The Old Regime and the Revolution, Volume II: Notes on the French Revolution and Napoleon

The continuation of Alexis de Tocqueville’s great meditation on the origins and meanings of the French Revolution.

With his monumental work The Old Regime and the Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59)—best known for his classic Democracy in America—envisioned a multivolume philosophical study of the origins of modern France that would examine the implications of French history on the nature and development of democratic society. Volume I, which covered the eighteenth-century background to the Revolution, was published to great acclaim in 1856. On the continuation of this project, he wrote: "When this Revolution has finished its work, [this volume] will show what that work really was, and what the new society which has come from that violent labor is, what the Revolution has taken away and what it has preserved from that old regime against which it was directed."

Tocqueville died in the midst of this work. Here in Volume II is all that he had completed, including the chapters he started for a work on Napoleon, notes and analyses he made in the course of researching and writing the first volume, and his notes on his preparation for his continuation. More than ever before, readers will be able to glean how Tocqueville's account of the Revolution would have come out, had he lived to finish it. This handsomely produced volume completes the set and is essential reading for anyone interested in the French Revolution or in Tocqueville’s thought.

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) was a French political thinker and historian best known for his works, Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution.

 

François Furet (1927-97) was the leading French historian of the Revolution and, according to the New York Times, "one of the most influential French thinkers of the post-war era."

 

Françoise Mélonio is professor emeritus of Sorbonne-University and Doctor of Letters. She is the editor of Gallimard's critical edition of Tocqueville's complete works.

Alan S. Kahan is professor of British Civilization at the University of Versailles/St. Quentin.