the French Revolution, not for its literary quality.

[Antigone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alexis de Tocqueville is most well-known for his book Democracy in America, published in two volumes that were released in 1835 and 1840. Sixteen years later he turned his attention to the task of divining the root causes of his own nation's upheaval. The French Revolution required a leveling eye; its truths having been twisted, as they so often are, into convenient justifications for (or against) post-Revolution policy reform. But more than this, de Tocqueville recognized how compelling it was in the aftermath of a substantial societal eruption to shorthand the event; to shear off its complexities and deliver it up denuded of all but a tuft of basic rationales. And if history is meant to teach us, that sort of short-handing leaves only a half-lesson learned.

This is a brief, heavily-researched work that requires a bit of dedicated concentration. Examinations are made not simply of the administrations, classes and movements of the age, but also those leading up to the reign of the ill-starred Louis XVI. We are introduced to structures that eroded over time; aristocratic influence that did in fact diminish; safeguards that were lost as France attempted, long before its citizens thought to riot, to embrace a more equalizing vision of government. In fact, the most fascinating element of this treatise for me is de Tocqueville's theory that the initial, activated stages of much-needed reform are those in which a society is most vulnerable to revolt. That it was precisely because the peasant caste was finally receiving the empathy it deserved that it rose up in rebellion. That the revolutionary match was struck after the problems were laid on the table and had begun to be addressed. In short, once everyone (including the aristocracy) agreed such grievances were well-founded. As if the poor had finally received permission to be enraged.

It's an interesting book if you've got the time and focus it requires. I'd certainly consider it canon in the field of French Revolution writings...and also apropos as an application to studies of modern-day Russia.

[Saeed abedi · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب تحلیلی بسیار جذابی است که با اسناد متعدد اثبات می کند رژیم قبل از انقلاب فرانسه تا چه حد شبیه به نظام بعد از آن بود و در واقع اگر لویی شانزدهم مشروطه را می‌پذیرفت چقدر غیر ضروری میشد ایجاد انقلاب و ریختن این همه خون
تمرکز کتاب روی نظام متمرکز مشابه شیوه مالیات گیری حدود و اختیارات والی در ایالات نجبا و نسبت آنان با حکومت و آموزش است
حسرت بزرگ نویسنده البته نوشتن کتابی درباره خود انقلاب فرانسه بود که عمرش کفاف آن را نداد

[Czarny Pies · Rating 5 out of 5]

As Marxism is receding from respectability, de Tocqueville's stature is growing even in France where his very bourgeois outlook and anglophile leanings have often made him extremely unpopular.

De Tocqueville's conclusion and logic are quite simple. It is highly dangerous for a corrupt regime to try to reform itself because the only thing holding it together is the self-interest of all those unscrupulously profiting from the injustices of the regime. When a reformer emerges in the ruling elite, he or she makes the hangers-on nervous. They start immediately looking for ways to jump ship in order to preserve their own privileges rather than closing ranks. In the view of de Tocqueville, this was has how the Old Regime fell, not so much from the Parisian mobs but from the rats jumping ship.

Simon Schama (Citizens) certainly thinks de Tocqueville got things right. Marxists starting with Marx himself however have always tried to dismiss Tocqueville as a bourgeois ideologue who failed to recognize the historical importance of revolution and the working class. It today's world however it is de Tocqueville whose star is on the rise in academic circles.

[Amir · Rating 5 out of 5]

همزمانی مطالعه این کتاب و بینوایان ویکتور هوگو لذت خواندن هر دو کتاب را برای من صدهابرابر کرد. تاریخ ملت فرانسه با تمام فراز و فرود هایی که پشت سر گذاشته به خصوص در دو قرن اخیر، آینه بی غل و غشی است که می توانیم برای شناخت کجی ها و راستی ها خودمان در آن نگاهی بیندازیم. کمی اغراق است اما به جای واژه فرانسه در عنوان کتاب می توان نام کشور ها و ملت های بسیاری گذاشت. کشور ها و ملت هایی که بواسطه تیغ یک انقلاب از گذشته خودشان بریدند و حال سالها بعد مجالی پیدا کردند که در دالان تاریک و تو در توی تاریخ به دنبال حقیقت و چیستی شان باشند.


در اجتماعی که پیوندهای خانوادگی، کاستی، طبقاتی و اخوت های صنفی در آن از بین رفته باشند، مردم بسیار آمادگی دارند که تنها بر حسب منافع شخصی‌شان بیندیشند و بر وفق یک فردیت گرایی بسیار محدود فقط در اندیشه خود باشند و هیچ گونه دلبستگی به خیر همگانی از خود نشان ندهند. رژیم خودکامه نه تنها با چنین گرایش‌های فرد پرستانه ای مقابله نمی‌کند بلکه به آنها بال و پر هم می دهد و بدین سان حکومت شوندگان را از هر گونه احساس همبستگی و وابستگی متقابل و علایق همسایگی و دلبستگی به افزایش رفاه کل اجتماع محروم می سازد. در جامعه‌ای که احساس افراد آن نسبت به همدیگر سرد بوده باشد رژیم خودکامه می‌تواند که گام بیشتر گذارد و این سردی را به یخ زدگی مبدل کند.


انقلاب فرانسه و رژیم پیش از آن اثر الکسی دوتوکیل یکی از شگفت‌انگیز ترین و دقیق ترین و در عین حال بی طرفانه ترین کتاب هایی است که نه تنها در مورد انقلاب فرانسه بلکه در مورد هر انقلابی بخوانید.

برای بسیاری، در فرانسه سال ۱۷۸۹ انقلاب نابهنگام بود. هیچ کس حتی در مخیله اش نمی گنجید که چنین طوفانی عظیمی با سودای برکردن بنیان تمام نهاد و سنت های گذشته فرانسه در راه است. به راستی که "هیچ ملتی نبوده است که مانند فرانسویان در سال ۱۷۸۹ مصمم شده باشد که از گذشته اش ببرد و خط زندگی اش را از هم بگسلد و چنان شکافی میان انچه که بوده و انچه که می خواست باشد بیافریند که با هیچ تدبیری نتوان آن را پر کرد"

الکسی دوتوکول با تعمق در تاریخ پیش از انقلاب،‌ ریشه های انقلاب ۱۷۸۹ را جستجو می کند و درنهایت به این نتیجه می رسد که وقوع انقلاب فرانسه نه‌ نابهنگام و شگفت آور که از ضرورتی تاریخی برمی خواست. ضرورتی که علت آن انحطاط آزادی در خاک فرانسه از یک سو و از سوی دیگر میل به برابری در عمیق ترین بخش های روح یک فرانسوی از دیگر سو بود. و توضیح‌ میدهد که این دو یعنی میل به برابری و آزادی با اینکه پیش از انقلاب هدفی مشترک داشته اند اما پس از به ثمر نشستن انقلاب باهم تصادم پیدا میکنند و میل به برابری بر سودای آزادی پیروز میشود. پادشاه میرود اما حکومتی بس مستبدانه تر جای آن را میگیرد. نتیجه انقلاب برای یک فرانسوی که اندیشه آزادی در جانش ریشه نگرفته به تعویض سرور خاتمه می یابد.

دوتوکویل توضیح‌ میدهد که چگونه‌ لویی شانزدهم (واپسین پادشاه پیش از انقلاب) و روشنفکران و فیلسوفان و اشراف زادگان بر شعله های انقلاب در سینه های مردم فروپایه فرانسه که سده های طولانی نابرابری های مالیاتی و اختلاف طبقاتی به ستوه‌شان اورده بود می دمیدند. سده هاست که ملت فرانسه دیگر در امور عمومی شرکت داده نمیشود و اندوخته ای و تجربه ای در مورد امر سیاسی نداشته. هر چه به انقلاب نزدیک تر میشویم حکومت سایه های اقتدارش را بر تمام شئون خصوصی و عمومی زندگی مردم پهن می کند و ملت فرانسه به این که این اقتدار نقش پدر را برای آنها بازی‌کند خو میگیرد. در نبود امکانی برای فعالیت مستقل و آزادانه سیاسی، روشنفکران و فیلسوفان زمام امور را با نظریات انتزاعیشان در دست میگیرند. روشنفکرانی که تجربه ای در امر سیاست نداشتند با پرتاب لاطائلاتی که به محک واقعیات تاریخی و اجتماعی ان روزگار فرانسه نخورده بود، اندیشه برانداختن تمام نهاد های رژیم گذشته و آغاز کردن همه چیز از نو را در سرمی پروراند. نتیجه این امر در نهایت این بود که " تمرکز از سر نو برپا شد و همه موانعی که پیش از این آن را محدود به حدودی می ساختند، از سر راهش برداشته شدند. بدین سان در میان ملتی که به تازگی سلطنت را برانداخته بود، اقتدار متمرکزی سر بلند کرد که قدرت هایش گسترده تر، سفت و سخت تر و حتی مطلقه تر از قدرت هایی بودند که هر پادشاه فرانسوی تا آن زمان به کار بسته بود"



فرانسوی می تواند به هر کاری دست یازد اما تنها در جنگ است که بر دیگران پیشی می‌گیرد. او ترجیح می‌دهد که علیه نابرابری‌ها بجنگد و فتوحات درخشان جنگی و پیروزی‌های چشمگیر را از دستاوردهای پایدارتر برتر می‌داند. این ملت برای قهرمانی آماده‌تر است تا فضیلت‌های ملال آور و برای شعور نبوغ آسا مستعد تر است تا یک ادراک سلیم و بیشتر به اندیشیدن طرح‌های باشکوه گرایش دارد تا اجرای قدم های بزرگ‌.

