Tocqueville: The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)

This New Translation Of An Undisputed Classic Aims To Be Both Accurate And Readable. Tocqueville's Subtlety Of Style And Profundity Of Thought Offer A Challenge To Readers As Well As To Translators. As Both A Tocqueville Scholar And An Award-winning Translator, Arthur Goldhammer Is Uniquely Qualified For The Task. In His Introduction, Jon Elster Draws On His Recent Work To Lay Out The Structure Of Tocqueville's Argument. Readers Will Appreciate The Ancien Régime And The French Revolution For Its Sense Of Irony As Well As Tragedy, For Its Deep Insights Into Political Psychology, And For Its Impassioned Defense Of Liberty-- Translated By Arthur Goldhammer ; Edited With An Introduction By Jon Elster. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Half-title Series-title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Introduction Bibliographical Note Chronology Foreword Book I I.1 – Contradictory Judgments of the Revolution at Its Inception I.2 – That the Fundamental and Final Purpose of the Revolution Was Not, as Some Have Thought, to Destroy Religious Authority and Weaken Political Authority I.3 – How the French Revolution Was a Political Revolution That Proceeded in the Manner of Religious Revolutions, and Why I.4 – How Almost All of Europe Had Exactly the Same Institutions, and How Those Institutions Were Crumbling Everywhere I.5 – What Was the Essential Achievement of the French Revolution? Book II II.1 – Why Feudal Prerogatives Had Become More Odious to the People in France Than Anywhere Else II.2 – Why Administrative Centralization Is an Institution of the Ancien Régime and Not, As Some Say, the Work of the Revolution or Empire II.3 – How What Today Is Called Administrative Tutelage Is an Institution of the Ancien Régime II.4 – How Administrative Justice and the Immunity of Public Officials Were Institutions of the Ancien Régime II.5 – How Centralization Was Thus Able to Insinuate Itself among the Old Powers and Supplant Them Without Destroying Them II.6 – On Administrative Mores under the Ancien Régime II.7 – How France, of All the Countries of Europe, Was Already the One in Which the Capital Had Achieved the Greatest Preponderance over the Provinces and Most Fully Subsumed the Entire Country II.8 –That France Was the Country Where People Had Become Most Alike II.9 – How Men So Similar Were More Separate Than Ever, Divided into Small Groups Alien and Indifferent to One Another II.10 – How the Destruction of Political Liberty and the Separation of Classes Caused Nearly All the Maladies That Proved Fatal to the Ancien Régime II.11 – On the Kind of Liberty to Be Found under the Ancien Régime and Its Influence on the Revolution II.12 – How, Despite the Progress of Civilization, the Condition of the French Peasant Was Sometimes Worse in the Eighteenth Century Than It Had Been in the Thirteenth Book III III.1 – How, Toward the Middle of the Eighteenth Century, Men of Letters Became the Country’s Leading Politicians, and the Effects That Followed from This III.2 – How Irreligion Was Able to Become a General and Dominant Passion in Eighteenth-Century France, and How It Influenced the Character of the Revolution III.3 – How the French Wanted Reforms Before They Wanted Liberties III.4 – That the Reign of Louis XVI Was the Most Prosperous Era of the Old Monarchy, and How That Very Prosperity Hastened the Revolution III.5 – How Attempts to Relieve the People Stirred Them to Revolt III.6 – On Some Practices That Helped the Government Complete the People’s Revolutionary Education III.7 – How a Great Administrative Revolution Preceded the Political Revolution, and on the Consequences It Had III.8 – How the Revolution Emerged Naturally from the Foregoing Appendix: On the Pays d’états, and in Particular Languedoc Notes Index *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 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 dissociate themselves from the past and from the autocratic old regime, they eventually reverted to a powerful central government. "This new translation of an undisputed classic aims to be both accurate and readable. Tocqueville's subtlety of style and profundity of thought offer a challenge to readers as well as to translators. As both a Tocqueville scholar and an award-winning translator, Arthur Goldhammer is uniquely qualified for the task. In his Introduction, Jon Elster draws on his recent work to lay out the structure of Tocqueville's argument. Readers will appreciate The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution for its sense of irony as well as tragedy, for its deep insights into political psychology, and for its impassioned defense of liberty"-- Provided by publisher