The nineteenth century was the age of colonialism. Many European powers, France included, dominated great empires during this
period. Not coincidentally, perhaps, the nineteenth century also saw the development of what is sometimes called ‘scientific
racism’, whose invention is often attributed to Tocqueville’s private secretary during his period as Foreign Minister, Arthur
de Gobineau. Tocqueville’s correspondence with Gobineau about racism, his notes on his voyage to Ireland, his writings and
speeches on the French conquest and colonization of Algeria, and his writings on the British conquest of India, give us insight
into how he projected his politics onto the canvas of imperialism.
Tocqueville was not a racist. This was more unusual among nineteenth-century European writers on social and political questions
than one would like to think. Even some of the most liberal minds of the day were occasionally guilty of casual anti-Semitic,
anti-Black or anti-Asian remarks. Not Tocqueville.
But this fact should not obscure Tocqueville’s support for European and especially French colonialism. Tocqueville was a nationalist,
and in some respects an extreme nationalist. In 1840 he shocked John Stuart Mill by being willing to run the risk of war between
France and England over disputes in the Middle East, rather than risk diminishing France’s national pride. Mill should not
have been shocked. In
Democracy in America Tocqueville had written:
I do not wish to speak ill of war. War almost always enlarges the thought and ennobles the heart of a people. There are cases
in which war alone can halt the excessive development of certain penchants to which equality naturally gives rise, and in
which it must be considered a necessary corrective to certain deep-seated afflictions of democratic societies.
For Tocqueville, patriotism and even war could serve to combat petty and materialistic individualism.
1However, Tocqueville’s nationalism sometimes conflicted with other values he held dear, and especially with freedom, normally
his central concern. This is particularly evident in his writings about Algeria and India, where he could never arrive at
a satisfactory synthesis of his moral and political imperatives. It also complicates his understanding of Ireland. If Tocqueville’s
views on race are satisfactory to most twenty-first-century readers, his views on colonialism evoke a much wider range of
reactions, partly because they are not nearly so consistent.
Anyone familiar with Tocqueville’s rejection of all forms of determinism, and his determination to maintain human freedom,
will not be surprised at his rejection of racism, although Gobineau was. Gobineau published the racist classic,
Essay on the Inequality of Human Races, in 1853. In it he vaunted the superiority of the ‘Aryan race’ over all others. He proclaimed the inevitable decline of nations,
like the French, whose Aryan essence had been mingled with lesser breeds. He sent a copy to Tocqueville, his former boss.
Over the next several years Tocqueville and Gobineau engaged in an extended discussion by correspondence of Gobineau’s theories,
although Tocqueville increasingly tried to change the subject.
2From the very beginning of the correspondence, Tocqueville categorically rejected Gobineau’s main ideas. ‘Your basic idea’,
Tocqueville wrote when Gobineau sent him the work, ‘seems to me to belong to the family of materialist theories, and even
to be one of the most dangerous of them, since it is fatalism applied to, not merely the individual, but to these collections
of individuals called races.’ When Gobineau was surprised by the hostile response, Tocqueville rejected his theory again,
on the grounds that it was harmful to humanity: ‘Do you not see that your doctrine brings out naturally all the evils that
permanent inequality creates – pride, violence, the contempt of fellow men, tyranny, and abjectness in all its forms?’ When
Gobineau objected that even if his theory might have harmful effects, this did not make it less true, Tocqueville responded,
‘I
did not become sufficiently German in studying the German language for the novelty or philosophical merit of an idea to make
me forget the moral or political effect that it can produce’. Tocqueville never let anything sway him from his attachment
to freedom (except, as we shall see, in colonial questions). But this is not to say that he would otherwise have found Gobineau’s
theories convincing. Pushed to the wall by a Gobineau desperate for approbation, Tocqueville argued that Gobineau’s theories
led to ‘a very great contraction, if not a complete abolition, of human liberty. Well, I confess to you that after having
read you, as well as before, I remain situated at the opposite extreme of those doctrines. I believe them to be very probably
wrong and very certainly pernicious.’ When, years later, Gobineau again importuned Tocqueville, Tocqueville cited scripture
in reply:
What is more clear in Genesis than the unity of humankind and the emergence of all men from the same man? And as for the spirit
of Christianity, is not its distinctive trait having wanted to abolish all distinctions of race … and making only one human
species, all of whose members were equally capable of perfecting themselves and of becoming alike?
Finally, Tocqueville asked Gobineau not to discuss his political theories with him any more.