[Erik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Certainly one of the very greatest works of political philosophy, in some ways better than Democracy in America. Tocqueville was fascinated by the phenomenon of social equality after centuries of feudalism, and he goes so far as to say that the outward political revolutions and charters of the new post Enlightenment order were already essentially complete, as social conditions, before these revolutions ever took place. The preparation for the French Revolution was simply that "men (notice: men) were more nearly alike then they had ever been before." Hence they simply outgrew their feudal institutions, or already had outgrown them, and that this process was complete under the ancien regime, not under the revolutionary government. The political revolts and events historians associte with the revolution are simply not that important, because the event was overdetermined. If it had not happened this way it would have happened some other way, hence any given way though sufficient is hardly necessary to the political philosopher. It's a daring thesis. It may even be true. It may even continue to be true and predictive, as Democracy in America was, and is. The more people are the same, the more arbitrary political and economic differences and privileges appear and the more easy they are to strike down with a coup de main to the system, from wherever quarter or circumstance that blow may come. Tocqueville expresses the view that essentially the political stage of the revolution was an act of pique by the new equal man, a proto-middle class man, against such arbitrary privilege of the aristocracy, long since degenerated into inbred fops. The American revolution? Simply the pique of the colonists who already considered themselves Englishmen and were shocked to find out they were not. Rejection always precedes anger and revenge. What can we learn today from this important and oh, so delightfully dangerous, wicked book? (And there are so few truly dangerous books!) Perhaps our own aristocracy of merit, our meritocracy-without-merit in other words is finally ready to fall. The one crucial lynchpin is: do people see those possessors of letters behind their names and privileged positions in the institutional structure as truly deserving--the ongoing mystique and fascination that sustained the old feudal aristocracy for centuries--or will that meritocracy be revealed as profoundly regressive and unfair, or worse, will the meritocrats simply be unmasked as no smarter or better than anyone else. Tocqueville suggests that just such a failure of legitimacy inevitably follows the realization of a profoundly equal social condition, suddenly unmasked in this way. If only there were some way to do this convincingly for all to see, the political and economic reforms and all the rest would be easy to accomplish. Really exciting stuff to be recommended to all young revolutionaries!

[Taha Rabbani · Rating 4 out of 5]

الکسی دو توکویل در اوایل قرن نوزدهم به دنیا آمده و در اواسط این قرن فوت کرده. گویا سیاستمدار هم بوده و منصب وزارت خارجه را مدتی در دست داشته. تا جایی که من متوجه شدم دو کتاب مهم دارد. یکی همین کتابی که نام بردم و دیگری «دموکراسی در آمریکا».
نکته ای که در خواندن این کتاب به ذهن من رسید این بود که توکویل تکلیف آدم را مشخص نمی‌کند. مثل پزشکی است که وقتی بیمار پیشش رفته، شروع می‌کند به توصیف بیماریش و جزئیات دقیقی از بیماری را تشریح می‌کند، اما دست آخر نسخه نمی‌دهد. این نگاه در کتاب ادموند برک، «تأملاتی در انقلاب فرانسه»، نبود. ادموند برک از همان ابتدا مخالفت خودش را با انقلاب فرانسه اعلام می‌کند و تمام کتاب را در باب دلایل این مخالفت حرف می‌زند. الان به ذهنم رسید که شاید توکویل محافظه‌کاری پیشه کرده و در زمانه‌ای که، احتمالاً، انقلاب فرانسه جنبه‌ای مقدس به خودش گرفته بوده، ترجیح داده که صراحتاً انقلاب را نکوهش نکند. به‌هرحال، توکویل چندین بار از کتاب ادموند برک نام می‌برد و هرچند گویا با زاویه‌ی نگاه برک مخالف است، اما تیزبینی او را می‌ستاید.
انقلاب فرانسه در سال 1789 به‌پا شد. توکویل برای بررسی پیشینه‌ی این انقلاب، بارها در تاریخ رفت‌وآمد می‌کند و در قرن هفدهم و هجدهم عقب‌وجلو می‌رود. این رفت‌وآمدها من را که با خود انقلاب فرانسه آشنایی نداشتم، چه برسد به تاریخ فرانسه، کمی گیج می‌کند. کمبود استعداد فرانسوی‌ها در نام‌گذاری پادشاهان‌شان هم مزید بر علت می‌شود. تا جایی که من فهمیدم تا شانزده «لوئی» پادشاه این کشور بوده‌اند. تشخیص لوئی «خوبه» از لوئی «بده» و لوئی «باعرضه‌هه» از لوئی «بی‌عرضه‌هه» کار چندان راحتی نیست.
در کتاب «انقلاب فرانسه و رژیم پیش از آن»، نویسنده با زبانی شفاف عمق مشکلات ساختاری رژیم قبلی را بیان می‌کند. خواننده تقریباً هیچ‌کجا در فهم متن درنمی‌ماند و احتیاجی به اطلاعات تخصصی ندارد. برخلاف کتاب ادموند برک، «تأملاتی در انقلاب فرانسه»، که در اواخر کتاب، بحث درباره‌ی حقوق و همین‌طور امور مالی چنان تخصصی می‌شه که من نافهمیده رهاش کردم. ترجمه‌ی کتاب هم بسیار روان است، هرچند با نگاه عیب‌جویانه‌ی ویراستاری می‌توان به آن اشکال گرفت؛ مثلاً «آنچه که»های پراکنده در کل کتاب که «که‌»اش اضافی است و باید حذف شود. درمقابل، ترجمه‌ی کتاب ادموند برک جالب نیست و نیاز به ویراستاری جدی‌ای دارد.

[Monty Milne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the title, don’t look in here for any kind of narrative of the Revolution: the focus is on what went before (and why it made the Revolution inevitable), not a description or analysis of the Revolution itself.

I found this fascinating, and the mass of detail gives a strong flavour of what pre Revolutionary France was really like. Or so it seemed to me – I am aware that many have called into question the accuracy of the author’s economic descriptions. Of course, famine and privation existed before the Revolution -as they did after it – but I am persuaded by the author’s belief that economic conditions were not, in and of themselves, the causes of the Revolution. As was also the case with Tsarist Russia, the last years of the old regime saw some remarkable economic advances. But both societies were doomed. Here, a strong case is made for maladministration and the selfishness of the ruling class.

A central tenet of the idea of European chivalry has always been that the knight or nobleman holds both land and honour in exchange for going to war for the monarch. When I was commissioned into the British army there was still a relic of this: not just the sword and spurs we wore with ceremonial dress, but the fact that officers paid for their own uniforms, just as our knightly predecessors arrived for war on their own horses. In France, centuries ago, the deal was: you provide your body and your horse and your weapons for the king when required, and in exchange you don’t pay tax. The whole point of the tax free status was that it was in exchange for service: but the aristocracy wriggled out of all their obligations, and yet retained all their privileges: unlike the peasantry (all obligations and no privileges) or the aristocracy in Germany (obligation to do military service replaced by a nobles’ tax).

It is easy to see why this was a recipe for a failing state, especially when the aristocracy in France became a caste closed to intermarriage (which it has never been in England). The resulting inability of the state to raise anything like enough revenue to enable it to function, and the selfish abdication of any kind of responsibility for public service by the ruling class, led inevitably to a disastrous seizing up of the organs of state, with the peasants feeling – with justification – that they had nothing to gain and everything to lose from a system entirely skewed against them.

The example of England shows that this did not need to be the case. And – to my surprise – there were also examples of good government and fiscal responsibility in some parts of France which, had they been duplicated everywhere, might have staved off disaster there too. (There is a very interesting Appendix in which the author discusses the case of Languedoc – the only part of France which seems to have worked – run efficiently as a kind of self governing province).

Marxist scholars have long been contemptuous of de Tocqueville, seeing him as a “bourgeois ideologue” who got his economic facts wrong. I am no economist, and I cannot judge the fairness of these criticisms. But I do know that de Tocqueville, after a long period of being out of fasion, is now undergoing something of a renaissance. At the very least, he gives interesting and eye opening examples of many of the tragedies and absurdities of pre Revolutionary France.

[امیر لطیفی · Rating 4 out of 5]

این اثر تاریخی به‌معنای رواییِ کلمه نیست؛ تحلیلی‌ست؛ خبری از بازگوییِ خطیِ وقایعِ انقلاب نیست. تمرکزِ کتاب بیش از خودِ انقلاب، بر بخشِ دومِ عنوانِ آن است: رژیمِ پیش از انقلابِ فرانسه.

کتاب به‌شدت متکی‌ست بر اسناد و مدارک، به‌ویژه آرشیوهای اداری. چنین رویکردی در زمانه‌ی نگارشِ اثر، شیوه‌ای نسبتاً بدیع در خوانشِ تاریخ به‌شمار می‌آمد.

کتابی‌ست که خواندنش حوصله می‌خواهد، پیشنهاد می‌کنم حتماً تورق کنید قبل از خرید و دست‌ گرفتن.

اصلِ مدعاهای کتاب این‌ها هستند:
- انقلابِ فرانسه در ظاهر همه‌چیز را دگرگون کرد، اما در عمل بسیاری از ساختارهای گذشته را بازتولید و حتی تقویت کرد؛ به‌ویژه دولتی مرکزی، متمرکز و نیرومند که در تمامِ شئونِ زندگی اجتماعی و فردی مداخله می‌کند. از نظر نویسنده، انقلاب نه پایانِ دولتِ مطلقه، بلکه تداومِ آن در شکلی عقلانی‌تر، منسجم‌تر و مشروع‌تر بود.

