American Historians and Tocqueville's Democracy

The att's taken by US historians to Alexis de Tocqueville's DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA (available in 2 reliable translations: Henry Reeve, translator, revised by Francis Bown & Phillips Bradly, NY, 1945; & George Lawrence, translator, NY, 1966) are examined. It is seen that DEMOCRACY is not a simple work & is not easy for historians to utilize. It does not fit into historians' traditional categories of source materials. At present it is in great vogue among historians, but until 1938 it was not very fashionable & only by the mid-1940's did it become thoroughly legitimized as an historical source. It is observed that his European, French, & personal background enabled Tocqueville to have a perspective from which he could identify signif problems in the US. He had a remarkable capacity to respond to new soc phenomena, to ask penetrating questions about instit's & att's, to obtain a broad, if not carefully representative sample of opinion, & to maintain a degree of intellectual independence from his own sources. He explicitly constructed DEMOCRACY against the background of a more general process of soc evolution in Western civilization toward ever greater equality of conditions. America was interesting precisely because it participated in this world-historical movement & offered some interesting variation of it. It appears that the basic general concept of democracy changed between 1835 & 1840. The way these 2 concepts of democracy are reconciled in DEMOCRACY as 2 successive 'stages' of democratic development is discussed. It is concluded that historians need to know Tocqueville's background in order to appreciate DEMOC- RACY. They need to be aware of his ambiguities on democracy & his variant undercurrents of developmental hypothesis on democracy. Above all, they must recognize the relevance of his primary concern about the general 'soc condition,' esp the structure & operation of 'associations,' & the roles of elites & masses within them. M. Maxfield.