The prominence of colonization in Tocqueville's life and works has been widely noted, yet scholars disagree about its importance. The perceived tension between Tocqueville's analysis of democracy and his advocacy of colonization continues to be the subject of heated scholarly debate. Revisiting Tocqueville's analytical and practical engagement with colonization, this essay reexamines its relationship to Tocqueville's account of democracy. It argues that, while lending political support to the French empire, Tocqueville was a clairvoyant critic of colonial rule; and that his involvement with colonization could only be properly understood in light of the historical and civilizational vista that informs his oeuvre as a whole. Proposing that Tocqueville viewed European expansionism as an instrument of the global movement toward democratic equality, the essay concludes with an assessment of the significance of Tocqueville's colonial writings for his “new political science,” and their relevance today.
This article suggests that to judge the state of democracy today we need to clarify what we mean by democracy. Not simply given, democracy's institutional and moral meanings have been historically, and continue to be at present, the subject of intense disagreement. Drawing on one of the most influential accounts of modern democracy -Tocqueville's -it argues that far from rolling back, democracy defined by the passion for equality is, so to say, rolling forward; and that the various crises we are observing today issue less from the retreat than from a deepening of inherently democratic tendencies. These same trends may help explain the rise of neo-liberalism in recent decades. Mitigating these deep-seated tendencies would require a comprehensive set of remedies. Among them is the need to rethink not only the nature of equality but also, perhaps above all, the meaning of freedom.
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