- آزادی و برابری آرمان‌های انقلاب بودند، اما آزادی خیلی زود به حاشیه رفت و برابری در اولویت قرار گرفت. برابری، در نهایت به نحوِ جداافتاده از آزادی و نهادهای تضمین‌کننده‌ی تأمین شد و در عمل عمدتاً نه از مسیرِ گسترشِ امکان‌ها، بلکه از راهِ سلبِ امتیازات، تخریبِ تمایزاتِ اجتماعی و هم‌سطح‌سازیِ اجباری تحقق یافت و از این حیث، نوعی عقب‌گرد بود که راه را برای استبدادی نو هموار کرد.

- خودِ رژیمِ پیشین با اصلاحاتِ نسنجیده و تمرکزگرایانه، مقدماتِ فروپاشیِ طبقاتی را فراهم کرد که می‌توانستند حامیِ آن باشند. دولتِ سلطنتی با تضعیف یا نابودیِ نهادهای محلی، صنوف، شوراها و اشرافیتِ منطقه‌ای، جامعه را از نهادهای میانجیِ کارآمد تهی کرد و افراد را بی‌واسطه در برابر دولتِ مرکزی نشاند. نتیجه آن بود که طبقات از یکدیگر بیگانه شدند، نارضایتی‌ها انباشته شد، تبعیض‌ها عیان‌تر شد و طبقاتِ فرودست بیش از پیش نسبت به نابرابریِ موقعیتِ خود آگاه شدند؛ اما این آگاهی، چون با تجربه‌ی نهادهای آزادی و خودسامانی همراه نبود، به مطالبه‌ی آزادی نینجامید، بلکه اغلب به واگذاریِ اختیار به دولتی متمرکز انجامید که وعده‌ی برابری می‌داد.

- هیچ ملتی به اندازه‌ی ملتِ فرانسه سیاست را در قالبِ ایده‌های ناب، انتزاعی و ادبی نیندیشید. فرانسویان به‌جای پرورشِ تدریجیِ نهادهای عملیِ آزادی، مجذوبِ مفاهیم کلی و آرمان‌های مجرد شدند؛ امری که نه‌تنها به استقرارِ آزادی پایدار کمک نکرد، بلکه در نهایت به زیانِ خودِ ملت فرانسه تمام شد.

[Aung Sett Kyaw Min · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now, it may be theoretically and practically impossible to write an "objective" commentary on the strange beast we all come to know as the French Revolution. Yet what Tocqueville has accomplished here is a comparative study illuminating the brute fact that the Revolution completes the task of centralization (concomitant with the levelling of the provincial laws, customs and regulations (e.g. parlements or mediaeval law courts) clumsily pursued by the Ancien Regime as early as Louis XIV. When all dust has settled, Frenchmen found themselves well underway on the road whose foundations was laid by the royal power that preceded it. Tocqueville even goes as far as to claim that the Ancien Regime, partially driven by greed, and by demolishing ancient customs and introducing new reforms through royal institutions that had no mediaeval precedent, showed all the orders how the society could be made anew. On the other hand, the Revolution also introduced its own "savagery" into the mix--a savagery which Tocqueville tacitly believed was avoidable, if only we applied the brakes at the end of 1789. Yet the question of whether the Terror was an unavoidable outcome of the 1789 is a question that is beyond the scope of Tocqueville's study. He does devote a chapter on the revolutionary 'discourse' produced by the class of philosophes and social reformers which, in his expert opinion, only 'caught on' because the latter and the middle classes sympathetic to the plight of the landed peasantry have longed since ceased to interact with the actual peasantry in the matters of governance. Unlike England and a few other emerging absolutist states in Europe the steady accumulation of royal power corroded the collaboration between the noble classes and those whom they were supposed to govern and care for. The ensuing vacuum is then filled by the discourse of equality and freedom and dreams of radical reforms until all Frenchmen were swept up by the fervor. Still, are the years of 1792-3 unavoidable? Beyond his praise for the 1789 ("a time to be remembered forever" pg. 204), Tocqueville remains largely silent.
We are all heirs to the Revolution, and in our hearts and minds it always inspires admiration or disgust, but never indifference.

[Edward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tocqueville is most known for his "Democracy in America", and I find it unfortunate that this work languishes in its shadow, as it truly is a wonderful work of political science. Tocqueville had managed to create a fresh examination of the Revolution while it was still in living memory. Indeed, coming for a noble background whose family was victimized by the Terror, and a friend of Legitimists or Ultraroyalists, Tocqueville manages to be a neutral perspective on a controversial event that was stirring passion in the politics of the time.

Tocqueville's account is a classic in that his analysis derives from direct sources of the Ancien Regime and the era, rather than as a polemical critique such as Edmund Burke's. The conclusions he arrives to contradict the popular image of the revolution, be it demonized or romanticized. Some of these conclusions we may not appreciate as a more impartial audience, such as King Louis XVI being a kind-hearted man with good intentions but lacking in skill. However, others challenge assertions commonly held today, that the revolution was continuing the monarchy's goals and efforts at centralization. Unfortunately the book ends at the beginning of the revolution proper, which was to be an issue dealt with in a book that was never written due to Tocqueville's death. A shame for us, but we can enjoy this wonderful work nevertheless.

[Xander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alexis de Tocqueville was a nineteenth century aristocrat and liberal who, after visiting the United States of America, became so interested in the concept of democracy that he wrote two huge volumes on 'Democracy in America'. One of the main themes in this work is the problem of how to combine the struggle for liberty with the struggle for equality. Tocqueville saw the struggle for equality as a danger to the freedom of individuals. Equality requires a centralized authority to make things equal and, combined with the process of democracy, leads to a situation in which every individual will be just that: an individual. This will lead inevitably to a transfer of power to the state and the rule of the majority, and hence destroy the personal autonomy of the individual.

In the USA, according to Tocqueville, this paradox was resolved by the strong sense of community: the state governments, but especially the townships, were a decent bulwark against the centralizing tendencies of the federal government. In Democracy in America (1840), Tocqueville concludes that democracy worked in the USA because it could start from scratch; democracy in Europe would be an entirely different matter - historical developments had already led to very unequal societies in which classes and despots were already present.

The Ancien Régime and the Revolution (1856) explores this last point in relation to France. Tocqueville delved into the administrative archives to unearth the society of eighteenth century France, in order to explain how the French Revolution originated and why - also: why in France and why at that particular moment (1789)?

So what's Tocqueville's answer to these questions? According to him, in the eighteenth century, there were different strands, all intertwining to develop into the explosion we now call the French revolution. First, feudalism was eroded - peasants were landowners and the aristocracy gradually lost all its finances, but increasingly gained in power. At the same time, a middle class developed that gained ever more financial power, eventually becoming much more powerful than the old aristocratic elite. France was a strongly stratified society: the three classes - nobility, bourgeouis, commoners - didn't mingle with and looked unfavourably towards each other.

During the eighteenth century - and really from the reign of Louis XIV in the seventeenth century - the French kings increasingly spend more and more money on wars, and because of the decline of the aristocracy gained tremendously in power.

The result of all these events? To finance the expenditures of the French state, the king needed taxes. Because the administrative and judicial systems were almost exclusively manned by bourgeous, and the nobility held exclusive privileges to exemptions from taxes, the state increasingly taxed the poorest people: the commoners. This led to frustration and growing unrest.

During this process, the French state centralized more and more, eventually ending up with the situation that 'just' the city of Paris governed the rest of France. The countryside and the smaller towns were only peopled by the French without money - if you had any money you would build your future in the capital. In effect this meant that the nobility ruled the countryside and the towns without being present. This strengthened the already ongoing process of alienation of the nobility from the commoners.

According to Tocqueville, this was a state bound to crumble. When Louis XVI tried to reform his administrative system, sending many bourgeois officials home, he created - in one instance - a society of individuals, in which everyone looked at everyone else with hatred and envy. For years the philosophes had inspired a sense of injustice and inequality in the common people and, strangely enough, the nobility. Just before the Revolution broke out, the nobility had tried to help better the situation of the commoners; this was also what king Louis XVI tried to do with his reforms.

So, absurdly, the Revolution was heralded (and if not heralded, at least welcomed) by the nobility, who would be the first ones on the list of the commoners, when they got rid of the king. The people, spurred on by the political ideologies (some would say demagogery) of the philosophes, resented king and nobleman alike and held both accountable for the abominable state they were in. And since the Catholic church was in league with the state - and derived much power and authority from this relationship - they felt strong passions for anticlericalism and antireligiosity.

And the bourgeois? They just went on with their business, administering the organs of the state. The only thing that really changed was their ruler.

Tocqueville claims that the lesson we should learn from this (among others) is that ideals of equality (really, democracy) and ideals of liberty (really, autonomy) can conflict with each other and clash violently. The Ancien Régime digged its own grave by taxing and alienating the masses (the poor): forced labour, military service, ever increasing taxation, harsh punishments, etc. The nobility stood by, while the bourgeouis just went about their business on their financial ego-trip. When the situation got so bad that, out of sympathy, king and nobility wanted to reform the situation, the slightest betterment led to immense feelings of unfairness and inequality by the masses. The Ancien Régime already passed the point of no return and, according to Tocqueville, the Revolution was, in this sense, inevitable.

Originally meant as part 1 of a trilogy on the Revolution, this is Tocqueville's only finished book on the subject. He intended to write two subsequent works: one detailing how the Revultion progressed and the other explaining what came after it. But even though Tocqueville didn't manage to write the other two works (he succumbed to tuberculosis), throughout The Ancien Régime and the Revolution, it becomes clear what his viewpoint is. He continuously compares the situation after the Revolution with pre-Revolutionary, eighteenth century France, and concludes that nothing really changed. The Revolution happened; and existing state structures and especially the trend of ever-increasing centralization of state power were used as tools by the new regime.

