Tocqueville on Algeria
Author(s): Melvin Richter
Source: The Review of Politics, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Jul., 1963), pp. 362-398
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Tocqueville on Algeria
Melvin Richter
I
N ANY list of the mostpenetratingand leastdeceivedpolit-
ical theoristsof the nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville must be rankedhigh. Few othersperceivedthe dangers
both of egalitarianismand of racial thinking; of secular religions
as well as of state churches; of historical determinism,as well as
of those other explanationswhich equally well undermineresponsibility by attributing everything to mere chance or to the appearance of exceptional individuals. Tocqueville insisted upon the
obligation of free men to determineby empirical investigationjust
what are the genuine alternativesconfronting them. By his own
effort to perform this task, he made a classic contributionto the
study of the relationshipsbetween social organizationand political
institutions.
Yet the time has passedwhen Tocquevilleneeded to be praised.
Indeed it is precisely the uncritical adulation of some admirers
that may provoke a reaction against him. It would be well for
Tocqueville to be studied as a serious thinker, rather than to be
puffed as a prophet or seer. Who has not been fatigued by still
another referenceto that passage in Democracy in America where
Tocqueville speculated whether within a century Russia and the
United States would share control of the world? But a theorist's
influenceupon the thought of a later age ought not to be estimated
by its repetition of his successfulguesses or strikingepigrams. His
ideas exert a creative power only when they are being subjected
to vigorous criticism and reworking by those who care enough
to separate what is worth preservingfrom what ought to be discounted as due to demonstrableerror or ideological bias.
In Tocqueville'scase, it is particularlynecessaryto understand
his meaning both in relation to the overt reasons he gave and to
the context within which he functioned. For his ideas were oriented
to choice and action, rather than to careful definition and systematic consistency. These qualities he disdained as being of more
concern to the man of letters than to the practicingstatesmanand
citizen. From an early age he involved himself with actual politics.
362
ON ALGERIA
TOCQUEVTLLFE
363
This participationboth registeredand altered Tocqueville's initial
ideals and tools of analysis. Yet we know little more about the
causeshe championedthan what he chose to tell us in his Souvenirs;
and little more about his operativepolitical values than the formal
statements of principle contained in his printed works. Both
sourcesare unsatisfactory.Tocqueville'saccount of his role in the
committee which drafted the Constitutionof the Second Republic
cannot be taken at face value. Paul Bastid has demonstratedin
detail both the errorsTocqueville propagated about the American
presidencyand his lack of energy and foresightin what he did to
prevent Louis Napoleon's seizure of power.1 This is surprising,
and surely worth knowing. The same is even more true of the
stand he took on the French conquestand colonizationof the territories now known as Algeria.
Tocqueville conspicuouslyfailed to apply to the French action
in North Africa the sociological insight and ethical awareness he
had demonstratedin his study of the United States. There he had
found indefensible the effects of force and exploitation, not only
upon the victims, but upon those who ostensibly benefited from
the means at the disposal of colonists and slaveholders. No such
judgments occur in his treatment of French policy in Algeria.
What makes this difference so striking is the fact that he was
alreadywriting on Algeriabefore he had completedthe Democracy.
When in the 1840's Tocqueville attacked the "philanthropy"of
those Frenchmen who condemned the cruelty of their country's
African operation, he nevertheless used the same liberal and
humanitarianargumentsto support the abolition of slavery in the
French colonies, and to distinguishhis own position from that of
his young assistant,Gobineau, in their correspondence.
These contradictionswere visible before the publication of the
latest volume in the new complete edition of Tocqueville. But in
this collectionof Tocqueville'swritingsand speecheson colonialism
- perhaps the single most revealing, and certainly the best-edited
volume in this series- Andre Jardin has given us materialswhich
put their author in a perspectiverather different from what some
of his admirers might have suspected.2 This is not to say that
Paul Bastid, "Tocqueville et la doctrine constitutionnelle," Alexis de
Tocqueville: Livre du Centenaire, 1859-1959 (Paris, 1960), pp. 51-53.
2 Alexis de
Tocqueville, Oeuvres completes, ed. J. P. Mayer, t. III, Ecrits
et Discours politiques (Paris, 1962), v. I. Texte &tabliet annot par Andre
Jardin.
364
THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
Jardin, or J.-J. Chevalier, who collaboratedin the highly intelligent and informative introduction, betray any uneasiness about
Tocqueville'sthought or conduct. Rather they argue that he succeeded in reconcilinghis political values with his espousal of colonialism in North Africa:
Slavery,Algeria,BritishIndia, the problemsof colonization,or of
contactsamongdifferentraces- these mattersare treatedby the
same expertand lucid pen, which, in the Democracyin America,
analyzed the structureof democraticsocieties and revealed the
true sourcesof their governments'action. But this pen servesas
well France'smajor interests,in additionto those values-truth,
justice,and libertyso dear to its author.3
Tocqueville,in their opinion, by advocatingthe seizureand settling
of Algeria, in no way abandoned the principleshe had expressed
in the work that made his reputation.
These conclusions,it seems to me, are mistaken. Tocqueville's
stand on Algeria was inconsistentwith the Democracy. When this
issue forced him to choose, he placed nationalismabove liberalism;
the interests of "progressive"Christian countries above the rights
of those that were not.
In another paper, Jardin has revealed for the first time how
Algeria came to assume such importance in Tocqueville's mind.4
This occurred before he went to America; after his return, he
considered settling there, but decided to write the Democracy
instead. Before this task was done, he wrote two long newspaper
articles on Algeria. Already he was seeking to make his name
known to voters so that he might be elected to the Chamber. After
his election in 1839, he consideredhimself to be not only an expert
on Algeria, but almost the sole member to perceive that it was
France's most valuable interest. This belief prompted him to visit
North Africa, and to return, despite an attack of fever which had
almost killed him during his first voyage. Algeria was the only
non-Westernsociety he knew at first hand except for the American
Indian tribes he had encounteredin North America. But Tocqueville was so concerned to diagnose the problemsof domination by
a Europeanpower of a much larger number of natives with a religion other than Christianity,that he began in the early 1840's a
3 Ibid., 9.
Andre Jardin, "Tocqueville et l'Alg6rie," Revue des Travaux de l'Academie des sciences morales et politiques, 4e s6rie, 1962 (ler semestre), 61-62.