3Besides the rejection of racism, there is another important point made in the correspondence with Gobineau which is not unrelated
to Tocqueville’s views on imperialism. Commentators on Tocqueville have often noted his growing pessimism. But Tocqueville
at his most pessimistic puts limits on his pessimism. He was never resigned to inevitable human failure. If Tocqueville laments
the nineteenth century in certain respects, its growing materialism, individualism, etc., he also recognizes its virtues.
As he tells a truly pessimistic Gobineau: ‘I am often annoyed with humanity. Who wouldn’t be? But not against the century,
which, after all, will count as one of the great centuries of history; the one in which man most subjected nature and completed
the conquest of the globe.’
4It is difficult to tell if the conquest of the globe Tocqueville had in mind was scientific or political. But the first examples
of world conquest
Tocqueville had occasion to consider were not the doing of the nineteenth century. His voyage to America and the book that
resulted are more than well known. Less well known is his voyage to Ireland in 1835, a voyage in which he made his first direct
acquaintance with what in many respects was a colonial society, one with more than passing resemblance to the Algeria he would
encounter not long afterwards.
Tocqueville found Ireland to be, like the England he visited on the same trip, an aristocratic society: that is, a society
founded on a presumption of human inequality. But there the similarity ended. Indeed, Ireland inspired Tocqueville to write
a short essay on the theme of ‘How aristocracy can form one of the best and one of the worst governments in the world’. The
picture of aristocracy in its worst form included a conquering class whose arrival was still remembered, and whose conquest
took place ‘in a century in which the victor had already almost all the accomplishments of civilization, and when the defeated
were still in a state of semi-barbarism’, so that the winners were as far as possible removed from the losers. Add to this
different religions held by the conquerors and the conquered, ‘so that the noble did not merely despise the people, but hated
them; and the people did not merely hate the noble, but considered him damned’. Give the new aristocracy the desire to remain
as similar as possible to the nation from which it came. Give it the exclusive power to govern and to become wealthy. Prevent
the natives from joining it or put such harsh conditions on social ascension (such as religious conversion) that it became
almost impossible for the natives to assimilate. Those rare natives who do manage to rise into the aristocracy then treat
their fellows just like the conquerors. The result: ‘You will then have a frightful social state’, a state of permanent oppression
and violence, regardless of the good intentions of individuals.
5Not a bad picture of much of Western imperialism, one might say. ‘If you want to know what the spirit of conquest, religious
hatreds, combined with all the abuses of aristocracy, without any of its advantages, can produce, come to Ireland’, Tocqueville
wrote in 1835.
6 Come to Algeria, he might have written in 1847 (or 1958). But he did not write this way about Algeria, for reasons that will
be explored below.
The nature of Irish government, as was so often the case in colonial governments, was, as Tocqueville noted, of a sort as
to make all Irish Catholics (read – natives) feel that they were a nation apart. Of course, in Ireland the local population
aroused Tocqueville’s sympathy, not just because they were fellow Catholics (Tocqueville’s own Catholicism was dubious, and
Catholic fanaticism was not something he found at all attractive), but because they reminded him of the French. He records
a conversation with a number of relatively well-off Irish Catholics, both priests and laymen: ‘The conversation was passionate,
superficial, light, often interrupted by jokes and bons mots. I thought I was in France. Nothing was like England.’ This did
not mean he was uncritical. He recorded the hatred of Protestantism expressed by several Irish Catholic bishops with disapproval.
Nevertheless, he liked the Irish.
7And he envied them one thing. The common misery and oppression had united the Irish people and the Catholic clergy in a way
that was inconceivable in France. Tocqueville records with admiration (and doubtless memories of the United States, where
he had observed the same thing) the support for separation of church and state voiced unanimously by the Irish clergy. He
is envious of the ‘incredible union’ between the clergy and people. More than once Tocqueville remarks to an Irish priest
that he had better keep his democratic sentiments to himself if he visits France, or the Catholic priest will be taken for
a Protestant pastor. Much of
Democracy in America is devoted to preaching the necessity for a rapprochement between democracy and religion, for freedom’s sake. Tocqueville
finds that rapprochement, unique for a Catholic country, in Ireland.
8 He admires the strong bonds between religion and the people in Ireland. He will find less admirable such a linkage between
religion and people in India. Why? Because in Ireland religion is associated with national resistance to an oppressor, whereas
in India it is partly responsible for the weakness of Indian resistance to British rule, in Tocqueville’s view.
