The Old Regime and the Revolution, Volume I: The Complete Text - Hardcover

Alexis De Tocqueville

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226805298 ISBN 13: 9780226805290

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1998

Synopsis

The Old Regime and the Revolution is Alexis de Tocqueville's great meditation on the origins and meanings of the French Revolution. One of the most profound and influential studies of this pivotal event, it remains a relevant and stimulating discussion of the problem of preserving individual and political freedom in the modern world. Alan Kahan's translation provides a faithful, readable rendering of Tocqueville's last masterpiece, and includes notes and variants which reveal Tocqueville's sources and include excerpts from his drafts and revisions. The introduction by France's most eminent scholars of Tocqueville and the French Revolution, Françoise Mélonio and the late François Furet, provides a brilliant analysis of the work.

About this title

Review

One is sorely tempted to allow the marvelously lucid prose in Alan S. Kahan's new translation of Alexis de Tocqueville's study of the French Revolution speak for itself: "In 1789 the French made the greatest effort ever undertaken by any people to disassociate themselves from their past, and to put an abyss between what they had been and what they wished to become." But as Tocqueville found out when--with the hindsight of half a century--he examined the historical records, the revolution was really not so radical a turn of events. "True, it took the world by surprise, and yet it was the result of a very long process, the sudden and violent climax of a task to which ten generations had contributed." Thus the first volume of The Old Regime and the Revolution concerns itself with the state of affairs before 1798, getting beyond the "confused and often mistaken notions" of his contemporaries "about the manner in which business was conducted, the real practices of institutions ... the real basis of ideas and mores." Although many historians have taken on the French Revolution in the years since Tocqueville's analysis was first published, few have addressed the subject with as effective a combination of insight and clarity. --Ron Hogan

About the Author

Alan S. Kahan is an associate professor in the history department at Florida International University and the author of Aristocratic Liberalism and Liberalism in Nineteeth-Century Europe.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0226805298
• ISBN 13: 9780226805290
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 459
• Editor: Francois Furet, Francoise Melonio