TOCQUEVILLE ON ALGERIA
365
manuscript devoted to analyzing what the British had done in
India. Although never completed, the fragment reprinted in its
entirety is an impressivespecimen of what Tocqueville could do
by his distinctivemethod of penetratingto the strengthsand weaknesses of a political society.5 As in the case of a highly revealing
memorandum he wrote upon his return from Algeria in 1841
(here publishedfor the first time), Tocquevilleused his intellectual
tools to serve the purposesof a Westernstate bent upon conquering
a territory outside of Europe.6 When he laid bare the political
consequencesof Islam or Hinduism, he did so in order to indicate
how the European power had or ought to have taken advantage
of weaknesson the part of Algeriansor Hindus. Whereasin almost
all his other writings, religion is viewed as a potential source of
strength for a free government, in this volume it appears purely
as a weak point in non-Christiansocieties apt to be invaded by
Europeanpowers. Nothing was worse, in Tocqueville'sview, than
for a society to be conquered. Hence any religion incapable of
inspiringits devoteesto fight against aggressorsis not worth much.
If this mode of thought recalls Machiavelli, the same is true
of Tocqueville's candid considerationof what would have to be
done by the French to take and hold Algeria. This document,
never intended for publication, is altogether free from the edifying tone its author assumed on occasion in his more deliberate
dialogues with his public and posterity. From this text it is possible to see the origin and real meaning of Tocqueville's parliamentaryspeeches on Algeria (all of which are reprintedhere from
the Moniteur), as well as the two reportshe did as rapporteurfor
the Chamber's:Committee on Algerian Affairs, state papers as
celebrated in his day as they are now unknown. Despite their
elegant acknowledgmentsof the obligations owed by a Western
and Christiancountry to other cultures, these reports envision an
inequality between the two races in Algeria after the conquest.7
Tocqueville'swriting on Algeria is worth reading both for the
light it sheds on his political values and for the use made of his
5
Tocqueville, ed. Mayer, t. III, v. I, 443-507.
6 Ibid., 213-82.
7 On this
point there is a discrepancybetween the introductionby Chevallier
and Jardin, which states that Tocqueville envisioned a permanent inequality,
and the paper of Jardin, who believes that Tocqueville was against permanent
inequality. Cf. Tocqueville, ed. Mayer, t. III, v. I, 26, 32, and Jardin, op. cit.,
p. 69.
THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
366
political sociology. What he emphasizedwas the relation between
the formal political institutionsof Moslem and Kabyle society to
their patternsof stratification,religion, elites, voluntary association,
and local self-government. But his interest was narrowly instrumental. Nothing concerned him more than the problemsof statecraft: how to subjugate, how to administer efficiently, how to
colonize a vanquished territory. All of Tocqueville's intellectual
resourceswere called into play. These included the intensive study
of governmentdocuments,including statistics;the eliciting of pertinent information from qualified experts at home and abroad;
and close personal observation,based on interviews carefully set
down in his travel journals. All this information was put into
categoriesof a comparativehistoricalsociologyvery broad in scope.
Many of the issues raised by George W. Pierson about the relation
of Tocqueville's observationto his conclusionsare actually applicable to his work on Algeria.8 His travel notes for his first voyage
to Algeria can be supplementedboth by this volume and by a full
account of his second voyage by a journalist who accompanied
him.9 From his correspondence,as well as from his early newspaper articles, it can be seen to what extent ideas he held prior
to his visits persisted, or were modified and even discarded. His
official reports reveal what constraintshe accepted in his role as
rapporteur and what part of his own views survived. On such
occasions he could not put at the center of his analysis general
hypothesesof the sort found in his books. Yet no one could call
his reports the dull weekday product of a mind which reserved
its best efforts for the Sunday of abstract speculation.
Tocqueville'smasteryof the administrativeprocesswill surprise
those who attribute to him only the vague antibureaucratic
cliches of mid-nineteenthcentury Liberalism. Indeed the intellectual level of these state papers is high enough to raise the question
of why they are based on such dubiousmoral and political assumptions. Already the Algerian issue had acquired its power to distort
the judgment of almost all Frenchmen. For in Tocqueville's case
little that he said or wrote during the French conquest bears any
8
George W. Pierson, Tocqueville
1938).
and Beaumont in America (New York,
9 Tocqueville, ed. Mayer,
Voyages en Angleterre, Irlande, Suisse, et Algerie
(Paris, 1958), t. V, v. II. Texte 6tabli et annotc par Mayer et Jardin. For the
journalist's report, A. Bussiere, "Le Marechal Bugeaud et la Colonisation de
l'Alg&rie,"Revue des Deux Mondes (Novembre, 1853), 449-506.
TOCQUEVILLE ON ALGERIA
367
recognizable connection to his earlier statements about what constitutes honor and justice in the dealings of Western states with
populations less well-armed. Once victory seemed assured, however, his language at least, returned to the tone of the Democracy.
Yet there remains some doubt about his sincerity when he warned
against exploitation of the defeated territory in words that today
provoke astonishment:
If we demonstrate by our behavior that we consider the native
population merely as an obstacle to be circumvented or smashed,
if by our rule we bring them not well-being and enlightenment
but destruction, then the only issue between the two races will
be that of life and death. Sooner or later Algeria will become
the bloody arena for a mortal combat between these two peoples
with mercy neither offered nor accepted. In such a struggle, one
or the other would have to die. May God forbid that this be our
destiny.1o
Another extraordinary prediction, it will be said. Perhaps.
Yet as is so often the case with such statements,there is a substantial difference between what we now read into these words and
what the author meant to say when he wrote them. To re-create
their original context, it will be necessaryto consider the conditions under which France came to dominate Algeria as well as
Tocqueville's attitude at various stages of this enterprise. Despite
Tocqueville'sdefense of colonialismon moral and political grounds,
rather than in terms of economic advantage, he could not alter
the logic of the situation. As a recent French treatment of the
subject put it: "There was a conqueror who imposed his rule
upon the vanquished, and, once the territory had been brought
under control, imposed the right of conquest. These two facts
dominate and explain the history of French Algeria."lII
Diplomatic historians and political scientists often attempt to
explain a nation's foreign policy by attributingto its rulers a type
of rational calculation based upon the permanent interests of the
state. Against this view, it is often argued that matters which
ought to be consideredonly in referenceto their effects upon--other
10
Tocqueville, ed. Beaumont, t. IX, 443; or, ed. Mayer, t. IIi,v. I, 329..
11Gabriel Esquer, Histoire de PAlg6rie (1830-1960) (Paris, 1960), p. 8.