I continue to be amazed by Alexis de Tocqeuville's sharp insights and his eloquent analyses of the themes of democracy, equality, liberty and centralization. In both Democracy in America and The Ancien Régime and the Revolution the same trends are observed. The struggle for equality leads to a situation in which liberty eventually succumbs and a centralized authority emerges. Although he was an aristocrat, Tocqueville seems to have accepted the changing times and he seems to have sympathy for the poor and powerless; he also seems to be a true liberal, fighting for personal freedom and autonomy and warning us for the potential dangers of democracy. (He saw Napoleon I as the culmination of all the bad sides of democracy; he was thrown in prison because he observed the exact same trend with the rise of the war-hungry demagogue Napoleon III).

Amazing thinker; amazing book; amazing subject.

[Rudyard L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly good book

[Belal · Rating 4 out of 5]

غير أنه عندما كان قد تم تدمير أو إضعاف هذا الجيل القوي الذي كان قد بدأ" الثورة، مثلما يحدث عادة لكل جيل يبدأ مثل هذه المشروعات، عندها ووفقا للمجري الطبيعي.. جرى تثبيط حب الحرية وإضعافه وسط الفوضى والديكتاتورية الشعبية، وعندما بدأت الأمة المضطربة البحث عن سيدها، وجدت الحكومة المطلقة _لإحيائها وإعادة تأسيسها_ تسهيلات هائلة اكتشفتها عبقرية ذلك الذي كان يتجه إلى أن يكون في آن واحد، المستمر بالثورة ومدمرها
"

[Laurens van der Tang · Rating 4 out of 5]

There really is no excuse for only reading Tocqueville's Democracy in America. The Ancien Régime is one of Tocqueville's best works. It analyzes the spirit of the French Revolution very accurately, although the factual information is not always correct (when he states France was affluent during the reign of Louis XIV).

[Marcos Augusto · Rating 4 out of 5]

The aim of the French Revolution (1789–1799), while demonstrably anti-clerical, was not so much to destroy the sovereignty of religious faith as to tear down all forms of the Ancien Régime, of which the established church was a foremost symbol, nor to create a state of permanent disorder. It was essentially a movement for political and social reform. Contrary to the views expressed by the participants in the Revolution themselves, there was an increase in neither the power nor the jurisdiction of the central authority. Instead, control of these forms was wrested from the monarchy and transferred in quick succession first to the People themselves and from there to a powerful autocracy. The Revolution never intended to change the whole nature of the traditional society. The chief permanent achievement of the French Revolution was the suppression of those political institutions, commonly described as feudal, which for many centuries had held unquestioned sway in most European countries. The Revolution set out to replace them with a new social and political order, based on the concepts of freedom and equality. In France, both before and after the Revolution, people relied on central authority instead of becoming economically or politically active themselves. By contrast, in the United States, political action permeated to even the lower levels of society. There, private individuals formed the basis of economic and political life, but, in France, the centre of political gravity resided in a chaotic bureaucracy answerable only to the monarchy form of government.

Another theme was the complete dissociation between French social classes, called the Estates, of which there were three – the clergy, the nobility, and the common people. Although this dissociation arose from social divisions imposed by the feudal system, the gradual disintegration of that system after the Middle Ages resulted, paradoxically, in social dissociation becoming increasingly complete. Whereas the feudal lord had at least a partial symbiosis with his vassals, the post-feudal nobility left ancestral estates in the hands of caretakers and flocked to the power centre that radiated from Paris, the seat of the monarchy and central government. The nobility lost all connection with the common poor (located mostly outside of Paris). The growing middle class emulated the nobility. By the late 18th century, the separation of classes was complete, breeding the class hatred demonstrated in the Revolution.

[Count Gravlax · Rating 4 out of 5]

If this was a youtube video, its title would be "Liberal aristocrat DESTROYS Reactionary chill and socialist cucks".

Tocqueville, a man of aristocratic origins and a son of the french revolution, holds no love for the revolutionary fervour that allowed him to get in the comfortable position of a public letterman. He also traces the roots of the future massacre and absolutism of the revolution from the centralizing movements of the ancién regime from 18th century until the year of the revolution.

He is not a historian, however how he says is more important than what he says - Tocqueville shows how the vices of the new State sprang to life during the reign of the last french kings. This is how he contradicts the arguments of Burke's pamphlet on the french revolution. Tocqueville is not a historian, so he might be unprecise in his affirmations, but is not so much how he talks about something but what he talks about. He describes a regime that slowly eroded the regional powers and obligations of the french public sphere and centralized it towards Paris. He describes a society micromanaged by bureaucrats appointed by the French king, and where public jobs become extremely more advantageous than pursuing a private entrepreneurship. The book also mentions how, through the centralization of local powers from feudal lords and local aristocracies, customary law was corroded by a confuse and imprecise legalism from Paris and how the poorer strata of society lost its possibility of recurring to the local lords and became dependent of a detached and uninterested caste of civil servants that had no "skin in the game" and no mutual dependency towards the the peasantry and city poor.

We are so used to think of the middle ages as a time of darkness but time and time again history shows that the way society found itself organized in those time followed a rational logic and not a superstitious or tyrannical one. When the State became an empowered being, it decided to rationalize life. This aesthetic desire of a rational, equanimous and centralized society was the greatest sin of the old regime, and the great obsession of the State in modern times.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book analyzes French society before the French Revolution, investigates the causes and forces that brought about the Revolution, develops his main theory about continuity in which he states that even though the French tried to disassociate themselves from the past and from the old regime; they continued with the same powerful central government. It was essentially a movement for political and social reform to increase the power and jurisdiction of the central authority. The Revolution never intended to change the whole nature of the civilization, or make any big change in the principles basic to the structure of the society...
نظریه ی اصلی توکویل در مورد انقلاب فرانسه این است که هدف انقلابیون، برخلاف آنچه تصور شده، تغییر کلی نظام و نابودی تمرکز قدرت نبود، چرا که آنها خود در تمرکز قدرت هیچ چیز کمتر از پیش از انقلاب نداشتند. شاید اثر الکسی دو توکویل از اولین آثاری باشد که به تجزیه و تحلیل انقلاب فرانسه پرداخته. نظریه ی انتقادی یک تاریخدان فرانسوی در مورد انقلاب تاریخی و مشهور کشورش، شگفت است.

[Stephen Heiner · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that is as relevant today as it was when it was written in the 1850s. To my mind, De Tocqueville exposes the fact that, contrary to what is taught in many schools, the Revolution did not spring out of nowhere suddenly, but was prepared by policies tolerated by all levels of society for centuries. He also shows that the idea of "absolute monarchy" is a theory parroted by history teachers, not anything that had any basis in reality, and certainly not in France.

For those living in France and/or amidst the French, the book is chock-full of lightbulb moments, in which you see that a certain national tendency, or way of living and thinking, dates neither to the Revolution or the Ancien Regime, but to time immemorial: the French have been that way for a long time. Most painful to read, for someone like myself who prefers subsidiarity in all things, was the continuation by the Revolutionaries of the process of centralization which we know was given a huge push by Louis XIV, but which had been happening over centuries as France married its way into the shape it holds today. This idea of centralization, which has as its chief boast "efficiency" is proof that bad ideas can be repeated by both royalists and revolutionaries, particularly when they think about humans as economic ciphers rather than immortal souls.

To be deeply appreciated this book requires a very basic knowledge of French history from 1780-1830, the kind you might even get via a Wikipedia read. The more that you know about French history, both before and after the Revolution, the deeper de Tocqueville's insights will loom.

"The central objective of this work which I am placing before the public is to explain why this great revolution, which was stirring simultaneously throughout almost the whole continent of Europe, should explode in France rather than elsewhere, why it emerged, as it were spontaneously, from the very society it was to destroy and how the old monarchy could finally collapse in such a comprehensive and precipitous fashion." (p. 10)

"Democratic societies which lack freedom can still be wealthy, sophisticated, attractive, even impressive, deriving power from the influence of their like-minded citizens. In such societies we encounter private virtues, kindly fathers, honest businessmen, exemplary landowners and even good Christians whose home country is not of this world and the glory of whose faith fosters people like that in the midst of the deepest moral corruption and the most depraved governments. The Roman Empire, in the final days of its decline, had many such in its population." (p. 14)

"We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country." (p. 15)

"Even in our own time we have seen men who believed that, by exhibiting their contempt for God, they could cover up their cowardice before the least significant government officials." (p. 21)

(regarding Catholicism in contrast to earlier religions) "I think I can say, without lacking respect towards this holy religion, that it owed its triumph in part to the fact that it had freed itself, more than had any other...from every special link with a single nation, government, social state, historical period or race." (p. 27)

(regarding the Revolution) "What can truly be stated is that it completely destroyed or is in the process of destroying...everything of the ancient society which derived from the aristocratic and feudal institutions, which was linked to them in any way at all and which bore the slightest impression of them in any way whatever." (p. 34)

"When the nobility possesses not only privileges but also powers, when it both governs and administers, its individual rights can be greater while being less obvious." (p. 43)

"Almost every ruler who has destroyed freedom sought at first to keep its outward form." (p. 56-57)

"For the intrusion of justice into administrative affairs harms only formal business, whereas the intrusion of the government into justice demoralizes men and tends to turn them into both revolutionaries and slaves." (p. 66)

"There we can see the Ancien Regime in a nutshell: strict rules, lax implementation; such was its essential nature." (p. 76)

"We often complain that the French have contempt for the law. Alas, when might they have learned to respect it?" (p. 76)

"No one imagined that an important matter could be brought to a successful conclusion without the involvement of the state." (p. 77)

