5/15/2023 0 Comments Tocqueville'sAs the political theorist Jeremy Jennings illustrates in his new book, not only were Tocqueville’s extensive wanderings remarkable for their variety and length. Tocqueville’s travels were, however, of a different scale altogether. It was also to give these individuals insight into the politics, economics, and cultures of states other than their own, thereby preparing them for future positions of leadership in their own country. The point of the exercise was not just the pleasure of travel or to complete a rite of passage into full adulthood. This meticulously planned, once-in-a-lifetime journey was one in which such young men, usually under the tutelage of a well-educated, linguistically adept tutor, would travel to see the sights of Europe, especially the legacies of the Renaissance and ancient and Catholic Rome. Nor would it be their last.įrom the late seventeenth century until the early nineteenth, a highlight in the life of many European aristocrats had been the Grand Tour. This was not the first journey that Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville, the future author of Democracy in America and the lesser known but equally remarkable The Old Regime and the Revolution, had taken outside their native France. On 2 April, 1831, two young French magistrates boarded the Harve, a ship bound for America. Travels with Tocqueville Beyond America, Jeremy Jennings.
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