368
THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
countries are in fact more often decided for reasons proper to a
nation's internal affairs. Tocqueville thought this to be a characteristic weakness of democraciesin their diplomacy.l2 Which of
these two theories applies best to the series of French decisions
which led to the taking of Algiers in 1830, restrictedoccupation
from 1830 to 1840, and, finally, total conquest and deliberate
colonizationof the area from 1841-1847? It will come as no surprise that the historians of these fateful events have not agreed
on any one explanation, and indeed have on the whole favored
the hypothesis that decisions were not taken on any other basis
than improvised reactions to unforeseen emergencies. According
to the most familiar interpretation,the seizure of Algiers in the
closing weeks of the Restoration could not have been more fortuitous. The city, long the headquartersfor a profitable piracy,
was governed by a Dey nominally subject to Turkish authority.
During the discussion of a debt incurred by the Directory and
disavowed by the Restoration, the Dey struck the French consul
with his flywhisk. Wounded by this affront to national honor,
various ministries ordered Algiers to be blockaded, and then to
be taken by storm. The champions of this hypothesisadmit that
CharlesX badly needed some new source of prestige.'3 Ch.-Andre
Julien, however, has asserted that the Dey was manipulated by
powerful merchant interests on the one side, and, on the other,
that the decision of the Polignac ministry to take the city was
promptedby the desireto distractpublic attention from the attack
upon civil liberties which Charles X was planning through the
Ordonnances.14In any case, the Dey's capitulationwas not enough
to prevent the overthrowof the Bourbons.
When Louis-Philippe came to power, he found himself confronted by the question of what to do with Algiers and the French
troopsthere. Should he withdrawthem? Should he seek to expand
French power in North Africa? There was a group of anticolonialists, but there was also some enthusiasm,particularlyin the South
of France, about possibleeconomic advantagesstemmingfrom the
victory won by the expedition. What, if any benefits,might come
to a Europeannation seekingto extend its control into the interior,
12Tocqueville, De la dfmocratie en AmJrique, ed. Mayer, I, 238-240.
18Esquer, Histoire de PAlgerie, pp. 5.7.
14Ch.-Andr6 Julien, "L'Algerie de 1830 i 1870," La Rlvolution de 1848,
XXI (1925), 3-7.
TOCQUEVILLE ON ALGERIA
369
what sort of resistance it might encounter - these were questions
no one in France could at that time answer. The July Monarchy
reacted in the way that was to become habitual: it temporized, it
evaded making any choice which might provoke disapproval. What
this meant in North Africa was the limited occupation of Algiers
and certain other coastal areas, a policy that continued with
modification until 1840. But with the appearance of a young,
energetic, and highly capable leader, Abd-el-Kader, a serious threat
was posed to the indecisive policy of the cabinet. The number of
its troops in 1831 was 18,000; in 1834, 30,000; in 1838, 48,000.15
A decision had to be made, and it was General Bugeaud, then a
deputy, who stated the issue in a decisive speech: "I say that
restricted occupation is a chimera and a dangerous chimera. Indeed as long as you remain in the small area to which your occupation is restricted, you will never attack the heart of your enemy's
position."'6
There were only two choices, either Algeria must be abandoned
or else it must be completely conquered:
As for abandoning Algeria: official France is unwilling to do so
... I see no prospect of a government strong enough to get out
of Algeria, even if such a step were indicated by the trend of
events there .... Since withdrawal is impossible, the only remaining alternative is total domination.17
?Bugeaud's words gained importance because he was himself
the man most likely to be named Commander-in-Chief in the event
that total conquest were to become the official policy. Speaking
with perfect candor, he set out the means necessary to attain that
end. His strategy was that of total war. With an army of 100,000
men and equivalent appropriations to support that force, he could
break the enemy. Instead of the defensive strategy hitherto followed by a European-type army, complete with heavy artillery
and complicated supply lines, Bugeaud prescribed a continual
offensive carried out by mobile columns and light infantry. The
goal was not so much to meet and fight the enemy as to destroy
his material basis of existence. This was to be done by burning
15 Tocqueville, ed. Beaumont, IX, 423.- The figures rose to
70,000 in 1841,
76,000 in 1843, 83,000 in 1845, and 101,000 in 1846.
16Gen. Paul Azan (ed.), Par l'lpie et par la Charrue: Ecrits et Discours
de Bugeaud (Paris, 1948), p. 63.
17Ibid., pp. 64-65.
THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
370
his villages and preventing him from sowing, harvesting, and grazing; the entire population must be considered as the foe. In the
chamber that heard these proposals, some deputies were squeamish
enough to balk at the prospect of such an operation. True, the
Arabs were scarcely gentle to the French soldiers they took, but
after all they were defending their homeland and were no crueler
to the Europeans than to their tribal enemies. To such criticism,
Bugeaud responded:
These murmurs seem to indicate that the Chamber finds my means
too barbaric. Gentlemen, war cannot be waged in the spirit of
philanthropy. Once you choose war as an end, you cannot reject
any means whatever.... I shall always prefer the interestsof France
to an absurd philanthropy directed towards foreigners who decapitate those of our soldiers who are wounded or taken prisoners.18
This speech carried the day and Bugeaud, once given the
command by Guizot, was as good as his word. The razzia became
the standard operation against all tribes that resisted or were naive
enough to think that they could remain neutral: villages were
razed, harvests burned, livestock confiscated or slaughtered, and,
most moder touch of all, certain resisting tribes which sought
refuge in caves were smoked to death.
This is how a razzia appeared to one French officer:
We arrive at tents abandoned by their owners who, awakened,
by the approach of our soldiers, have fled in disorder with their
flocks. Shots from all sides rain upon these miserable people, surprised and without defense. Men, women, and children are soon
surrounded; their flocks are seized. Everything that cannot be
carried off is put to the torch. The tribes whose resources we
have taken are thus made to feel the need for a long peace to
restore themselves.19
Saint-Arnaud described his campaigns of 1842 to his brother
in extraordinarily frank and vivid terms:
We are in the middle of the mountains between Milianah and
Cherchell. We hardly fire a shot, we burn everything (April 5,
1842). The country of the Beni-Menasser is superb.... We have
burned everything. Oh war, oh war! How many women and
children have died of cold and misery in the snows of the Atlas
18 Ibid.,
pp. 67-68.
19Esquer, Histoire de l'Algdrie,p. 33.