"Since the government had usurped the place of Providence, it was natural for everyone to call upon the former for their personal needs." (p. 79)

"The men of '89 had overturned the building but its foundations had stayed in the very hearts of its destroyers and, upon these foundations, were they able to rebuild it, constructing it more stoutly than it had ever been before." (p. 80)

"'We are only a provincial town, we must see what they are going to do in Paris.'" (p. 83)

"Only government by one man has, in the long run, the unavoidable effect of making men similar to each other and mutually indifferent to each other's fate." (p. 89)

"In fact, as the government of the manor broke down, as the Estates-General finally met less frequently or eventually stopped meeting altogether, and as general freedoms in the end collapsed, ruining local liberties alongside them, the middle classes and the nobles ceased to have contact in public life. Never again did they feel any need to draw closer to each other or to cooperate; every day saw the rift between them widen and they became estranged from each other. In the eighteenth century this revolution was complete. These two classes of men met only by chance in private life and then not only as rivals but as enemies." (p. 93)

"The more this noble order ceased to be an aristocracy, the more it apparently became a caste." (p. 93)

"[Y]ou only have to dig to the root of this evil to find some financial short-term expedient which has grown into an institution." (p. 107)

(regarding the attitude of the French towards the King pre-1789) "They felt for him both the tenderness one feels for a father and the respect one owes only to God. By submitting to his most arbitrary commands, they were yielding less to constraint than to love; thus they often kept complete freedom of soul even in the most extreme state of dependence. They though the greatest evil of obedience was constraint; for us it is the least. For us, the worst evil stems from the slavish feeling which induces that obedience. Let us not despise our forefathers; we have not the right to do so. Would to God we could recover a little of their greatness along with their prejudices and failings!" (p. 123)

"In the eighteenth century, a village was a community all of whose inhabitants were poor, uneducated, and coarse." (p. 127)

(regarding the nobility) "As they went on marching at the front, they thought they were still governing and indeed they continued to retain around them some men whom, in legal documents, they called their subjects; other men they named as their vassals, tenants and farmers. In reality no one was following them; they stood alone. When eventually an attack came along to overthrow them, the nobles' only recourse was to flee." (p. 138)

"The nobles had forgotten so completely how general theories, once they have been accepted, inevitably become transformed into political passions and actions." (p. 144)

"Political language itself then adopted something of the language spoken by authors, packed with generalizations, abstract terms, pretentious vocabulary and literary turns of phrase." (p. 149)

"What is peculiar is that we have retained the habits derived from books while losing almost completely our former love of literature." (p. 149)

"In France the Christian religion was attacked with a sort of madness with no attempt even to put another in its stead. The passionate and unrelenting effort to rid people of the faith which had settled there left their souls empty." (p. 151)

(regarding the monarchy) "It is true they permitted no one to lay a finger on the Church but they allowed her to be pierced from afar with a thousand arrows." (p. 153)

"It was Bolingbroke who paved the way for Voltaire." (p. 154)

"The nobility of old, which was the most irreligious class before 1789, became the most devout after 1793 - the first to be infected was the first to be converted." (p. 155)

"When I seek to disentangle the different results caused by non-belief in the France of that time, I discover that it was the disorder in people's minds more than the degradation of their hearts or the corruption of their moral habits that brought men of that age to entertain such extraordinary excesses of behavior." (p. 156)

(critiquing a quote of Quesnay) "'Tyranny is impossible if the nation is educated'...With the help of this piffling literary rubbish, they intended to replace all political guarantees." (p. 160)

(quoting Voltaire, who was backing a policy of the King) "'As for me, I believe the king to be right and, since we must serve, I think it better to do so under a well-bred lion than two hundred rats of my own kind.'" (p. 165)

"[W]henever nations are poorly governed, they are very ready to entertain the desire for governing themselves." (p. 167)

"Only the thirty-seven years of constitutional monarchy, which were for us times of peace and rapid progress, can be compared in this respect with the reign of Louis XVI." (p. 172)

(quoting Necker) "'Most foreigners find it hard to have any idea how much authority is wielded in France by public opinion; they have difficulty in understanding the nature of this unseen power which even controls the royal palace. Yet that is how things are.'" (p. 173)

"[T]he Highways Department was besotted with the geometrical beauty of straight lines which we have seen since...rather than making a short detour it carved a way through a thousand inheritances." (p. 186)

"They judged and administered first in the name of the king, then in that of the republic and finally in the name of the emperor. Then, as fortune's wheel turned once again full circle, they began once more to administer and judge for the king, for the republic, and for the emperor, ever the same, ever in the same way. For what mattered the name of their master? Their business was less to be good citizens than good administrators and good judges. As soon as the first shock wave had passed by, it seemed as if nothing in the country had shifted." (p. 198)

"When I contemplate this nation in itself, I find it to be more extraordinary than any of the events in its history. Has there ever appeared on this earth a single nation so full of contrasts and so excessive in all its actions, guided ore by emotions, less by principles; always achieving consequently either less or more than was expected of it, sometimes below the common level of humanity, sometimes well above; a people so constant in its basic instincts that we can still recognize it from portraits drawn two or three thousand years ago; at the same time so nimble in its day-to-day thinking and its tastes that it ends up becoming a spectacle surprising to itself and often it remains as astonished as foreigners at the sight of what it has just enacted; the most stay-at-home and the most humdrum nation of all when left to itself yet, once uprooted involuntarily from its home and routines, ready to go to the ends of the earth and to risk all; unruly by temperament yet better suited to the arbitrary and even violent authority of a king than to the free and orderly government by leading citizens; today the declared enemy of all obedience, tomorrow devoting to servitude a kind of passion which nations best suited to slavery cannot manage; led by a thread as long as no resistance is offered; ungovernable as soon as an example of such resistance appears somewhere; thus always tricking its masters who fear it either too much or too little; never so free that one need despair of enslaving it nor so enslaved that it cannot still break its yoke; fitted for everything but excelling only in warfare; in love with chance, force, success, fame and rumour more than true reputation; more capable of the heroic than the virtuous, of genius than common sense; better suited to imagine vast plans than to complete great projects; the most brilliant and the most dangerous of European nations and the best shaped to become an object, by turns, of admiration, loathing, pity and terror but never of indifference?" (p. 206)

"One never quite appreciates the great energy feeble souls expend on hating anything which drives them to make an effort." (p. 215)

[Aurélien Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

The French Revolution was not a sudden outburst of violence, but the coming to the fore of a new socio-political ideal those shattering impact will go beyond borders and resonate with mankind as a whole. Few historical events could then compared to it, apart from, perhaps, as de Tocqueville recognises here, past religious revolutions (eg Christianity supplanting paganism…).

Here, he describes why feudalism was such a crippled and outdated system that is was ripe for crashing down. Through numerous examples, he reminds how arbitrary, unfair, burdensome, and contemptuous such a system was to the commoners; especially the peasants, a crucial demographic in what was then a predominantly rural society. He also shows how the nobility had gradually turned itself into a cast, a flock of courtesans leaving their localities and having forfeited their duties to society, thus alienating itself from the people yet, still, clinging rapaciously to its privileges. Here's therefore a brilliant snapshot of why these two social classes (the Third Estate and the Nobility) would end up hating each other, announcing many of the violence to come. Here's also, denouncing feudalism, a nice exposé of why the French Revolution will be welcomed in those countries then still burdened by such an archaic system (eg modern day Germany).

For here's the point: contrary to what reading a Edmund Burke (for all its prescience) may let you think, the French Revolution was not brutality instigated by atheists to overthrow Christianity. It was, at its core, the more than needed redefining of a whole new social order, in which oppressors from the past had no place. The revolutionaries were not anti-religious. They just targeted all symbols of the oppressive system they fought against, and of which the Church was a part.

Did they succeed?

De Tocqueville, of course, admits that French people are better off after the Revolution than under the Old Regime. But, what he points at and warns against is, interestingly, the continuity of centralisation that is, a way of governance which, ironically, had led to the Revolution itself. Indeed, if under the Bourbon monarchy all political power had been centralised in Paris, leading all aristocrats to flock there and turn themselves into useless courtesans disassociated from the people, under the new regime (he is writing in the 1850s) the picture remains roughly the same. This time, France is under the spell of a bourgeoisie, ruling through an overbearing bureaucracy that he sees more as an hindrance than an efficient system to actively involve citizens in the political arena. That's here the crucial question: are people really empowered?

'The only substantial difference between the custom of those days and our own resides in the price paid for office. Then they were sold by government, now they are bestowed; it is no longer necessary to pay money; the object can be attained by selling one's soul.'

Take that! Here again we see him, as he had famously done in his 'Democracy in America', turning his eyes towards the US; another country that had embraced revolutionary ideals, but which, fortunately for itself and unlike France, could have started it all from scratch...

Here's a wonderful read! Historically, it teaches a great deal about the motives and reasons behind the French Revolution; not least because he simply exposes not only the intolerable abuses of the feudal system but, also, criticises how the nobility had made itself useless through the centralisation of power in Paris. Politically, because by questioning centralisation (this form of governance which 'preponderates, acts, regulates, controls, undertakes every thing, provides for every thing, know far more about the subject's business than he does himself - is, in short, incessantly active and sterile') he is toying with a question that hasn't ceased to haunt every society ever since: how far a government can be centralised without, if not turn into despotism, at least contribute to disempower the people it is supposed to serve? A sharp analysis, those tenets still echo nowadays.

[Ricardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tocqueville realizou uma verdadeira pesquisa com fontes provenientes das instituições públicas do Antigo Regime francês, algumas remontando até ao reinado de Luís XIV (quase 150 anos antes), incluindo actos, petições e requisições públicas de poder local (paróquias) até ao central (governo de Paris), passando pelo provincial. Através destes exemplos, Tocqueville explica como as instituições presentes na França revolucionária já existiam em forma e substância, durante o Antigo Regime, pelo que o novo regime se limitou a passar uma vassourada e a tentar colar de novo os cacos, de forma a manter o centralismo burocrático de Paris.
Do mesmo modo, Tocqueville analisa as causas da Revolução, relativamente às injustiças entre as classes privilegiadas (clero e nobreza) e o Terceiro Estado (tudo o resto), que incluíam uma extrema injustiça na distribuição de impostos e de como este facto estava relacionado com a liberal posse de terrenos agrícolas em toda a França. O sistema feudal era raramente aplicado mas, devido às inúmeras excepções legais que as classes privilegiadas possuíam, todo o peso do Estado era exercido sobre os mais desfavorecidos (recrutamento, taille, corveias, portagens). Isto quando não eram requeridos para alguma obra pública em regime de servos ou presos arbitrariamente.
Tocqueville quebra o mito da posse de terras pertencer às classes privilegiadas, quando pertencia, na sua maioria, ao Terceiro Estado. O poder central, omnipotente e portando ausente nas províncias, tomava medidas que favoreciam a corrupção e não resolviam quaisquer dos problemas das províncias. As guildas, sob posse estatal, limitavam a liberdade de exercer todo o tipo de profissões pelo país fora, favorecendo uma oligarquia.

Para todo este tipo de maus exemplos (aos quais faz uma analogia contemporânea), Tocqueville apresenta documentação pública dos dois regimes. Mesmo passados 60 anos da Revolução, a maioria dos problemas administrativos mantinha-se, embora o panorama equitativo dos impostos tivesse melhorado. Mesmo com a destruição de uma década de revolução e duas de guerra, a França não voltou ao ponto de partida (o mesmo não se pode dizer do resto da Europa, onde somente o Reino Unido respirava alguma liberdade no meio do fumo das fábricas).

[Mehmet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tocqueville'i çokça duymuş olmama rağmen ilk defa okudum. Gerçekten Fransız Devrimi konusunda ufkumu açtı diyebilirim. Kimi zaman bariz bir şekilde devrim karşıtlığı yapması birazcık sinirimi bozsa da (sonuçta tüm kralların hakkı giyotindir :D) değindiği konular günümüze kadar yazılmış olan Devrim ile ilgili kitapların dışında bir bakış açısı sunuyor.

Özetleyecek olursam, Tocqueville, Fransız Devrimi'nin Eski Rejim'den direkt bir kopuş olduğunu düşünmüyor. Ona göre, Devrim'in getirdiği kimi şeyler zaten Eski Rejim'in bünyesinde mevcuttu: mesela merkezileşme. Devletin kamu idaresinde giderek daha fazla söz sahibi olması, içişleri için atadığı bakanlar ve temsilciler, yetkisini giderek artırdığı olağanüstü mahkemeler gibi. 18. yüzyıl boyunca ve özellikle ikinci yarısında gerçekleşen bu merkezileşme Devrim ile birlikte kat kat artmış ve kralların bile sahip olamayacağı seviyeye gelmiştir.

Devrimler her ne kadar köklü kurumları ortadan kaldırsa da; başka bir bakış açısı, yönetim, siyaset, felsefe getirse de yine de içinden çıktığı toplumdan ve yönetimden izler taşır. Tocqueville bu yüzden haklıdır: çünkü devrim olduğunda mecburen bir devri sabık yaratılır, bu da ister istemez tarihi anlatımı etkiler.

Bir başka husus feodalizm ile ilgilidir. Tocqueville, feodalizmin Devrim'den önce zaten çoktandır bittiğini, belki küçük uygulamalar haricinde ismen mevcut olduğunu belirtiyor. Devrim, ömrünü tamamlamış olan bu kurumu kaldırmakla zaten yapılması gerekeni yapmıştır.

Savunduğu bir diğer görüş XVI. Louis döneminde ülkenin bir refah içerisinde olduğu ve sürekli bir zenginleşmenin yaşandığıdır. Buna pek katılmamakla birlikte bilgimin de zayıf olduğunu söylemeliyim açıkçası. Yine de insanların ekonomik durumunun kötü olduğunu ve bahsi geçen zenginleşmenin toplumun oldukça sınırlı bir kesiminden ibaret olduğunu tahmin ediyorum.

Bütün bunlar Tocqueville'in basit bir krallık övgüsü yaptığını düşündürmesin. Eski rejimin yaptığı hataları da dile getiriyor. Kesinlikle okunması gereken bir kitap.

Son olarak çevirinin de gerçekten harika olduğunu söylemem gerekir. Öyle rahat okudum ki kitabı, sanki Tocqueville Türkçe yazmış gibiydi.

[Seth Benzell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me by Christophe Chamley, a French professor of mine, who recommended it as his favorite on political economy. He ranked it much higher than Democracy in America, which I am yet to read. However, I strongly suspect that this is due to his own cultural predispositions. 'The Ancient Regime' ends with a thrilling pseudo-paean to the French people who he describes as "today the declared enemy of all obedience, tomorrow devoting to servitude a kind of passion which nations best suited to slavery cannot manage" (shades of Sartre here) and as "more capable of the heroic than the virtuous, of genius than common sense." I'll have to compare this to 'Democracy in America' myself to see if I find his description of the American spirit equally compelling.

Despite the ending, the book attributes the French revolution as much to a unique political economic climate than some essential characteristic of the French nation. It is hard to summarize a book with so many insightful details and anecdotes. That being said, I take the books' essential political thesis as the following:

1) The King of France had lots of incentives to remove the political power of the aristocracy. For short-termist reasons, the monarchy decided to let the aristocracy maintain its economic privileges

2) The removal of the ancient responsibilities of the nobles left a political and technical power vacuum in the countryside

3) The centralization of power and ideas in cosmopolitan Paris led to the development of a highly abstract political philosophy focused on things like 'universal rights' and 'the original position.' This philosophy was appealing to the middle and lower classes who felt the current system was anti-egalitarian, inefficient and outdated.

4) The indolent aristocracy tolerated this intellectual development as a kind of fun word game. They never took seriously its implications.

5) The monarchy actually encouraged and propagated these ideas, because they tended to agree with the Kings' centralization and modernization programs. The monarchy used enlightenment rhetoric when removing privileges from guilds, towns and aristocrats. Technocrats and 'economists' agreed that the main problems of the peasants could be solved through the correct application of centralized power.

6) While centralization sometimes allows for greater efficiency in collective action, it also enables both accidental and intentional tyranny. The recent book "Seeing Like a State" is a modern retelling of this dilemma -- far off, 'scientific', technocratic governance, even when benevolent, often makes things worse.

7) Ancient prerogatives, institutions and relationships -- things like guilds and aristocracies -- are sometimes good and sometimes bad for welfare. However, organized factions like these are ALWAYS opposed to the centralization which enables tyranny. This is one important sense in egalitarianism and liberty are opposed. For example, he says of the corrupt judicial system "The irregular interventions of the courts in government, which often disturbed the efficient administration of business, thus served as a safegaurd of men's freedom from time to time. This was a case of one great evil setting limits on an even greater one" because it sometimes impeded the growth of a tyrannical monarchy.

8) For all of these reasons, the French revolution was - ironically - committed to actually accelerating the monarchical project of centralization. With the goals of equality and rationality it abruptly eliminated the Church and the aristocracy, further transforming the country into a uniform mass - ready for technocratic manipulation, 'education' and 'improvement'. This rapid and idealistic unmooring of society made the reign of terror possible. At its height, the revolution sought even to reorganize and standardize things like months and seasons. Some liberal institutions were established at the beginning of the revolution, but these were soon abandoned as barriers to 'efficiency'. Think here of the different emphasis on individual versus collective rights in Scottish and French Enlightenment thought.

9) On the eve of the French Revolution the King was actually making some steady progress towards eliminating stupid elements of ancient feudalism. This made the moment ripe, as the progress made the common people hopeful and impatient.

Ultimately, de Tocqueville thinks the French revolution had a bit too much égalité and not enough liberté. Frenchmen were fascinated by the concept of rights and freedom, but the key thought leaders put efficiency and égalité first. The author writes, "They seemed to love freedom; it turns out they simply hated the master." Liberty was seen as an intriguing element of Anglo-Dutch-American political economic success and as a useful rhetorical weapon -- not as the main end. And in the words of de Tocqueville "It is indeed true that in the long term, freedom always brings with it, to those who are skilled enough to keep hold of it, personal comfort, well-being and often great wealth... [But] whoever seeks anything from freedom but freedom itself is doomed to slavery."

Among other things, this book should be a stern warning to those who see freedom as merely an instrumental good.

Ultimately a great book. It just misses 5 stars because some of the discussions are hard to follow without a better descriptions of the various main actors. It also sometimes drags. The edition I had was the one pictured. It seemed a solid translation and contained the often interesting original endnotes.

As a final note, I was reading this book, sometimes aloud at my Grandfather's sickbed. For what it's worth.

[Redsteve · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is as much political science/philosophy as it is straight history. At some points De Tocqueville just makes sweeping statements and generalizations, with supporting details often anecdotal; in others, his analysis is more detailed. He does make a good case for the root causes (going as far back to the Middle Ages) for the French Revolution and it's results, and includes comparisons of history/government/society/economics with England and Germany. Strongly advise that readers also peruse the end notes as they go through - they are often lengthy and frequently include details left out of each chapter. 3 stars. This book gives you an idea of what an educated Frenchman in the mid-19th Century thought of the Revolution.

