The Ancien Regime and the Revolution is a comparison of revolutionary France and the despotic rule it toppled. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) is an objective observer of both periods - providing a merciless critique of the ancien regime, 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.

‘A new political science is needed for a totally new world’

In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and ambitious civil servant, made a nine-month journey throughout America. The result was Democracy in America, a monumental study of the strengths and weaknesses of the nation’s evolving politics and institutions. Tocqueville looked to the flourishing democratic system in America as a possible model for post-revolutionary France, believing that the egalitarian ideals it enshrined reflected the spirit of the age and even that they were the will of God. His insightful work has become one of the most influential political texts ever written on America and an indispensable authority for anyone interested in the future of democracy. This volume includes the rarely translated Two Weeks in the Wilderness, an evocative account of Tocqueville’s travels in Michigan among the Iroquois and Chippeway, and The Excursion to Lake Onéida.

This is the only edition that contains all Tocqueville’s writings on America, and includes a chronology, further reading and explanatory notes. Gerald Bevan’s translation is accompanied by an introduction by Isaac Kramnick, which discusses Tocqueville’s life and times, and the enduring significance of Democracy in America.