TOCQUEVTT.LF, ON ALGERIA
371
Mountains (April 7, 1842). My last letter was sent from the
land of the Brazes, which I have burned and devastated. Here
I am now on the territory of the Sindgads ... the same thing but
on a larger scale. . . . Some of them came to me leading the
horse that symbolizessubmission. I refused them because I wanted
total capitulation and so I began to burn (October 11, 1842).20
Bugeaud (1784-1849), who originated this strategy deserves
more attention than he has thus far received from French historians. Not only did he carry through the conquest of Algeria
as he had promised, but also he reintroduced into political life a
tradition of military violence that further embittered its already
great tensions. It is Bugeaud who constituted the critical link in
the chain connecting the guerrilla war in Spain under Napoleon
with Algeria, and the repressions of 1848, 1851, and the Paris
Commune.
It is not surprising that when his officers were criticized in
France for acts of cruelty committed during the conquest, Bugeaud
not only defended them but counterattacked in the most violent
language imaginable. As one historian has remarked, Bugeaud
and his officers all suffered from the psychosis that it was they
who were being wronged and misrepresented.21 Thus, they created
an image of themselves as the victims of those in France who
wanted the fruits of victory but were too self-seeking and cowardly
to do more than criticize the men who bore the brunt of the
fighting. The professional soldiers thought that they knew how
to assume responsibility even if the politicians and journalists did
not. Confronted by an enemy whose code included courage but
not mercy, the French officers in Algeria, whatever their personal
politics, carried through their operations quite without restraint.
A long and bitter colonial war fought by professional soldiers while
France was otherwise at peace produced in the 1840's that same
estrangement from the values of the Metropole that a century later
was repeated in the armies of Indo-China and Algeria.
III
At the time when Tocqueville began to concern himself with
the problem of Algeria, he had not yet finished the second part
20Ad. Leroy de Saint-Arnaud (ed.), Lettres de Marechal de Saint-Arnaud
(Paris, 1855), 2 vols., I, 379, 381, 433.
21Ch.-Andr, Julien, Histoire de PAfriquedu Nord (Paris, 1931), p. 633.
372
THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
of the Democracy in America. But among the sections which had
already reached the public, one stood out by its overt moralism.
Nothing in the United States shocked Tocqueville more than the
lamentable past and unpromising future of relations among the
Indian, Negro, and Caucasian races. When he discussedhow the
whites had treated peoples of other color, he took care to contrast
the ugly reality of the actual situation with the ideals professedby
the Americans in their official pronouncements upon human
equality. Seldom have irony and moral indignation been more
effectively combined than in this part of Tocqueville'swork. Yet
when he himself had to take a stand on French treatment of the
native populations in Algeria, the same sort of contradictionwas
to appear in his own position. The national policy he supported
was simply inconsistentwith Tocqueville's eloquent statements of
moral and political principle.
In America he had felt strongly,without impairing his powers
as an observer. Although condemning the Americans' cruelty to
the non-European races they dominated, he felt that he must
analyze and explain this phenomenon. And, he had learned from
Montesquieu,such understandingcan come only from the careful
use of the comparative method. The Spaniards, as well as the
Americans, had used the superior power of European arms to
exploit the Indians. Indeed it would seem that the Americanshad
been rather more humane. It was true that the shame of the
Spanish conquest could never be effaced. In Mexico they used
their dogs to hunt down the Indianslike wild beasts. The Spaniards
had shown no quarter,they killed, burned, massacred,pillaged the
new world like a city fallen into the hands of mercenaries. But
finally their fury ended, and not everything had been destroyed.
What was left of the Indian population intermarriedwith the
Spanish and absorbedtheir religion and way of life so successfully
that by the 1830's the conquered had already come to rule over
the conquerors.22But the North Americans, more humane, moderate, respectful of legal forms, had been much more successful
in exterminatingthe Indian population. The government of the
United States treated every Indian tribe as an independentnation
whose lands could not be abrogated without solemn treaty. And
if it happened that a tribe fell into difficultiesbecause game had
fled its lands as a result of encroaching settlement, Washington
22 Tocqueville, ed. Mayer, De la dimocratie en Amnrique, I, 354-355.
TOCQUEVILLE ON ALGERIA
373
with a show of fraternity, would offer graciously to buy their lands
(at a small price), and resettle them far away, where the white
man, it promised, would never come. Tocqueville had himself
seen the tragic scene of the Choctaws leaving the territory and
graves of their ancestors. His heart, he wrote his mother, was filled
with pity at this irretrievable farewell, this spectacle of the ruin
and destruction of what once had been a great nation.23
It was by such peaceful, legal, and pseudo-philanthropic means
that the Americans attained their objectives. No one else, Tocqueville concluded dryly, could "destroy men with any more respect
for the laws of humanity."24 But despite the different means used
by the Americans and the Spaniards, their objectives were in fact
the same. Both cared not at all for the sufferings of the original
inhabitants; both felt that the New World by right belonged to
them. Ultimately their conduct could be explained only by "the
same pitiless feeling which characterizes the Europeans here as
everywhere."25 To Tocqueville it seemed perfectly clear that the
Indians were doomed because of the superior power of their white
enemies. This was the meaning of European civilization which so
prided itself on its superior religion and morality.
These sentiments reappear in Tocqueville's condemnation of
slavery in the American South. When he later urged the abolition
of that institution in the French colonies, he recalled his vivid
memories of the United States. What, he asked, could be more
deplorable than a state of affairs, in which it was a capital offense
to teach human beings how to read or write? And, repeating a
reflection found in the Democracy, he remarked that the worst
effect of permanent inequality upon the masters was to convince
them that their domination rested upon right. Thus they saw no
incompatibility between their actual role as tyrant and their image
of themselves as men of principle.26 This was written in 1843.
There was no reason for Tocqueville to misrepresent his true
feelings, for these words occur in unsigned newspaper articles.
Yet when he put down his ideas on Algeria, he refused to
approve the notion that the French ought to encourage the con23Tocqueville, ed. Beaumont, VII, 102-104, 105.
24 Tocqueville, ed. Mayer, De la democratie en
Amerique, I, 355.
25
Tocqueville, ed. Mayer, Voyages en Sicile et aux ?tats-Unis (Paris, 1957),
p. 225.
26
Tocqueville, ed. Mayer, t. III, v. I, 117.
THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
374
quered population to attend Western schools.27 Another surprising
shift came in his use of the concept of decadence. In the case of
Algeria, Tocqueville argued that a nation which had conquered
a territory could not give it up without convincing the rest of the
world that such an action stemmed from impotence and failure
of nerve. To abandon Algeria would provide the incontrovertible
proof of France's decadence, its acceptance of a permanently
second-class status as a power.28 Yet he used the concept of
decadence in quite another way when he discussed the abolition
of slavery:
Nations cannot with impunity abandon those ideas and feelings
which have long distinguished them; to do so would be to lose
prestige and to fall into decadence.
Those notions of liberty and equality which everywhere are
shaking or destroying slavery-who propagated them throughout
the world? . .. It cannot be denied that we ourselves did so.
This has been the source both of our glory and our force. Christianity, after having long combated the egoistic passions which
re-established slavery in the 16th century, had become tired and
resigned. ... It was we who gave a practical and precise meaning to the Christian idea that all men are born equal; it was we
who found out how to apply it to the world as it is. Finally, we,
attributing to society as a whole new duties, have designated as
principal among them the obligation to come to the aid of the
unfortunate, to defend all the weak, and to guarantee to every
man the equal right to liberty. . . . Will France, the country of
democracy par excellence, remain the only European nation to
maintain slavery? . . . If so, let us prepare ourselves to pass to
others that standard of modern civilization which our fathers were
the first to raise fifty years ago; if so, let us renounce the role we
were so proud to play, but which we no longer have the courage
to continue.29
It is not easy to reconcile such language with Tocqueville's
position on Algeria. The deliberate cruelty that was part of
Bugeaud's strategy scarcely could be regarded as stemming from
concern with the unfortunate, the weak, or as guaranteeing the
liberty of the conquered. Tocqueville subordinated his liberal values
to what he judged to be the more urgent imperatives of national
interest and international competition. It is true that he purported
27 Ibid., 325.
28 Ibid., 212-13.
29 Ibid., 88-89.
TOCQUEVILLE ON ALGERIA
375
to be interested in maintaining legal protections for the native
population. Yet he insisted that the principal objective of French
policy ought to be, not just conquest, but colonization by settlers
from the Metropole. The implications should have been clear to
the man, who on the basis of what occurred in America, had
concluded that the Europeansettler, whether by guile or by force,
always succeeds in imposing his will upon the indigenous population. How could Tocqueville believe that a territorygained by the
razzia would thereafter be administeredin accordance with the
rights and interests of the defeated? Only two explanations are
possible: either Tocqueville deliberately chose to put national
interest above everythingelse; or there were forces at work upon
him which maskedthe actual situation and moral choices inherent
in any colonial venture.
IV
Tocqueville knew most of what there then was to be known
about Algeria. Well informed by correspondentswho included
Lamoriciere, founder of the Arab Bureaus, and second only to
Bugeaud among the officerswho made their reputation in North
Africa, Tocqueville felt sufficientlyarmed to write his first articles
in 1837. The next year he began the study of the Koran in a
French translationunfortunatelymore distinguishedfor the finish
of its prose than for the accuracy of its renditions. On the basis
of what he thus learned, he judged that Islam was marred by its
fatalism. To its credit was the fact that it managed to dispense
with a sacerdotal clergy, "which is always a source of malaise in
society."30 Nevertheless Moslem society was plagued by a confusion between the civil and the religiouspower. Thus handicapped
it could never be genuinely progressive. Perhaps this judgment
justified in Tocqueville's mind the fact that in his studies of
Algeria, he used his knowledge of Islam as a way of justifying
French policy. High among his concerns was to discoverprecisely
what were the usages in regard to landholding and the right of
the ruler to punish political resistance.For he thought that whenever the French could further their cause by asserting that they
were following native religion and law, they ought to do so.
By 1841 Tocqueville felt that he had to see Algeria for him30
Ibid., 174.
376
THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
self. By way of further preparation,he read and absorbed much
of the official documentation.How to reach the nerve of administrativeand political problems,how to avail himself of analogous
experiences in other countries and to compare them to his own
studies- this he had long before learned in his reports on American prisons and slavery in the West Indies. As Jardin has remarked,Tocquevillewas able, on the basis of documentspublished
by the French governmentto defend its recordin Algeria, to indict
it in the strongestterms.31What emerged even from this defective
recordwere the inefficiencyof the civil administration,the arbitrariness of the military vis-a-vis the French settlers, and the creation
of conditionsso far inferior to the Metropole that only those with
nothing to lose could possibly be tempted to come and settle in
North Africa.
On the basis of his notes and correspondence,it emerges that
Tocqueville's solicitude extended largely to French citizens, although he did comment that the administrationfailed to respect
both Moslem law and local usage. At this time his thought was
in transition. Tocqueville's first sketch of French objectives did
not yet include colonization on a large scale. What he thought
most feasible was an occupation on the Turkish model, which
meant emphasis upon making the natives pay taxes and indirect
rule.32 He also thought that much of the fertile soil was unoccupied, so that the French who did come would be able to
merge easily with whatever population was present. In his newspaper articles he had spoken of a probable fusion between the
two races. This was among the ideas he was to abandon as a
result of his first visit. Above all he went to decide whether his
country ought to drive through to achieve total conquest, or
whether it ought to abandon Algeria entirely. This last course
of action never attracted him, for he was predisposed to any
course of action which would assert France's status as a great
power and pre-empt English annexation on the other side of the
Mediterranean.
When Tocqueville, and the companion of his American journey, Gustave de Beaumont, reached Algiers, they were dazzled
31
Jardin, "Tocqueville et l'Algerie," 62-63.
Tocqueville, ed. Beaumont, VI, 101-02; letter to M. de Corcelle, September 26, 1841.
32
TOCQUEVILLE ON ALGERIA
377
by what they saw.33 Tocqueville made much of the architecture,
for which his reading seems not to have prepared him. The fact
that houses did not open on the street but had an inner court
surrounded by galleries-this
he attributed, not to the climate
but
to
social
and
the
alone,
political condition of the oriental
of women, the absence of
the
isolation
population: "polygamy,
all political life, a tyrannical and omnipresent government which
forces men to conceal themselves and to seek all their satisfactions
in family life."34 Somewhat inconsistently Tocqueville noted with
regret that his countrymen had already begun to pull down houses
of this design.
