Tocqueville and Beaumont, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2018
Aristocratic Liberalism in Democratic Times

This is the first concise study to give full credit to the collaboration of works between French nobleman, writer and politician Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) and his travel companion and friend Gustave de Beaumont (1802-66), and puts this collaboration into its social, historical and theoretical context.

It accompanies the two friends to the US and analyses the fruitful encounter between the New and the Old World that was the result of that journey, particularly in relation to emerging Atlantic democracies and revolutions. This includes the hopes but also the problems and contradictions that they have come to represent. The book also follows Tocqueville and Beaumont to England, Ireland, and Algeria. It discusses their political careers and their engagement in the abolitionist movement, their fight for liberal social and political reform, as well as their futile attempt to rationalize French colonization in Algeria.

Andreas Hess is Professor at the School of Sociology, University College Dublin, Ireland. He is the author of The Political Theory of Judith N. Shklar (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and Sociology in Ireland (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

The first concise study giving full credit to the significance of the collaboration between Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont and its impact on their works

Situates and contextualises the aristocratic liberalism of Tocqueville and Beaumont

Provides insight into what remains to be learnt from the works of Tocqueville and Beaumont about the emergence of modern democracy