[Eoin Smyth · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second book in our Long Distance Book Club, this book was chosen not necessarily because either of us are super interested in the French Revolution (the interest is there, just secondary), but rather because of our history of living and working in China. This book allegedly gained a lot of popularity in CCP circles a few years back, causing quite the stir among some officials. Tocqueville proposes that revolution occurs, not when times are at their worst, but rather during times of reform, social change, and growing inequality. I can easily see why this message may have resonated with these CCP officials, as the parallels that can be drawn between the conditions leading up to Revolution and the modern day (not just China, but the West as well) are quite striking.

I wouldn't recommend this as a good introduction to the French Revolution, even if the whole point of the book is to illustrate the circumstances leading up to it. A lot of context is either assumed or brushed over. Tocqueville's voice comes through strongly in the text, and while all of his arguments and research is presented well, he has some obvious biases. It's clear he laments the loss of the Monarchy and the nobility, for example. Given the times following the Revolution and his arguments concerning institutional loss and centralization, these biases are not entirely unfounded, but from a modern perspective they can seem a bit outdated.

Below are the talking points I jotted down while reading for later discussion. Of course these aren't the only points of discussion that can be drawn, merely the ones that interested me the most. Hell, the chapter titles are TED talks in and of themselves, and are good jumping off points.

Long Distance Book Club: The Ancien Régime and the Revolution

Meeting 1 – Book 1
• Forward and Introduction
- The Regime shaped the Revolution’s politics.
- China parallels – Government appropriating the name of the Revolution.
- Freedom as a force for social good.
• Chapter 1 – Conflicting opinions of the Revolution at its outset.
- Unexpectedly significant.
- What did it destroy / create?
• Chapter 2 - How the fundamental and ultimate intention of the Revolution was not, as was thought, to destroy religious power or to weaken political power
- Christianity as a political institution.
- ‘As one of the largest landowners... [wanted to] maintain the Ancien Regime.’
- The National Assembly – Abolishing the old structure of society.
• Chapter 3 – How the French Revolution was a political revolution which followed the lines of religious revolutions and why.
- An ideological revolution VS civil war.
- The citizen in abstract.
• Chapter 4 – How almost the whole of Europe had exactly identical institutions and how these institutions were everywhere falling into ruin.
- The transition from feudal (Roman Law) to Democratic Monarchy.
- ‘Everything which was alive, active and creative was recent in origin, not only new but in conflict with the past’.
• Chapter 5 – What was the real work of the French Revolution?
- To bring about a social and political regime based upon social equality.
- Destroying everything derived from the aristocratic and feudal institutions.
- Abolishing the ancient common law of Europe.

Meeting 2 – Book 2
• Chapter 1 – Why feudal rights had become more hated among the people of France than anywhere else
- The division of land / the desire to be a landowner.
- Administrative Delegation – The nobility ceasing to conduct its own affairs.
- “Those who produce everything have nothing, those who produce nothing have everything.”
- ‘Enslavement of the land.’
• Chapter 2 – The centralization of the administration belongs to the Ancien Regime and is not the work of the Revolution or of the Empire as is maintained
- The Intendants – Agents of the central administration.
- Control of the roads and police.
- Government moves from sovereign to guardian.
• Chapter 3 – How what is now called Administrative Control is an institution of the Ancien Regime
- The common people get shafted time and time again.
- The middle class bourgeoisie seized control of the General Assembly.
- By the 18th Century, town government had degenerated into petty oligarchy.
- Central Government interfered much more extensively than its rights.
• Chapter 4 – How administrative justice and the immunity of public officials are institutions of the Ancien Regime
- Judicial and Government powers confused.
- Administrative immunity.
• Chapter 5 – How centralization had been successfully introduced at the hearth of the Old Powers and had supplanted them without destroying them
- The Revolution adopted the centralization of the Ancien Regime.
• Chapter 6 – Administrative methods under the Ancien Regime
- ‘The Lazy Peasant’ – Typical rhetoric.
- Control of the media and the debate.
- Strict rules, lax implementation.
• Chapter 7 – How France was already of all European countries the one where the capital had acquired the greatest dominance over the provinces and had enveloped the entire country most effectively
- By 1789 ‘Paris was already France itself.’
- Dividing up the country.
- The center of industry, trade, politics, arts, business, etc.
• Chapter 8 – How France was the country where Men had come to resemble each other the most
- The obliteration of the provinces homogenized French society.
- Nobles maintained their appearance, but not the reality of their former status.
- The middle classes and aristocracies education was the same.
• Chapter 9 – How much similar men were more divided than ever before into small groups, alien and indifferent to each other
- Nobility as a caste – freedom from taxation.
- Tax inequality – Still a modern problem.
- The nobility and the middle class despised each other.
- The middle class feared being confused with the common people.
- Collective Individualism – Absolute notions about themselves.
• Chapter 10 – How the destruction of Political Liberty and the separation of classes caused almost all of the ills which resulted in the demise of the Ancien Regime
- The taxation of the poor and exemption of the rich.
- Central direction of public finances.
- The Guilds – Control of craft and industry.
- A bloated administrative machine by design.
- The deliberate separation of classes.
• Chapter 11 – The form of Liberty that existed under the Ancien Regime and its influence on the Revolution
- Imperious as long as obedience was not challenged, otherwise dumbfounded at the sight of the slightest resistance.
- The Cahiers – Lofty ideals of mere lip service?
- The Clergy – Dual loyalties.
- Business was debated in public and decisions arrived at after appeals heard.
- ‘It would be wrong to muddle independence with freedom.’
• Chapter 12 – How the condition of the French peasant was sometimes worse in the eighteenth century than it had been in the thirteenth despite the progress of civilization
- Brain Drain – Anyone who could moved to the towns or cities.
- ‘If the lower classes were well off, it would be difficult to keep them in line.’
- Wealth buys exception.
- Laws and punishments for thee, not for me.
- Class isolation.

Meeting 3 – Book 3
• Chapter 1 – How around the middle of the eighteenth century Men of Letters became the leading political figures in the country and the consequences of this
- The desire for a natural equality of social conditions.
- Writers occupying the normal position of party leaders.
- One group directed the nation’s affairs; the other guided the nation’s minds.
• Chapter 2 -How irreligion could have turned into a universal and dominant passion for the French of the eighteenth century and what kind of influence it had on the character of the Revolution
- Irreligion replaces Christianity (mainly among the upper classes).
- Religious and political societies could not be governed by similar principles.
- Church had grown weaker while state grew stronger, but still lent a level of moral authority.
• Chapter 3 – How the French sought reforms before freedoms
- The Economists sought to make use of the royal admin to achieve reform.
- ‘Democratic Despotism’ – China idolization? Socialism?
- The French did not simply look for their affairs to be better directed; they wished to manage their own affairs.
- ‘Whoever seeks anything from freedom but freedom itself is doomed to slavery.’
• Chapter 4 – That Louis XVI’s reign was the most prosperous period old the old monarchy and how that very prosperity hastened the Revolution
- Paris alone grew richer and more extensive.
- Monarchical apologist?
- Evils seem unbearable as soon as the idea of escaping them is conceived.
• Chapter 5 – How the managed to stir the common people to revolt while intending to relieve their situation
- Patronising the poor, more lip service.
- The enthusiasms of the educated classes inflames the common peoples’ rage.
• Chapter 6 – Some practices which helped the government to complete the revolutionary education of the common people
- The destruction of ancient institutions paved the way for the common people to so do themselves.
- The Third Estate’s dealings with the state were stacked against them.
• Chapter 7 – How a great administrative revolution had preceded the political revolution and the consequences that this had
- Within the new system of law, all the powers created were collective.
- By wishing to improve everything, they ended up causing wholesale confusion.
- By bringing men together they saw more clearly the differences how their interests were hostile to each other.
- Each Frenchman had been shaken in his social habits, obstructed in business, etc.
• Chapter 8 – How the Revolution sprang inevitably from what preceded it
- Democratic envy towards the nobilities inexplicable privilege.
- The common people adjusted the writers ideas to their own rage.
- They wished to live not only equal but free.
- ‘Never so free that one need despair of enslaving it, nor so enslaved that it cannot still break its yoke.'
• Appendix -Independent provinces and especially Languedoc
- A model province of what could have been state wide, effectively implying the institutions of the Ancien Regime in a fairer and more equitable manner.

[harry gee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly astute if somewhat boring in its detail, there is no doubt that this is full of enough profound observations so as to make it both highly re-readable and an essential text on the Revolution, and therefore political science (relevant knowledge of the period prerequisite).

notes:

“even despots do not deny the merits of freedom; only they wish to keep it for themselves, claiming that no one else is worthy of it. Thus our quarrel is not about the value of freedom per se, but stems from our opinion of our fellow men (…) it is no exaggeration to say that a man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.”

“when great revolutions are successful their causes cease to exist, and the very nature of their success has made them incomprehensible.”

“Even if it had not taken place, the old social structure would nonetheless have been shattered sooner or later. The only difference would been that instead of collapsing with such brutal suddenness, it would have crumbled bit by bit.”

“When the nobles had real power as well as privileges, when they governed and administrated, their rights could be at once greater and less open to attack. In fact, the nobility was regarded in the age of feudalism much as the government is regarded by everyone today; its exactions were tolerated in view of the protection and security it provided. True, the nobles enjoyed invidious privileges and rights that weighed heavily on the commoner, but in return for this they kept order, administered justice, saw to the execution of the laws, came to the rescue of the oppressed, and watched over the interests of all. The more these functions passed out of the hands of the nobility, the more uncalled-for did their privileges appear-until at last their mere existence seemed a meaningless anachronism.”