Nevertheless Tocqueville had not made the trip to indulge his
curiosity. Exoticism, whether that of Chateaubriand or of Delacroix,
failed to attract him. He was drawn, instead, to the grim business
of the professional soldiers. Traveling at times with Bugeaud and
Lamoriciere, he took over their strategic views. "A skillful war of
razzias" could defeat Abd-el-Kader and exhaust the "fanatical"
Arabs.35 Bugeaud, he wrote approvingly, knew how to carry the
war to the Arabs.36 Now and then Tocqueville did criticize the
Commander-in-Chief, when he thought him too unsympathetic
to the first civilian colonies. This theme grew stronger as Tocqueville saw more of Algeria and finally came to feel that Bugeaud
was responsible for this "imbecilic feeling on the part of the army,
which is driven into fury by the idea that it is shedding its blood
for the sake of those who had come to Algeria only to enrich
themselves."37 To Bugeaud's predilection for military rule and
colonization, Tocqueville contrasted Lamoriciere's understanding
of the fact that civilian colonization was so much the key to
French success in Algeria, that it could not await the end of
hostilities. The French colonists in Algiers and Philippeville awakened Tocqueville's memories of America. Significantly what he
recalled was his visit to Cincinnati which he had seen arising
with incredible speed out of the wilderness.38 For Tocqueville had
33 Pierre-Rene
Roland-Marcel, Essai politique sur Alexis de Tocqueville
(Paris, 1910), p. 326, letter from Tocqueville to his father, May 12, 1841.
34
Tocqueville, ed. Mayer, Voyages en Angleterre, Irlande, Suisse et Algerie,
p. 192.
35 Tocqueville, ed. Beaumont, V, 361, letter to Kergolay,
May 23, 1841.
36 Roland-Marcel, Essai politique, p.
326, letter from Tocqueville to his
father, May 12, 1841.
37 Tocqueville, ed. Mayer and
Jardin, Voyages, p. 217.
38 Ibid., p. 191.
THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
378
concluded that the American economic system made its citizens
tremendously energetic and self-reliant, thus rendering government
action unnecessary. But in Algeria, under military rule, colonists,
so far from being encouraged to use their initiative, were denied
every elementary economic and civil right. And the administration,
centralized in Paris, worked slowly and badly. This was a bureaucratic tyranny unchecked by any counterweights. Thus when it
came to Frenchmen, Tocqueville displayed his usual liberalism,
and was capable of criticizing "the coarseness and violence natural
to military rule."39
Only once did he take notice of the fact that the Arabs also
suffered. Significantly this occurred when he could couple them
with the colonists as victims of the army. These sentiments arose
out of a conversation with the commanding officer at Philippeville,
who minced no words about the Arabs and the civilian colonists.
Gentlemen, only force and terror can succeed with these people.
The other day I carried out a razzia and it is a pity that you
missed it. It involved a tribe which had allowed passage through
its territory to a group that had come to rob and kill us. As it
turned out, I did not go nearly as far as I might have. After
killing five or six of them, I then spared their animals. . . . Only
terror has any effect on them. The other day a murder was committed on the highway, and an Arab suspect was brought to me.
I had him interrogated and then ordered his head cut off, you
can see it on the road leading to Constantine.
As for your so-called colonists at Philippeville, they are a
rascally crew, who would be nothing without us, and yet think
that we are here to make their fortune for them. I have the
greatest difficulty even to make them stand guard. Yesterday I
ordered them to furnish their wagons and horses for bringing in
the hay (for the Army horses). I let them know that the first
one who refused to do so would be sent until further orders to
the monkeys' blockhouse (an isolated outpost on an arid mountain) .40
All this was said by what seemed to be a devil of a good
fellow.... And I listening sadly to it asked myself what could be
the future of a country delivered over to such men. Where could
it all end, this series of injustices and violence, if not in the revolt
of the natives and the ruin of the Europeans?41
This passage by its deep feeling and the fact that it stands
39Ibid., p. 217.
40 Ibid., p. 216.
41 Ibid., p. 217.
TOCQUEVILLE ON ALGERIA
379
alone in Tocqueville'stravel journal suggeststhat he was repressing
from his consciousnessthat violence, without which there could
be no conquest or colonization.Having willed these ends, Tocqueville was compelledto will means antipatheticto himself. But such
was the force of what he considered idealism that he swallowed
whole Bugeaud's military strategy. This process appears with fascinating, if disturbing, clarity in the memorandum he wrote immediately after his first trip to Algeria.42 Destined for the eyes
of Beaumont alone, this text is significant, both for the light it
casts on Tocqueville'sown thought, here unabashedlyMachiavellian, and the fact that five years later Tocqueville was to use much
of this draft in the report, rather more moralisticin tone, he wrote
as rapporteurfor a committee of the Chamber.
Even in his memorandum Tocqueville was not completely
candid. In a section on "what sort of war can and ought to be
made against the Arabs," he distinguishedhis own position from
two others he found reason to reject. The first and most bloodthirsty he attributed to the officers actually doing the fightingthe notion that no prisonersought to be taken alive, that all those
resisting ought to be executed summarily. This he condemned
with an ardor that suggests he was looking for an outlet for his
moral indignation. Had he not thought Algeria a vital national
interest, no doubt he would have condemned the government's
actual policy in the terms he reservedfor that of the most extreme
officers: "at this time, our mode of making war is much more
barbarous than that of the Arabs. . . . This is as unintelligent as
it is cruel."43But he had no patience for those in France who
condemned the razzia as carried out by Bugeaud- the burning
of harvests,the destructionof all food, and the seizure of the old,
the unarmed, the women and children of all tribes which would
not submit to French arms.
Such means, Tocqueville remarked coolly, are "unfortunate
necessities which cannot be escaped by any people at war with
Arabs."44 And again paraphrasing Bugeaud, Tocqueville went
over to the attack. To carry out a campaign of razziaswas distinctly more humane than to engage in the practices authorized by
international law and contemporarypractice in European wars.
42
Tocqueville, ed. Beaumont, VII, 188-190, letter to Faucher, July 5, 1841.
Tocqueville, ed. Mayer, t. III, v. I, 226.
44Ibid., 227.
48
380
THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
Surely a razzia was better than the artillery bombardment of
civilian populations in cities under siege, or the consequences
of naval blockades.In any case the fact was that when one's enemy
was a nomadic people, it was impossibleto distinguishcombatants
from civilians, governmentsfrom people. Tocqueville concluded:
"As for me, I believe that all means of desolating these tribes
ought to be used. I make an exception only in case of what is
interdictedby internationallaw and that of humanity."45Yet he
remained silent in 1846 when it was revealed that hundreds of
Arabs had been smoked to death in the course of the razzias he
had approved for their humane quality.