9 In Algeria religion is also linked with resistance to an invader. But this time the invader is French, and Tocqueville refrains
from either praising or criticizing Islam on this ground in his writings on Algeria. This is not the only case where nationalism
compels Tocqueville to silence.
It is not, after all, very surprising to find a Frenchman criticizing British rule in Ireland. What is more interesting is
to see Tocqueville trying to imagine a solution to the plight of Ireland. It is here that we begin to see that in a colonial
context Tocqueville may not be as much the friend of freedom as we might expect from the author of Democracy in America.
Repeatedly during his trip to Ireland Tocqueville questioned those he met, Catholic and Protestant, clergy and lay, throughout
the country, about whether or not it would be desirable to introduce an English-style Poor Law into Ireland. Ireland in 1835
was subject to appalling poverty and chronic starvation, which would culminate in the Irish Potato Famine at mid-century and
the loss of much of the country’s population to starvation or emigration to America. As a remedy to starvation, Tocqueville
supported introducing a Poor Law. This meant a system in which landowners would be taxed to pay for the housing and upkeep
of the destitute. Since the vast majority of Irish land was owned by absentee Protestant landlords, it would be this absentee
aristocracy that would foot the bill. They would be unable to pass it on to their tenants because their tenants were already
living on the edge of starvation, and any increase in their rent would merely send them to the poor house and increase its
costs. Another facet of the Poor Law which requires mention is its compulsory character. The poor, once admitted to the workhouse,
were forced to submit to a prison-like regime, including separation of the sexes and of children, designed to make going to
the poor house as unattractive as possible, so that only starvation would drive people to it. But Ireland was starving.
10Tocqueville found a mixed response to this idea among Protestants, and general support among Catholics. What is relevant here,
however, is his willingness to impose a paternalistic, state-mandated system of semi-prisons on the country. When Tocqueville
writes about America or France, his concern is always the same: how to encourage those mores, laws and institutions that will
create and maintain freedom. Would poor houses be the best way to educate the Irish for freedom? In the colonial context of
English rule in Ireland, freedom is not Tocqueville’s first priority. Sometimes, as when he condemns Hinduism for failing
to resist
the British or praises the support of the Irish church for the separation of church and state, Tocqueville continues to emphasize
freedom even in a colonial context. But most often he does not. Perhaps the most startling thing in Tocqueville’s notes on
Ireland is a brief remark about Napoleon. One will not find a single good word about Napoleonic
coups d’état in Tocqueville’s correspondence or writings, except in this leading question, which he asked one of his Irish informants:
‘Don’t you think that a temporary dictatorship, exercised in a firm and enlightened manner, like that of Bonaparte after the
18th Brumaire, would be the only means of saving Ireland?’
11 Not surprisingly, the witness answered yes, and there the record of the conversation ends. The alternative to aristocratic
despotism in Ireland seems to be democratic dictatorship. Temporary, it is true, but Tocqueville was not usually one to defend
temporary dictatorships as the best means of achieving fundamental social reforms. The Irish context, however, seems to alter
his perspective. Freedom does not seem to be an option for Ireland.
This is the case for reasons that are specific to Ireland and that are general to imperialism. In Irish conditions, in which
the worst form of aristocratic government had rendered anything better impossible, freedom was out of the question. Freedom
would require unity between Protestants and Catholics – which was impossible. Again and again Tocqueville inquired about links
between the aristocracy and the people, between the Catholic and Protestant clergy, or between Catholic and Protestant lawyers,
only to be told that none existed, or were likely to exist. In the circumstances of a radically divided society, the only
way of improving the situation was, it seems, one or another sort of enlightened absolutism, whether through the Poor Laws
or a Bonaparte. Tocqueville, who is so concerned with freedom, hardly mentions the word when writing about Ireland.
The implied conclusion is that colonization and freedom are irreconcilable in the context of a colonized country with its
inevitable divisions between rulers and ruled. Tocqueville does not draw the further conclusion that therefore colonization
must be abandoned for the sake of freedom. Tocqueville, who recognized and condemned all the evil features of British rule
in Ireland, does not conclude that England should withdraw from Ireland – or that France should withdraw from Algeria. There
are considerations other than freedom. In the case of Ireland, Tocqueville leaves them implicit. In the case of Algeria, his
political position as a
member of the National Assembly, one who furthermore took a prominent role in Algerian questions, forced him to make these
considerations explicit.
