Tocqueville’s Politics of Grandeur

• Author: Gianna Englert
• DOI: 10.1177/00905917211043790
• Published date: 01 June 2022
• Date: 01 June 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917211043790

Political Theory

2022, Vol. 50(3) 477 –503

© The Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00905917211043790

journals.sagepub.com/home/ptx

Article

Tocqueville’s Politics

of Grandeur

Gianna Englert1

Abstract

In his defenses of empire, Alexis de Tocqueville emphasized the need to

achieve grandeur for France, and his writings on Algeria have shaped our

understanding of his political career. In pursuing empire abroad as a remedy

for weak politics at home, scholars maintain that Tocqueville abandoned the

participatory politics of Democracy in America. This essay argues, however,

that the focus on Tocqueville’s international turn has obscured his interest

in the greatness of domestic party politics. It demonstrates that Tocqueville

championed a version of grandeur tied to the latent energies of the lower

classes and distinct from the Bonapartism and aristocratic nostalgia that

characterized his thoughts on empire. This version of grandeur was a

political reclamation of disagreement and debate that supported great party

opposition to counter the malaise of bourgeois rule. The essay concludes

by comparing Tocqueville’s attitude toward foreign others, whose freedoms

had to be sacrificed to the cause of French nationalism, with his description

of the lower classes within his own nation, whose inclusion in the franchise

could foster great politics. This comparison enables us to draw modest

lessons for interpreting political grandeur in the present day.

Keywords

Tocqueville, empire, social class, political parties, grandeur

1Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Southern Methodist University,

Dallas, TX

Corresponding Author:

Gianna Englert, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Southern Methodist

University, 3300 University Boulevard, Carr Collins Hall #210, Dallas, TX 75205.

Email: genglert@smu.edu

1043790PTXXXX10.1177/00905917211043790Political TheoryEnglert

research-article2021

478 Political Theory 50(3)

From his fears about the leveling influence of democracy in America to his

complaints about the pettiness of French politics, Alexis de Tocqueville made

no secret of his disdain for all things mediocre. Mediocrity bred political

apathy, and a society of apathetic individuals was no society at all. “What

strikes me most,” he wrote of the French in 1840, “is how little [they are]

occupied with political affairs. . . . It is a distressing and alarming spectacle”

(Tocqueville 1985a, 144). He was hopeful that the Americans could offset

similar tendencies with associations and religion, which in different ways

approximated the binding ties of aristocracy for the democratic age. But

France needed “great events” to overcome its citizens’ indifference, and

Tocqueville wished to make France great again. This need for greatness man-

ifested in his arguments for empire in North Africa and the Caribbean, framed

in the language of grandeur that led at some moments to ambivalence toward

colonialism and at others to a defense of violence in pursuit of French pride.1

Tocqueville’s use of grandeur in his writings on empire has received con-

siderable attention, so much so that it has shaped our understanding of his

political priorities in the 1830s and 40s. The Tocqueville of French politics

has become inseparable from the “catechism” of national glory used to justify

the Algerian enterprise (Duong 2018, 33).2 For some scholars, this period of

his career exposes the dissonance between his liberalism and nationalism

(Richter 1963; Welch 2003; Boesche 2005; Pitts 2000; Pitts 2009). Others

recognize degrees of coherence (for good or for ill) between his theoretical

writings and support for colonialism, and resist drawing distinctions between

moralist and politician or liberal and imperialist (Atanassow 2017; Kohn

2008; Boyd 2001; Todorov 1988; Dion 1990).

Amid these disagreements, one thesis is consistent: Tocqueville looked

internationally to cure the malaise of domestic politics, or as Jennifer Pitts

has written, to “substitute national glory for political virtue” (Pitts 2000,

298). In pursuing empire as therapy for languishing public life, he abandoned

the attention to political engagement that guided his earlier work (Hereth

1985, 162). This move, scholars contend, was out of necessity. Having recog-

nized that the self-governing American township was not an option for

France, Tocqueville looked for a remedy on other foreign shores (Pitts 2000,

308; Duong 2018, 45). The renewal of active citizenship required that the

French people unite behind great global undertakings, some involving the

domination of distant others.

1. As evidence of ambivalence, see Tocqueville (1983a, 151): “I think that we shall

never do in Algeria all the great things of which we delude ourselves and that, all

in all, we have there a rather sorry possession.”

2. A noteworthy exception is Gannett (2006), which looks more completely at

Tocqueville the politician.