On this subject, as on so much else involving Algeria, Tocqueville played the unfamiliar role of an apologist. If local custom
or law favored the French, he advised that they take advantage
of this situation; if no such arguments were available, he used
analogies to warfare in Europe between powers of comparable
armaments and conventions in war. This memorandum urged
total dominationof Algeria by the French and partial colonization.
To attract settlers from the Metropole, its author urged that in
Algeria they be given as many as possible of the civil libertiesthey
enjoyed at home. But where would land be found for them to
settle? Tocqueville opposed colonization and forced expropriation
in the province of Bone for reasons,which appear to be based on
justice but turn out to be purely expedient and prudential. The
Arabs,he remarked,had long been accustomedto foreign dominion.
So long as they saw the French merely as the successorsto the
Turks in that capacity, they might simply obey their new masters.
This had happened in the province of Bone. However, the moment
that French settlers appeared, the natives would understandthat
more than a change of governors was involved-that this was
dispossession,that the quarrel was between the two races. Significantly, Tocqueville condemned the notion of expropriationonly
where it was dangerous.It was not wise to reveal to the inhabitants
of BOne the true situation, for the adjoining province of Oran
was not yet pacified. Tocqueville counselledthat French colonization of Bone be deferreduntil Oran was in the hands of the Army.
No such caution was necessaryin the province of Algiers. There
the French intention to colonize was patent, and the resident
population had already revolted unsuccessfully.By Moslem law,
45 Ibid.
TOCQUEVILLE ON ALGERIA
381
all lands belonging to rebels against the government could be
expropriated.The French administrationshould not delay in seizing
everything of this sort around Algiers in order that the colonists
should have a place to settle.46
In this memorandum, Tocqueville was no less frank about
what he thought to be the appropriaterelationshipsbetween the
native population and the French, once the conquest was completed. So far as the Arabs were concerned, their community was
so differentin every way from the French, that two differenttypes
of legislation would be necessary (Tocqueville carefully differentiated the Kabyles from the other inhabitants of Algeria). Nor
could the divergencesbetween Europeans and non-Europeansbe
mitigated. Impersonal forces were at work, not only to maintain
existing differences, but to make them even more stark. The
Moslem population was declining; the European, increasing. The
metaphor of growth and decadence was much in Tocqueville's
mind. It formed an essentialpart of his analysisthat Algeria could
not be abandoned. "Any people which gives up without a contest
what it has taken by force so that it may retire peacefully to its
original borders-any such people proclaims that its age of
greatnessis over."47 Moreover there was no overlookingthe fact
that henceforthNorth Africa would be involved in the movement
of European civilization. If the French should leave, their successorswould probablybe a Europeanpower or the English. Even
if a Moslem state should arise to take over the French position,
this Moslem power would be of a qualitatively different order
from any known before the French entry into Algiers. This philosophy of history was an integral part of Tocqueville's critique of
the July Monarchy. Only nationalism, in his view, could supply
a counterweightto the tendencies he saw at work within France.
Thus his argument for colonialismwas essentiallypolitical, rather
than economic.
V
Running through Tocqueville's parliamentaryspeeches from
1839 to 1848 is a single major theme orchestratedin numerous
and subtle variations. The July Monarchy, by limiting participa46 Ibid., 241-44.
47
Ibid., 214.
382
THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
tion in political life to a small pays legal, in effect to the upper
bourgeoisie,had devalued and debased citizenship.In every aspect
of its policy, the government wooed major groups by appealing
to their materialinterests.Its hidden aim was to extinguishpolitical
idealism, which it judged dangerous, by awakening an appetite
for physical well-being. The result of such leadership,Tocqueville
thought, was moral anarchy and a dangerouspublic indifference.
Without quite arguingthat France was an affluentsociety, Tocqueville concerned himself with many of the political phenomena
Europeansnow call Americanization:the decline of parties based
on abstract principles, a growing apathy to politics, and the
absence of powerful leadership.The moder world is increasingly
individualistic,Tocqueville argued, by which term he meant that
more and more everyone retires into himself and the small circle
formed by his family and friends. Each department, each commune, each citizen sees in political life nothing more than the
occasion to satisfy his own interests. And because each group
demands that its representativeuse, not his judgment, but his
constituents' view of what benefits them, there are no longer
compact parties based on common opinions which constitute in
turn a government and its opposition. Thus there is created a
system of political coalitionswhich always include the same leaders
of various parties, who in principle are rivals but in fact are
colleagues. The country cannot but interpret such behavior as
deriving from the cynical calculation of personal benefit. In such
a political order, which is restrictedto a single class and appeals
to the least worthy of instincts,there cannot be anything creative.
Nor is there any possibility of communication between the few
rulers and their subjects. Thus real discontents, Tocqueville remarked, although apparently suppressed, continued to grow beneath the untroubledsurface of parliamentarylife.48
The foreignpolicy of Louis-Philippeand his Ministers,cautious,
anxious to conciliate England, seemed to Tocqueville but the
extension of its domestic policy. The governmentdeemed it wisest
not to become involved in any situationthat might lead to hostilities
with the major European powers, for it feared that war abroad
might occasion revolution at home. Such a chain of reasoning
Tocqueville rejected because it accepted tacitly the settlement
imposed by the Congress of Vienna. To do so, he thought, was
48
Tocqueville, ed. Beaumont, IX, 374-388, speech of January 18, 1842.
TOCQUEVILLE ON ALGERIA
383
to endanger permanently France's claim to be a major power
whose voice carried weight in internationalrelations. And surely
it was impossiblethat the dynasty could become firmly rooted in
the hearts of Frenchmenby adopting a line of conduct based on
fear of other nations and contempt for its own people. Besides it
was an error for the governmentto believe that simply by evading
its role as a great power it could kill interest in foreign affairs.
In fact by emptying domestic politics of significance,it had stimulated interest in what went on outside the country.49 As an
alternative to official policy, Tocqueville proposed an equally extreme but opposite theory: that the only certain way of stimulating public spirit in France was through an appeal to national
pride, which, if necessary, had to be kept alive through war.
In his first speeches as a deputy, Tocqueville came close to suggesting that France begin hostilities if she were not allowed to take
a full part in settling the so-called Eastern Question, which involved the relation of Egypt and Syria to the decaying Turkish
Empire.50 In 1840, the Treaty of London had been completed
without the participation of the French: Turkey signed on one
side; Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia on the other.
