| Bio |

Who they were

Alexis Charles Henri Clerel de Tocqueville was born on 29 July 1805 into an old aristocratic Norman family^[2][3]. An ancestor, Chretien-Guillaume de Malesherbes, had defended King Louis XVI at his trial during the French Revolution and was guillotined for it in 1794^{[4, p. 5]}. Tocqueville spent much of his childhood at the family's estate at Verneuil^[5]. He trained as a lawyer and, still in his twenties, became a young magistrate^{[1, p. 189]}.

On 9 April 1831, Tocqueville and his close friend Gustave de Beaumont left Le Havre for the United States, sent by the French government ostensibly to study its prison system^{[5][6, p. 1]}. During their travels they met President Andrew Jackson, on 19 January 1832^{[1, p. 3]}, before sailing home on 20 February 1832^[1]. Beaumont wrote up their official report on prisons, while Tocqueville turned his own notes into something far larger^[1]. On 26 October 1835 he married Mary Mottley, an Englishwoman, and that same year published the first volume of Democracy in America^{[1, p. 6]}.

Democracy in America, completed with a second volume in 1840, examined how equality and liberty could coexist in a democratic society, and warned of a 'tyranny of the majority' that could threaten minority views even without a king^[7][1]. Building on this reputation, Tocqueville was elected a deputy for the Manche region of Normandy on 2 March 1839^{[1, p. 6]}, and briefly served as France's Foreign Minister in 1849^[8]. When Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in a coup on 2 December 1851, Tocqueville opposed him and was briefly imprisoned at Vincennes^[1].

The coup effectively ended Tocqueville's political career^[2]. He turned back to writing history, and in 1856 published The Old Regime and the Revolution, arguing that the French Revolution grew out of, rather than broke cleanly from, the old monarchy's own centralising habits^[9][10]. Tocqueville died at Cannes, in the south of France, on 16 April 1859^{[11, p. 224]}.

Democracy in America remains one of the most frequently cited works ever written about the United States, and is still read as a foundational text on democratic society^{[12, p. 24]}. His warnings about the tyranny of the majority, and his analysis of how equality could threaten liberty as much as protect it, continue to shape political thought^[7]. The Old Regime and the Revolution similarly reshaped how historians understood the French Revolution, by tracing its roots into the centralising habits of the monarchy it overthrew^{[12, p. 26]}.

For all his fame as an interpreter of American democracy, Tocqueville's actual visit lasted well under a year - he left France on 9 April 1831 and was sailing home again by 20 February 1832^[5][1]. His marriage to Mary Mottley, an Englishwoman with no aristocratic title, was an unusual match for a man from one of Normandy's oldest noble families^{[1, p. 6]}.

| Legacy & Reputation |

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