The French statesman and writer Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clérel de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was the author of "Democracy in America, " the first classic commentary on American government written by a foreigner.
Alexis de Tocqueville was born in Paris on July 29, 1805, of an aristocratic Norman family. He studied law in Paris (1823-1826) and then was appointed an assistant magistrate at Versailles (1827).
The July 1830 Revolution which, with middle-class support, put Louis Philippe on the throne, required a loyalty oath of Tocqueville as a civil servant. He was suspect because his aristocratic family opposed the new order and was demoted to a minor judgeship without pay. Tocqueville and another magistrate, Gustave de Beaumont, asked to study prison reform in America, then an interest of the French government. Granted permission but not funds (their families paid their expenses), Tocqueville and Beaumont spent from May 1831 to February 1832 in the United States. Their travel and interviews resulted in On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application in France (1832). Then followed Tocqueville's famous Democracy in America (vol. 1, 1835; vol. 2, 1840), an immediate best seller. By 1850 it had run through 13 editions.
Tocqueville was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1839. He opposed King Louis Philippe but after the Revolution of 1848 again served as a deputy. Tocqueville was foreign minister for a few months in 1849 and retired from public affairs at the end of 1851. During his last years he wrote The Old Regime and the French Revolution (1856). He died in Cannes on April 16, 1859.
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