12Shortly before the restored Bourbons finally lost power in 1830, France had conquered Algiers. During the July Monarchy, France
extended its power over all Algeria, and began European colonization. Tocqueville never gave an opinion on whether the original
invasion of Algeria was good or bad. However, looking back in 1846, Tocqueville wrote to General Lamoricière, one of the military
leaders of the campaign:
From the moment when we committed that great
violence of the conquest, I believe that we ought not to draw back from all the little violences which are absolutely necessary to
consolidate it. But, in the interest of our establishment itself, it is very important to put on our side, as much as possible,
in the eyes of the natives, the law, and if not the law, at least humanity and a certain consideration.
13
In this passage Tocqueville twists in the wind, refraining from any judgement about the initial violence, justifying the later
violence as inevitable, and striving to legalize, or at least give a moral veneer ‘in the eyes of the natives’, to the violence
of foreign invasion. Had he forgotten that he wrote of Ireland: ‘Whatever one does, the memory of great persecutions is hardly
forgotten and, when one has sown injustice, one sooner or later harvests the fruits’?
14Combining humanity with violence was much like squaring the circle. Tocqueville never succeeded in doing it. But it was not
for lack of trying. Tocqueville probably was more involved with Algerian affairs than with any other single issue during his
parliamentary career under the July Monarchy, with the possible exception of anti-slavery. Even before then, he had been much
concerned with Algeria. His friend and cousin Louis de Kergorlay was a member of the first military expedition to Algeria
in 1830, and in 1833 he and Tocqueville seem to have briefly considered settling there. Tocqueville published two letters
on Algeria in 1837, during his unsuccessful first campaign for the Chamber of Deputies. Afterwards,
he made lengthy trips to Algeria in 1841 and 1846, and was a prominent and active participant in the Assembly’s debates on
Algeria.
On many issues associated with Algeria Tocqueville hesitated and changed his mind. On one point, however, he never wavered.
Having conquered, France must remain master of Algeria. Withdrawal could not be contemplated. ‘In the eyes of the world, such
an abandonment would be the clear indication of our decline … Any people that easily gives up what it has taken and chooses
to retire peacefully to its original borders proclaims that its age of greatness is over.’ And yet, in the next paragraph
of this unpublished essay of 1841, Tocqueville almost backtracks: ‘If France ever abandons Algeria, it is clear that she could
do it only at a moment when she is seen undertaking great things in Europe, and not at a time such as our own, when she appears
to be falling into the second rank and seems resigned to let the control of European affairs pass into other hands.’ Is Tocqueville
really committed to French Algeria, or is it a question of circumstances? At any rate, there would be no point in leaving,
for then Algeria would simply be taken over by another European power. In the colonial world, freedom is not an option.
15Tocqueville was attached to Algeria as a symbol of French power, almost of French virility. Although there were a handful
of parliamentarians who wanted France to withdraw from Algeria, Tocqueville was in agreement with the vast majority of French
public opinion. Parliamentary debates about Algerian policy were heated because of disputes about means, not ends. Tocqueville
himself was morally conflicted about everything that followed once the nationalist imperative of upholding French power and
prestige was accepted. He wrote in 1841, after his first trip to Algeria:
For my part, I returned from Africa with the distressing notion that we are now fighting far more barbarously than the Arabs
themselves. For the present it is on their side that one meets with civilization … It was certainly not worth taking the Turks’
place in order to recreate that aspect of their rule that deserved the world’s abhorrence.
Yet after this astonishing admission, Tocqueville continued: ‘On the other hand, I have often heard men in France whom I respect,
but with whom I do not agree, find it wrong that we burn harvests, that we empty silos, and finally that we seize unarmed
men, women and children. These, in my view, are unfortunate necessities.’
16Tocqueville was no less conflicted about what kind of relation France could have with the natives. His earliest writings on
the subject were almost utopian. In 1837 he hoped that eventually French and Arabs would one day form a ‘single people’ in
Algeria. He seemingly wanted to avoid the ethnic and religious divisions that made freedom impossible in Ireland and freedom/emancipation
so difficult in the American South. But by 1846 he was proclaiming in an Assembly debate ‘that the idea of possessing Africa,
of keeping Africa with the aid and support of the indigenous population – that idea, that dream of noble and generous hearts,
is a chimera, at least for the present’. Assimilation to French culture was another chimera. ‘It would undoubtedly be as dangerous
as it would be useless to seek to suggest to them our mores, our ideas, our customs. It is not along the road of our European
civilization that they must, for the present, be pushed.’ The French and native peoples would remain separate.
