1300 187 187
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) is familiar to readers as the author of "Democracy in America," the most-quoted book written about the United States. "The Old Regime and the Revolution" is 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. Writing in 1851, Tocqueville showed the continuity of French political behavior and social attitudes before and after the Revolution. He discussed the dangers to political freedom posed by tendencies towards government centralization and persistent class hostility that endured from the old regime to the Revolution and beyond.
Alan Kahan's new translation finally provides a faithful and readable rendering in English of Tocqueville's last masterpiece, surpassing existing English editions of the work which are now decades old. The first translation to be based on the forthcoming French critical edition, it includes notes and variants, which reveal Tocqueville's sources as well as new material from his drafts and revisions. The reader will also find a new introduction and other discussions by France's most eminent scholars on Tocqueville and the French Revolution, Franç oise Mé lonio and the late Franç ois Furet.
A major scholarly event, this handsomely produced book will be the definitive English edition of on of the great books in modern intellectual history.
Franç ois Furet (1992-1997) was the leading French historian of the Revolution and, according to the "New York Times," "oneof the most influential French thinkers of the post-war era." Franç oise Mé lonio is the editor of Gallimard's critical edition of Tocqueville's complete works.
"Franç oise Furet . . . challenged the popular Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution and reshaped French thinking about subsequent events. His lifelong fascination with the French Revolution and his many books on it . . . earned him a special place among historians."- "New York Times," 16 July 1997
| Foreword | p. vii |
| Conflicting opinions of the Revolution at its outbreak | p. 1 |
| How the chief and ultimate aim of the Revolution was not, as used to be thought, to overthrow religious and to weaken political authority in France | p. 5 |
| How, though its objectives were political, the French Revolution followed the lines of a religious revolution and why this was so | p. 10 |
| How almost all European nations had had the same institutions and how these were breaking down everywhere | p. 14 |
| What did the French Revolution accomplish? | p. 19 |
| Why feudalism had come to be more detested in France than in any other country | p. 22 |
| How administrative centralization was an institution of the old regime and not, as is often thought, a creation of the Revolution or the Napoleonic period | p. 32 |
| How paternal government, as it is called today, had been practiced under the old regime | p. 41 |
| How administrative justice and the immunity of public servants were institutions of the old regime | p. 52 |
| How the idea of centralized administration was established among the ancient powers, which it supplanted, without, however, destroying them | p. 57 |
| Of the methods of administration under the old regime | p. 61 |
| How in France, more than in any other European country, the provinces had come under the thrall of the metropolis, which attracted to itself all that was most vital in the nation | p. 72 |
| How France had become the country in which men were most like each other | p. 77 |
| How, though in many respects so similar, the French were split up more than ever before into small, isolated, self-regarding groups | p. 81 |
| How the suppression of political freedom and the barriers set up between classes brought on most of the diseases to which the old regime succumbed | p. 97 |
| Of the nature of the freedom prevailing under the old regime and of its influence on the Revolution | p. 108 |
| How, despite the progress of civilization, the lot of the French peasant was sometimes worse in the eighteenth century than it had been in the thirteenth | p. 120 |
| How towards the middle of the eighteenth century men of letters took the lead in politics and the consequences of this new development | p. 138 |
| How vehement and widespread anti-religious feeling had become in eighteenth-century France and its influence on the nature of the Revolution | p. 148 |
| How the desire for reforms took precedence of the desire for freedom | p. 157 |
| How, though the reign of Louis XVI was the most prosperous period of the monarchy, this very prosperity hastened the outbreak of the Revolution | p. 169 |
| How the spirit of revolt was promoted by well-intentioned efforts to improve the people's lot | p. 180 |
| How certain practices of the central power completed the revolutionary education of the masses | p. 188 |
| How revolutionary changes in the administrative system preceded the political revolution and their consequences | p. 193 |
| How, given the facts set forth in the preceding chapters, the Revolution was a foregone conclusion | p. 203 |
| The pays d'etats, with special reference to Languedoc | p. 212 |
| Notes | p. 222 |
| General Notes | p. 289 |
| Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved. |
ISBN: 9780385092609
ISBN-10: 0385092601
Audience:
General
Format:
Paperback
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 320
Published: 1st October 1955
Dimensions (cm): 20.2 x 13.3
x 1.8
Weight (kg): 0.25
9am - 4pm AEST, Monday - Friday
