The Dark Side of Tocqueville: On War and Emoire

From right to left, from Reagan to Mitterrand, seemingly everyone wants to befriend Tocqueville and line him up on his on her side. No writer, except perhaps Orwell, has such appeal across political boundaries, and a judicious quotation from Tocqueville, no matter how much out of context, is believed to buttress any argument. While I too have spent a couple of decades of my intellectual life admiring and writing about Tocqueville,1 I have been unable either to forget or ignore a seamy side of Tocqueville, a dark side that has its roots both in his aristocratic heritage and also in his century's rush to global conquest. His two hundredth birthday is a good time to shed light on his embrace of war and empire.