The Old Regime and the Revolution
by Alexis de Tocqueville · L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution
Assigned by 1 of the 9 reading lists
Tocqueville's last book, written from the archives of the intendants, argues that the French Revolution completed work the monarchy had already begun. Centralisation, the destruction of local liberty, the reduction of the nobility to a caste with privileges but no function, the separation of classes and the growing equality of Frenchmen under a single administration were all in place before 1789. What the Revolution did was to sweep away the debris and finish the job, which is why the administrative state emerged from it stronger than before. Along the way he explains why the peasants who owned land resented the old taxes most, and why reform made revolt more likely.
We recommendThe Old Regime and the Revolution, translated by Alan S. KahanUniversity of Chicago Press, 1998The Furet and Melonio edition, which prints the finished volume with Tocqueville's notes and drafts for the sequel he did not live to write.
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- Written
- 1856
- Form
- History
- Language
- French
- Length
- Medium · 300 pp120 to 300 pages
- Difficulty
- Demanding3 of 5 for a first-year reader
Why it's on the list
Arguing that the Revolution completed work the monarchy had already begun, rather than breaking with it, overturned the story both revolutionaries and reactionaries told, and made continuity rather than rupture the problem every later historian of 1789 has had to face. Working from the archives of the intendants, the provincial administrators of the crown, grounded the argument in the daily paperwork of the old state rather than in memoirs and speeches, an early model of history written from administrative records. Showing that the nobility had been reduced to a caste with privileges but no function explains why its privileges became intolerable at the moment they ceased to buy anything, and gives a general account of how an aristocracy loses its legitimacy. Observing that reform made revolt more likely, and that the peasants who owned land resented the old taxes most, produced the paradox that bad governments are most in danger when they begin to mend their ways, which has been applied to revolutions Tocqueville never saw.
Key themes
- History and progress
- Arguing that the Revolution completed work the monarchy had already begun made continuity rather than rupture the problem every later historian of 1789 has had to face.
- Power and authority
- Centralisation under a single administration was in place before 1789, and the Revolution swept away the debris and finished the job, which is why the state emerged from it stronger.
- Money and class
- Showing that the nobility had been reduced to a caste with privileges but no function explains why its privileges became intolerable at the moment they ceased to buy anything.
- Liberty and rights
- The destruction of local liberty under the old regime left Frenchmen equal and alike under one administration, but without the habits of self-government that might have made them free.
- Society and the state
- Observing that reform made revolt more likely produced the paradox that bad governments are most in danger when they begin to mend their ways.
Which translation to read
Our pick
The Old Regime and the Revolution, translated by Alan S. Kahan
University of Chicago Press, 1998
The Furet and Melonio edition, which prints the finished volume with Tocqueville's notes and drafts for the sequel he did not live to write.
Amazon: the Alan S. Kahan translation, opens in a new tabBookshop.org: the Alan S. Kahan translation, opens in a new tab
Overview
About three hundred pages, Tocqueville’s last book, published in 1856 and written from the archives of the intendants, argues that the French Revolution completed work the monarchy had already begun. Centralisation, the destruction of local liberty, the reduction of the nobility to a caste with privileges but no function, the separation of classes and the growing equality of Frenchmen under a single administration were all in place before 1789.
What the Revolution did was to sweep away the debris and finish the job, which is why the administrative state emerged from it stronger than before. Along the way he explains why the peasants who owned land resented the old taxes most, and why reform made revolt more likely.
What happens
What the Revolution was and was not. Tocqueville opens by clearing away contemporary judgments, arguing that the Revolution was not anti-religious or anarchic in its essence but a political and social revolution that, like a religion, spoke to all mankind, and whose real object was to destroy feudal institutions already dying everywhere.
Administrative centralisation. From the archives he shows that the crown’s intendants and the royal council already governed France in detail, that Paris had swallowed the provinces, and that local self-government survived only as empty form.
The nobility without a function. He shows how the nobles had lost their governing role to the intendants while keeping their exemptions and dues, so that they were resented as a caste rather than obeyed as a ruling class, and how the classes had drawn apart into mutual ignorance.
Equality before liberty. Frenchmen had become alike under one administration, with the same ideas and the same grievances, but without the habit of acting together, which Tocqueville sees as the fatal combination.
The men of letters and the physiocrats. Excluded from politics, writers turned to abstract theories of government, and the physiocrats imagined a democratic despotism run by an enlightened state, both preparing minds for what came.
Why then. In the last book Tocqueville explains that prosperity was rising, that Louis XVI’s reforms had raised expectations and loosened old restraints, and that a regime is most in danger when it begins to mend its ways, so that the Revolution came not from despair but from hope.
How to read it
Read the argument for continuity as the book’s central provocation, the Revolution completing the monarchy’s work rather than breaking with it, and notice how much of both the revolutionary and the reactionary story it overturns.
Pay close attention to the use of the intendants’ archives, and to how the daily paperwork of the old state becomes evidence in a way memoirs and speeches could not.
Notice the account of the nobility reduced to a caste with privileges but no function, and ask whether it explains aristocracies losing legitimacy elsewhere.
Consider the paradox of reform making revolt more likely, and test it against revolutions Tocqueville never saw.
Read this book alongside Democracy in America to see the same mind asking what equality without liberty makes of a people, first in a nation that grew up equal and then in one that was made so.
Questions it raises
- If the Revolution only completed what the monarchy had begun, why was it so violent, and does Tocqueville’s account of continuity leave room for the Terror?
- Is the paradox that reform provokes revolt a general law, or a description of one regime that lost its nerve at the wrong moment?
- What does it mean for a people to become equal before they become free, and does Tocqueville think France ever recovered from that order of events?
- How much of the argument depends on the intendants’ archives, and what might a history written from other records, the peasants’ own or the parlements’, have shown instead?
- Why does Tocqueville blame the men of letters for abstract politics, and is the charge that intellectuals excluded from power grow dangerous one that applies beyond France?
- What did Tocqueville intend for the sequel he did not live to write, and does the finished volume explain the Revolution or only its preconditions?
Highlights
Tocqueville argues that the French Revolution completed work the monarchy had already begun: centralisation, the destruction of local liberty, the separation of classes and the growing equality of Frenchmen under a single administration were all in place before 1789.
Paraphrase of the argument for administrative continuity between the old regime and the new.
The nobility had been reduced to a caste with privileges but no function, and it was precisely when its privileges ceased to buy the peasants any service that they became intolerable.
Paraphrase of the book's account of how an aristocracy loses its legitimacy.
Reform made revolt more likely, since the regime was never so dangerous to itself as when it began to mend its ways, and the peasants who owned their land resented the old taxes most.
Paraphrase of the book's most famous paradox, that a bad government is most at risk when it improves.
