Alexis de Tocqueville Timeline

Upon returning from his American tour, Tocqueville published a report on the prison systems he had studied. Together with Beaumont, he also produced 'Du système pénitentiaire aux États-Unis et de son application en France' in 1833.

Image source: Democracy in America

In 1835, Tocqueville published the first volume of Democracy in America, writing of the New World and its burgeoning democratic order. Observing as a detached social scientist, he described his travels through the United States during an era when the Market Revolution, Western expansion and Jacksonian democracy were radically transforming American life.

Image source: Democracy in America

In 1835, Tocqueville published his 'Mémoire sur le paupérisme', asking whether public charity produces an idle and dependent class in society. It was originally published by Ivan R. Dee.

Image source: Alexis de Tocqueville

Gustave de Beaumont, Tocqueville's traveling companion, wrote an account of their travels in Jacksonian America: Marie or Slavery in the United States, published in 1835.

The second volume of Democracy in America appeared in 1840, completing the work that appeared in two volumes, 1835 and 1840. Later editions include translations by Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (University of Chicago Press, 2000) and Arthur Goldhammer (The Library of America, 2004).

Having retired from political life, Tocqueville began work on The Old Regime and the Revolution. He would spend the days remaining to him fighting the same fight, but conducting it now from libraries, archives, and his own desk, drafting L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution.

Image source: The Old Regime and the Revolution

In 1855, Tocqueville wrote a text published by Maria Weston Chapman in the Liberty Bell: Testimony against Slavery, stating: 'I do not think it is for me, a foreigner, to indicate to the United States the time, the measures, or the men by whom Slavery shall be abolished.'

Image source: The Liberty Bell (annual)

In 1856, Tocqueville published the first tome of L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution (The Old Regime and the Revolution), leaving the second one unfinished. The work examined the causes of the French Revolution and its relationship to the old regime.

In 1837, Tocqueville wrote of his hope for eventual intermarriage between the French and indigenous Arabs and their amalgamation into a distinct whole, reflecting his views on assimilation in France's newest colony.

In 1841, Tocqueville traveled to Algeria, which France had invaded and colonized from 1830. Having entertained the possibility of settling there as a colonist himself, he studied the colony closely during his visit.

Image source: French conquest of Algeria

In an 1841 essay concerning the conquest of Algeria, Tocqueville called for a dual program of 'domination' and 'colonization'. In the same year's report on Algeria, he applauded Bugeaud for making war in a way that defeated Abd-el-Kader's resistance, though he had advocated leaving Kabylia undisturbed.

After modifying his views following his second visit to Algeria in 1846, Tocqueville criticized Bugeaud's desire to invade Kabylia in an 1847 speech to the Assembly. In the debate about the 1846 extraordinary funds, he denounced Bugeaud's conduct of military operations and convinced the Assembly not to vote funds for Bugeaud's military columns.

Image source: Thomas Robert Bugeaud

In his 1847 'Report on Algeria', Tocqueville declared that Europe should avoid making the same mistake they made with the European colonization of the Americas in order to avoid bloody consequences.

Tocqueville began his political career in 1839, despite despising the July Monarchy (1830–1848). From 1839 to 1851, he served as member of the lower house of parliament for the Manche department (Valognes), and became seen as the parliament's foremost expert on Algeria.

Image source: Chamber of Deputies (France)

In 1847, Tocqueville sought to found a Young Left (Jeune Gauche) party which would advocate wage increases, a progressive tax, and other labor concerns in order to undermine the appeal of the socialists.

After the fall of the July Monarchy in the Revolution of 1848, Tocqueville was elected a member of the Constituent Assembly of 1848, where he became a member of the commission charged with drafting the new Constitution of the Second Republic (1848–1851). A few days after the February insurrection, he anticipated a violent clash between Parisian workers led by socialists agitating for a 'Democratic and Social Republic' and conservatives including the aristocracy and rural population.

Image source: French Revolution of 1848

The social tensions Tocqueville had anticipated eventually exploded in the June Days Uprising of 1848, the violent clash between the socialist-led Parisian workers' population and the conservative forces that he had predicted after the February insurrection.

Image source: June Days uprising

Tocqueville had supported Cavaignac against Louis Napoléon Bonaparte for the presidential election of 1848, aligning himself with the Party of Order against Bonaparte's candidacy.

Image source: 1848 French presidential election

During the troubled days of June 1849, Tocqueville pleaded with Interior Minister Jules Armand Dufaure for the reestablishment of the state of siege in the capital and approved the arrest of demonstrators. He approved two laws voted immediately after the June days which restricted the liberty of clubs and freedom of the press, having since February 1848 supported laws restricting political freedoms.

A supporter of Cavaignac and of the Party of Order, Tocqueville accepted an invitation to enter Odilon Barrot's government as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 3 June to 31 October 1849.

Image source: Odilon Barrot

Opposed to Louis Napoléon Bonaparte's 2 December 1851 coup, Tocqueville was among the deputies who gathered at the 10th arrondissement of Paris in an attempt to resist the coup and have Napoleon III judged for 'high treason' as he had violated the constitutional limit on terms of office.

Image source: 1851 French coup d'état

Detained at Vincennes and then released, Tocqueville, who supported the Restoration of the Bourbons against Napoleon III's Second Empire (1851–1871), quit political life after the coup and retreated to his castle, the Château de Tocqueville.

While sharing many contemporary views on assimilation and segregation, Tocqueville opposed Arthur de Gobineau's theories as found in An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853–1855).

Image source: Arthur de Gobineau

A longtime sufferer from bouts of tuberculosis, Tocqueville eventually succumbed to the disease on 16 April 1859 and was buried in the Tocqueville cemetery in Normandy.