The Old Regime and the Revolution

Alexis de Tocqueville - L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution, Lévy, 1866

L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution (1856) is a work by the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville translated in English as either The Old Regime and the Revolution or The Old Regime and the French Revolution. The book analyzes French society before the French Revolution — the so-called "Ancien Régime" — and investigates the causes and forces that caused the Revolution. It is one of the major early historical works on the French Revolution. In this book, de Tocqueville develops his main theory about the French revolution, the theory of continuity, in which he states that even though the French tried to disassociate themselves from the past and from the autocratic old regime, they eventually reverted to a powerful central government.

The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution (Hiatus)

The aim of the French Revolution (1789–1799) was not to destroy the sovereignty of religious faith (church) or create a state of permanent disorder (anarchy). It was essentially a movement for political and social reform to increase the power and jurisdiction of the central authority.The Revolution never intended to change the whole nature of our traditional society. The chief permanent achievement of the French Revolution was the suppression of those political institutions, commonly described as feudal, which for many centuries had held unquestioned sway in most European countries. The Revolution set out to replace them with a new social and political order, based on the concept of equality.

Tocqueville puts forth two main ideas in his work. First, Tocqueville points out that even though the Revolutionaries attempted to completely abolish all institutions of the Old Regime, they reverted to many of its foundations. Most importantly, they attempted to dismantle the powerful state that was the monarchy, but ended up creating an even stronger, more centralized state themselves. The idea is that in the nascent stages of the Revolution, following the destruction of the monarchy, Revolutionary leaders realized that they would only be able to maintain order through the creation of a centralized, quasi-authoritarian state. As a result, many practices and institutions formerly held in contempt as associated with the Old Regime were revived. In Tocqueville's view, even though the French Revolutionaries sought radical reform and change, many components of their 'new' Revolutionary government reflected previously existing entities.

Secondly, Tocqueville repeatedly stresses is that if people want freedom not for its own sake but for some other goal, to further their material interest, it is unlikely that freedom will not turn into a despotic form of rule, where everyone may be free to further their material interest but without political freedom. He thus argues that if material, self-interested behaviour is the offspring for action, people may vote for a government that gives them economic stability, even if the price to pay for this is political freedom.

Furthermore, analyzing Tocqueville's work in context to Democracy in America, it can be argued that he perceived France to be the opposite of the United States in terms of Revolutionary achievement and the manipulation of the idea of 'freedom.' In France, before and after the revolution, people relied on a central authority instead of becoming economically or politically active themselves. By contrast, in the United States, political action permeated to even the lower levels of society. There, private individuals formed the basis of economic and political life, but, in France, this center of gravity was taken up by the bureaucratic machine.

See also

• Economic sociology

External links

• (French) L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution at Gallica
• The Old Regime and the Revoltution at Archive.org