17Yet Tocqueville also attacked those who claimed that the only course of action was either to exterminate the natives or to
push them entirely out of French territory:
Let us not, in the middle of the nineteenth century, begin the history of the conquest of America over again, let us not imitate
the bloody examples that the opinion of the human race has stigmatized. Let us bear in mind that we would be a thousand times
less excusable than those who once had the misfortune of setting such examples; for we are less fanatical, and we have the
principles and the enlightenment the French Revolution spread throughout the world.
18
What, then, was to be done? Tocqueville promoted decentralized administration, European colonization, and, for the native
Arab and Berber-speaking populations, the creation of a community of interests with the French which would not eliminate hostile
feelings, but dampen them. How? ‘Let us not force the indigenous peoples to come to our schools, but help them rebuild theirs,
multiply the number of teachers, and create men of law and men of religion, which Muslim civilization cannot do without, any
more than our own.’ Common interests could further be fostered by encouraging commerce, protecting Arab property beyond what
was immediately necessary for colonization, and by good government and the rule of law.
19Tocqueville’s conclusion in 1846 was weak, and he knew it. In fostering respect for indigenous culture, he was striking a
false note, because his chief concern in Algeria was not the freedom of its indigenous inhabitants. Throughout his discussion
of Algerian questions, freedom takes a
back seat to national interest. By contrast, Tocqueville was never willing to see freedom take a back seat to power in France
itself. He repeatedly rejected this argument in a French context, whether made on behalf of Louis XIV or of Napoleon. Nothing
could be sufficient compensation to the French for the loss of liberty. But when it came to Algerians, that was another matter.
French national interest trumped foreigners’ rights. However, Tocqueville shrank from confronting the consequences of this
conclusion – hence the twists and turns of his writing once the need to maintain French power in Algeria had been asserted.
But what about when two foreign nations were concerned, Britain and India?
In 1841–3, shortly after completing Democracy in America, Tocqueville entertained the project of writing one or two articles about the British conquest of India, with Algeria in
mind. What lessons for France might there be in Britain’s success in ruling India? The project was abandoned, but not before
Tocqueville had done a considerable amount of reading, and left many notes and drafts. Tocqueville returned to the subject
of India again in 1857, when the Great Rebellion against British rule occurred. His English wife was deeply distressed, and
Tocqueville became an avid reader of news on the subject, and corresponded about it with English friends.
From these writings it emerges that even when Tocqueville was a bystander, he was still a nationalist, and thought that others
should be too – including Indians (and Algerians – he does not
blame Algerians for resisting the French). He rejected the racist view that the Indians had failed to successfully resist the British
because they were cowards by nature. Instead, he blamed their inability on history, religion and mores. Above all he blamed
the caste system, which effectively destroyed the nation. In India, ‘there are a multitude of castes …, there is no nation’,
and ‘in a country of castes, the idea of the fatherland, of nationality, disappears in a sense’. Hinduism, in Tocqueville’s
eyes, had the fatal flaw of rejecting the idea that all human beings were fundamentally equal. This helped Hinduism acquire
the merit of not inspiring religious fanaticism as long as it was not interfered with, since Hindus had no interest in proselytizing,
or persecuting other religions. But it deprived Hinduism ‘of the one good one has a right to expect from even the worst religions.
It never inspired the Indians with that pious fury which has led so many peoples to oppose a conquest when the conqueror professes
a different faith than theirs and which has led them to save their nationality in wishing to honour their religion.’
20Alongside the caste system, Tocqueville held up for contempt India’s princes. No modern Indian nationalist could be more scathing
in his condemnation of Indian rulers’ collaboration with the British than Tocqueville (by contrast he had nothing but respect
for Abd-el-Kader, the Algerian leader). Tocqueville repeatedly remarks on Indian princes’ incompetence, childishness and refusal
to unite against the English. The English task of conquest was an easy one. Any European nation could have conquered India
in the eighteenth century, according to Tocqueville.
What interested Tocqueville most was not the easy conquest of India, although he was interested in why it was so easy. What
interested him was how the English had managed to keep India, and for relatively little cost. This is where he thought France might find lessons for Algeria. However, the more
he examined the government of the East India Company, the worse it seemed. Tocqueville was contemptuous of the legal system
the English imposed on those parts of India they ruled directly. We can probably find the reason for Tocqueville’s abandoning
work on the project in the lack of useful lessons it seemed likely to provide for French colonization of Algeria.