The peasants had become land owners. “In this restricted form it was far more hated than in the heyday of feudalism, and we are fully justified in saying that the very destruction of some of the institutions of the Middle Ages made those that survived the more detestable.”

On the Lords: “Yet, though he no longer governed, his very presence in the parish and his privileges put difficulties in the way of establishing a good parochial government in replacement of his own. For the mere fact that there existed within the community an individual so highly privileged, so independent and different in kind from all its other members, told against the due enforcement of laws, which, in theory, applied to all alike.”

“A French peasant may be willing enough to leave the government of the nation as a whole in the hands of and autocratic central power, but he bitterly resents the idea of not having a say in the local administration of his village.”

“When the judiciary intervenes in administrative matters, only material interests suffer; but when the State tampers with the course of justice, the effect is to unsettle men’s minds and to render them at once servile and revolutionary-minded.”

“In the sphere of finance alone there are now such frequent changed that a municipal officer who wished to keep abreast of them would have to devote his whole time to this task, and neglect his other duties.”

Mirabeau on capital cities: “when the head becomes too swollen, the body develops apoplexy”

“Of all the various ways of making men conscious of their differences and of stressing class distinctions unequal taxation is the most pernicious, since it creates a permanent estrangement between those who benefit and those who suffer by it. Once the principle is established that noblemen and commoners are not to be taxed at the same rates, the public is reminded of the distinction drawn between them year by year when the imposts are assessed and lev-ied. Thus on these occasions each member of the privileged class takes notice of the practical interest he has in differentiating himself from the masses and in stiffening the barriers between himself and them.”

“It is curious to see how a difference in political principles led to a complete divergence in the social system of two countries separated only by a narrow arm of sea. In England during the eighteenth century it was the poor who enjoyed exemption from taxation; in France it was the rich. The English aristocracy voluntarily shouldered the heaviest public burdens so as to be allowed to retain its authority; in France the nobles clung to their exemption from taxation to the very end to console themselves for having lost the right to rule.”

“When we come across any ancient medieval custom which was maintained, with its worst elements willfully exploited in defiance of the spirit of the age, or any new and equally pernicious measure, we always find, if we go to the root of the matter, some financial expedient that has crystallized into an institution. Thus, to meet emergencies of a temporary order, new powers were frequently created which were to last for centuries.” Against conservatism

“The segregation of classes, which was the crime of the late monarchy, became at a late stage a justification for it, since when the wealthy and enlightened elements of the population were no longer able to act in concert and to take part in the government, the country became, to all intents and purposes, incapable of administrating itself and it was needful that a master should step in.”

“For in its desire to make money out of everything the old administration put up to sale most public offices and thereby deprived itself if the right of appointing or dismissing its officials at will.” The dangers of privatisation and deregulation

Almost all the vices, miscalculations, and disastrous prejudices I have been describing owed their origin, their continuance, and their proliferation to a line of conduct practiced by so many of our Kings, that of dividing men so as the better to rule them. But once the bourgeois had been completely severed from the noble, and the peasant from both alike, and when similar differentiation had taken place within each of these three classes, with the result that each was split up into a number of small groups almost completely shut off tom each other, the inevitable consequence was that, bough the nation came to seem a homogeneous whole, its parts no longer held together. Nothing had been left that could obstruct the central government, but, by the same token, nothing could shore it up. This is why the grandiose edifce built up by our Kings was doomed to collapse like a card castle once disturbances arose within the social order on which it was based.”

“I cannot help feeling that had this revolution, instead of being carried out by the masses on behalf of the sovereignty of the people, been the work of an enlightened autocrat, it might well have left us better fitted to develop in due course into a free nation.”

“In fact, those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it long. What has made so many men, since untold ages, stake their all on liberty is its intrinsic glamour, a fascination it has in itself, apart from all "practical" considerations. For only in countries where it reigns can a man speak, live, and breathe freely, owing obedience to no authority save God and the laws of the land. The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave. (…) Other nations, once they have grown prosperous, lose interest in freedom and let it be snatched from them without lifting a hand to defend it, lest they should endanger thus the comforts that, in fact, they owe to it alone.”

“generally speaking, the most perilous moment for a bad government is one when it seeks to mend its ways. Only consummate statecraft can enable a King to save his throne when after a long spell of oppressive rule he sets to improving the lot of his subjects. Patiently endured so long as it seemed beyond redress, a grievance comes to appear intolerable once the possibility of removing it crosses men's minds. For the mere fact that certain abuses have been remedied draws attention to the others and they now appear more galling; people may suffer less, but their sensibility is exacerbated. At the height of its power feudalism did not inspire so much hatred as it did on the eve of its eclipse. In the reign of Louis XVI the most trivial pinpricks of arbitrary power caused more resentment than the thoroughgoing despotism of Louis XIV.” Tocqueville argues that France was not on the decline, and the people had not simply grown weary of their circumstances, but that in fact it was in the best position it had ever been, yet the revolution still broke out as it was an inevitability for the progression of French Society, and a result of the undermining of faith which followed from attempts at reform and loosening of authoritarianism. In this way, you can understand why the Soviet Union collapsed under Gorbachev but not Stalin. It is a very astute observation. Thus the case for conservatism is held up, on the condition that you believe the French Revolution was not a good thing. It’s a very interesting situation - gradual reform and respect to the toil of established tradition ensuring the stability of the state as would have occurred conservatively, versus brazen reform where “scarcely any novelty, however startling, would not seem worth trying out”, to the outcome of total degradation of faith in the state, and the creation of the Revolution. Ultimately your choice of whether or not you believe in conservatism or not comes down to whether you think the revolution was good or not. Tocqueville himself, on this note, says: “Radical as they were, these reforms did not seem to have jeopardized the State itself, but every Frenchman was affected by them, if only in a minor way. He felt that his life had somehow been disorganized, that he must cultivate new habits, and if a businessman, that his activities would now be handicapped. True, routine of a kind still prevailed in the conduct of affairs of vital importance to the nation, but already no one knew from whom he should take orders, to whom he should apply, or how to solve those small private problems which crop up almost daily in the life of every member of a social group. Thus the nation as a whole was now in a state of unstable equilibrium, at the mercy of that final stroke of destiny which was to have such tremendous eftects and to produce the most formidable social cataclysm the world had ever seen.”

[Sezgin · Rating 4 out of 5]

RE-WO-LUCJA!!!!

[Todd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth reading but not as sublime as Democracy in America. In this work, Tocqueville conducted exhaustive research into how France was organized and run in the lead-up to the French Revolution. He explodes many myths about pre-revolutionary France, many of which, unfortunately, remain solidly believed myths taught in school as fact to this day. His deep, penetrating insights into people, government, and society are not as numerous here as Democracy in America, but there are still a few sprinkled in and leavening the work. It is also not nearly as long as the former work and fairly easy to read.

In essence, Tocqueville highlights the benefits of liberty, as well as the difficulties in achieving and maintaining it. He notes the dangers of tyranny, the ease toward which people tend to slide, and the masks it wears to creep into power.

As for pre-revolutionary France, Tocqueville notes how many post-revolutionary forms were already present: a near-total power in the center (though based in the monarchy), a bureaucratic state that preceded Bismarck's by a century (run from the Royal Council and its subordinates), democratic mentalities and vocabularies (spoken most often by those most obnoxious to its tenants, such as the nobility and upper middle class). He also goes through the vestiges of the feudal system that made the pre-revolutionary system so incredibly intolerable, despite its near total eradication. Principally, the nobility no longer formed a governing class of any import, but they retained their many tax immunities and claims against the commoners, they were typically absentee and out of touch, and the minor tasks, duties, and privileges attaching to them or their lands made daily life intolerable for ordinary people. The clergy had their faults, but their closer proximity to the people might have made those bearable in isolation. The upper middle class, much like the nobility, carved out exemptions for themselves that left the poor holding many of their burdens, and frequently they were the class most opposed to representation and any real movement toward a more democratic or free society.

Any serious student of the French Revolution or revolutions generally really ought to read this work; Tocqueville's research and findings remain fresh if only because they are so often overlooked. There are some gems of wisdom for the general reader here too, but the topic may be a little dry and in-depth for those not principally interested in it.

[Stone · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book basically tries to analyze and to some extent, answer two vital questions that will catch the attention of anyone in power:

1) Does the discontent of the populace actually have anything to do with economic development? If so, is it a positive or negative correlation? Why, as Tocqueville wondered, didn't the French Revolution take place during the worst financial years? Why didn't the Revolution take place in poor and underdeveloped rural areas, but instead it happened right in the heart of Paris, where people enjoyed the highest living standard in the entire country?
2) Does a revolution necessarily shake up the establishment? Does it actually reduce the power of centralized authority or simply construct a new one?

Reading this book along with Democracy in America is, in my opinion, recommended. The contrast between the outcomes of revolutions in France and the U.S. constitutes part of Tocqueville's principal arguments on social and political reforms -- the degree of involvement of lower classes in politics and their respective roles in the national economy varied sharply in the two countries, a fact that wasn't well understood by the revolutionaries and most of Tocqueville's contemporaries.

Another interesting note to be added to this book, as I've noticed from several other reviews, is its increasing popularity in China. The political and social situations in China today resemble a lot of those in the late 1780s' France -- a growing economy marked by the expansion of middle class; the struggle between central government and the "estates", which depends on the bureaucratic system it flourished on; the gradual liberalization of private individuals and their increasing involvements in the politics, etc. There are more than enough reasons for the leaders of CCP to be aware of previous incidents and avoid their own version of the overthrowal of the Ancien Régime.

Even for those who aren't anywhere into political science and history, this book still poses as a great source of useful knowledge and cautionary tales.