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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What caused the French Revolution ?, December 4, 2008
This review is from: Ancien Regime and the French Revolution (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)
This was required reading for a graduate course in the history of the French Revolution. Alexis De Tocqueville's research for his book The Old Regime and the Revolution taught him that there were several socio-political and economic causes that led to the Revolution. There is enough excellent historical scholarship available to finally put to bed the myth that the Enlightenment was in and of itself the impetus that caused French citizens to storm the Bastille. According to Tocqueville's excellent analysis in his book, he argues that the waning vestiges of feudalism sowed the seeds of destruction of the Old Regime. The reasons why in France the vestiges of feudalism were torn down in the cataclysmic crash of the French Revolution and not discarded as peaceably, as say in England, is the question to which his book was devoted. The first social structure he turns his attention to is the Church, the Second Estate of France, because of the socio-economic and political power it occupied in the nation.
When it came to his observations that the influence the philosophes had on the Revolution, he found that it was not unusual to find intellectuals writing about improving society and that ambition had been historically evident since the early Greeks. What Tocqueville became interested in was that since the mid-eighteenth century, this desire became the bedrock of Enlightenment writing in France and was soaked up like a sponge by its citizenry. Thus, he wrote, "The philosophy of the eighteenth century is rightly considered one of the principle causes of the Revolution and it is certainly true that that philosophy was deeply irreligious" (Tocqueville, 96). Therefore, Tocqueville argued that one of the central causes of the Revolution was the attacks on the Church by the Philosophes throughout the eighteenth century. "The priests were not hated because they claimed to regulate the affairs of the other world, but because they were landowners, lords, tithe collectors, and administrators in this one" (97).
Tocqueville noted in his book that during the eighteenth century, for the most part, French intellectuals had no experience or say in governmental affairs. Tocqueville lamented that the philosophe's lack of experience created, "A frightening sight! For what is merit in a writer is sometimes vice in a statesman, and the same things which have often made lovely books can lead to great revolutions" (Tocqueville, 201). However, Tocqueville also found that the country, "...was at the same time the most educated of all nations on earth, and the most fond of things intellectual, one will understand without difficulty how writers became a political power in France, and ended up being the most important one" (Tocqueville 200).
Recommended reading for anyone interested in political philosophy, enlightenment history, and the French Revolution. I also recommend you read the book that Tocqueville is most famous for "Democracy In America" although written in the 1830's it is still the most prescient look at America and its citizenry.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A French Perspective on the French Revolution, February 6, 2010
This review is from: Ancien Regime and the French Revolution (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)
Edmund Burke's critique of the French Revolution might be the most famous work about that historical event, but Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1850s looked back at that revolution as well in "The Ancien Régime and the Revolution".
De Tocqueville examines what the Revolution did and did not set out to do and the extent to which it was or was not a revolution against religion. He believed that many customs and ideas of the Ancien Régime actually survived the Revolution and that centralization of power was furthered, not impeded, by it.
The author agreed with Burke on the overarching point that gradual reforms of existing institutions are the best way to improve societies, but he did disagree with Burke on some less important issues.
De Tocqueville looks at the issue of class and how the social classes in France eventually became isolated from each other. Some of the other observations he made include the importance of public opinion even under monarchies; the effects of despotism on the altruism of a populace; the supercilious attitude that many government bureaucrats and administrators have toward the populace (something that hasn't changed even today); that rulers who seek to destroy freedom while seeking to preserve its outward form always fail; and the remarkable observation that revolutions sometimes occur not when conditions go from bad to worse, but when conditions are gradually getting better.
Much as the author was able to examine America, he closes with a list of distinct French character traits and contradictions that contributed to the Revolution. This work may be of interest to those who have read Burke's work and want to see how de Tocqueville differs with him or to those who have read Democracy in America and want to plumb deeper into de Tocqueville's oeuvre.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent translation, July 19, 2011
This review is from: Ancien Regime and the French Revolution (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)
Extraordinary book. Detailing conditions immediately before the French Revolution.
Translated into easy-to-read prose.
Full of fascinating facts.
Highly recommended to anyone interested in this subject matter.
It is in marked contrast to the subject as typically treated (if at all) in textbooks.
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