This makes Tocqueville’s return to the subject in 1857 all the more interesting. Tocqueville had withdrawn from public life
in 1852, after Napoleon III took power, and had said almost nothing about Algeria in public or in private correspondence since.
In his correspondence about the Indian rebellion, he seems to take some very different positions from those he had taken about
Algeria. Is the difference due to circumstances, or had Tocqueville changed his mind about colonization in general?
Not all his positions changed. In 1857, Tocqueville wanted the English to stay in India as much as he ever wanted the French
to stay in Algeria. Indeed, their withdrawal would be ‘disastrous for the future of civilization and the progress of humanity’.
He did not blame the revolt on English oppression, but rather on the progress Indians had made in their ideas of government
and administration under English influence.
21Nevertheless, he does blame the English. Referring to previous work in 1841–3, he writes, ‘the thought still stays with me
from this study that the English had not in a century done anything for the Indian populations that might have been expected
from their enlightenment and their institutions’. In contrast to his friend John Stuart Mill, who worked for the East India
Company and did his best to preserve it, Tocqueville
argued that ‘I would like to see the East India Company abolished … Only then will you attain the level of your task, which
is not only to dominate India, but to civilize it.’ In this regard there are both similarities and differences with earlier
positions. England, like France, has a ‘civilizing mission’ to perform, although the encouragement for indigenous culture
Tocqueville hoped to provide in Algeria is absent from his remarks about India.
22On the other hand, in one respect Tocqueville’s attitude to India is radically different from his attitude to Algeria: he
completely rejects the desirability of introducing European settlers to India. ‘I confess that I consider such a remedy, if
it could be applied, so dangerous that I would be tempted to return to the laws that prevented the purchase of lands in India.’
He goes on to argue that India can only be held ‘with the consent, at least tacit, of the Indians’, a position he regarded
as chimerical with regard to Algeria in 1846. Introducing English settlers would, he thinks, make that consent impossible.
European settlement has created ‘more anger … than … any political oppression’. Has the French experience in Algeria changed
his mind about colonization, as opposed to conquest? Would the later Tocqueville have opposed French settlement in North Africa?
We cannot tell for sure.
Tocqueville also criticized English racism in India. The English were far less likely to form a ‘single race’ with the Indians
than the French ever were with the Arabs of Algeria. Indeed, Tocqueville puts the root cause of the mutiny of much of the
Indian army down to the combination of Indian soldiers with British officers, who nevertheless held aloof from them, thus
arousing their resentment. The events in India were ‘the revolt of barbarism against pride’. In the modern world, even in
India, it seems, it is impossible to maintain a European aristocracy. To attempt it is only to encourage jealousy, hatred
and, in the end, revolution.
23Anti-colonial revolutions, from Tocqueville’s 1857 perspective, are likely to be successful. Discussing the Second Opium War
(1857–8) between England and China, he wrote an English friend:
It seems to me that the relations between that country and Europe are changed, and dangerously changed. Till now, Europe has
had to deal only with a Chinese government – the most wretched of governments. Now you will find opposed to you a people;
and a people, however miserable and corrupt, is invincible
on its own territory, if it be supported and impelled by common and violent passions.
24
Does this mean that Tocqueville foresaw that one day France would be expelled from Algeria, and Britain from India, if the
local populations should ever manage to unite against them? And that, as the Indian and even Chinese example showed, prolonged
European domination could not help but improve the natives’ desire and ability to unite against the colonial power? Western
imperialism, it seems, is its own gravedigger, in Tocqueville’s view.
As always in Tocqueville’s analysis, democracy is inevitable, even to some extent in caste-ridden Hindu India. Freedom is
another matter. Tocqueville is less concerned about freedom in some places than in others. In France, freedom trumps power.
Tocqueville will never praise the power wielded by Louis XIV or Napoleon as an adequate substitute for freedom. But elsewhere,
the maintenance of national power – that of England in Ireland and India, that of France in Algeria – takes precedence. Tocqueville
is no racist – he does not reserve freedom for a European master-race. It is not the people that change between France and
Algeria – there is only one humanity, Tocqueville told Gobineau. It is the place that creates the difference in perspective.
Freedom here, despotism there, was not illogical in the view of this nineteenth-century Frenchman desperate to maintain his
country’s ideals as well as its power. Many a cautious European politician today would say the same thing about North Africa
or the Middle East.