Tocqueville's speeches were criticized for their bellicosity by the
British, and in an attempt to justify himself he explained his
position to John Stuart Mill. A brilliant exchange ensued which
centered on Tocqueville's assertion that "national pride is the
greatest sentiment remaining in our nation."51 Mill ordinarily was
full of deference and genuine admiration for Tocqueville. He
had just published an enthusiastic review of the second part of
Democracy in America and its author declared that only Mill,
of all his critics, had grasped his purpose. And so Tocqueville in
a long letter put to Mill the case for a French politics of grandeur:
I do not need to tell you, my dear Mill, that the greatest illness
that menaces a country such as ours is the gradual weakening of
its mores [moeurs], the degradation of its spirit [esprit], the medi49 Ibid.,
IX, 389-415, speeches of January 29, 1843, and March 2, 1843.
speech which was most offensive to the English was that made by
Tocqueville on December 1, 1840, Le Moniteur universel. The most complete
account of Tocqueville's stand on the Eastern Question is Mary Lawlor, S.N.D.,
Alexis de Tocqueville in the Chamber of Deputies (Washington, D.C., 1959),
pp. 43-66.
51
Tocqueville, ed. Mayer, CorrespondanceAnglaise (Paris, 1954), p. 330,
letter to J.S. Mill, December 18, 1840.
50 The
384
THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
ocrity of tastes. . . . Thus it is not this nation which ought to be
allowed to develop the habit of sacrificing its grandeur to repose,
of subordinating great matters to petty ones. ... It is unhealthy
to allow France to believe that although its place in the world is
smaller than that bequeathed to it by our ancestors, it can be
consoled by adding to the well-being of every individual by a
prosperitybased on peace, regardlessof how that peace is obtained.
Those who march at the head of such a nation must always maintain an attitude of pride, or else they will degrade its mores.52
To Tocqueville, Mill responded with equal candor, and did not
conceal his misgivings about Tocqueville's program for "that
country to which by tastes and predilections I am more attached
than to my own."
I have often, of late, remembered the reason you gave in justification of the liberal party in the late quarrel between England &
France--that the feeling of orgueil national is the only feeling
of a public-spirited & elevating kind which remains & that it
ought not therefore to be permitted to go down. How true this is,
every day makes painfully evident ... But, in the name of France
& civilization, posterity have a right to expect from such men
as you, from the nobler & more enlightened spirits of the time,
that you should teach to your countrymen better ideas of what
it is that constitutes national glory & national importance.... Here,
for instance, the most stupid & ignorant person knows perfectly
well that the real importance of a country in the eyes of foreigners
does not depend upon the loud & boisterous assertion of importance, the effect of which is an impression of angry weakness, not
strength. It really depends upon the industry, instruction, morality,
& good government of a country. .. .53
Tocqueville's nationalism derived to a considerable extent from
his analysis of the July Monarchy. But in his thought there is
another stand, which also led him to favor the conquest of Algeria
and may be said to have foreshadowed later theories of imperialism. What Tocqueville proposed by way of foreign policy derived
from his vision of the future. Indeed as a political theorist, he
thought that every statesman worth his salt should practice la
grande science du gouvernement. As the latter teaches in what
direction society is moving and what is happening in the minds
of the masses, it is able to predict the consequence of their inter52Ibid.,p. 335, letterto J.S. Mill, March18, 1841.
53 Ibid.,
pp. 337-8, letter from Mill to Tocqueville, August 9, 1842.
TOCQUEVTT.LE ON ALGERIA
385
action.54 By his own statement, this does not mean that nations
any more than individuals must follow blindly the stream of
historical tendency. They may seek to limit its effects. If they
ignore its power, they are defeated in advance, but it is within
their grasp to mitigate what they cannot eliminate. Despite this
emphasis on man's capacity, indeed his duty, to exercise his power
of choice, Tocqueville, when it came to the question of acquiring
colonies, simply assumed that if other countries added to their
possessions, that France must do likewise. If he argued that France
even at the cost of war, should insist on a voice in the Eastern
Question, he argued from history, for in the Orient he saw "all
societies tottering, all religions weakening, nationalities disappearing, all enlightenment extinguished, the ancient Asiatic world
disappearing, and in its place the European world ascending."55
In 1840 he had written to an English friend, that as a benevolent
but disinterested observer, he could not but rejoice in the invasion
of China by the English:
Here is the European spirit of movement pitted against Chinese
immobility. This is a great event especially when one remembers
that it is only the ultimate consequence, the most recent in a
whole series of events which gradually push the European race
abroad to subjugate all other races. . . .Quite without anyone
noticing it, our age is achieving something vaster and more extraordinary than anything since the establishment of the Roman
Empire. I mean the subjection of four-fifths of the world by the
remaining fifth. Let us not scorn ourselves and our age, the men
may be small, but the events are great.56
It should be noted that Tocqueville's defense of imperialism
was not based on a claim of racial superiority. Such theories he
condemned both in his correspondence with Gobineau and in his
first report on Algeria. Rather his advocacy of imperialism was
based on what he considered moral grounds: the European nations
could escape from the selfishness of individualism only by undertaking great tasks. The amount of self-delusion in this point of
view is too obvious to need any elaborate analysis. But its presence
in a man of Tocqueville's abilities is surely an indication of how
54Tocqueville, ed. Mayer, L'ancien rJgime et la Rivolution (Paris, 1952),
2 vols., I, 198.
55Le Moniteur universel, December 1, 1840.
56Tocqueville, ed. Mayer, Correspondance
Anglaise, I, 58, letter to Henry
Reeve, April 12, 1840.
386
THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
deeply rooted was the European sense of superiorityto the rest
of the world. Tocqueville's reasons for supporting the conquest
of Algeria emerge clearly from his attack on those who proposed
that Great Britain leave India at the time of the Mutiny. For on
this subject, he broke with his radical English friends, whom he
supportedon almost all other matters involving their country. To
them he wrote that he quite disagreedwith their view that England
would not be weakened by the loss of India. Conceding that
India cost more than it brought in and that its occupation immobilized much of Great Britain'spower, he neverthelessthought
that to lose the colony would be to debase its ruler's honor.
For nothingin the world has occurredto equal the conquest,and
still more the governmentof India by the English.Nothing has
done more to fix the eyes of mankindon that small Island....
Do you believe . . . that a people having filled such a vast place
in the imaginationof mankindcan safelywithdrawfrom it. As for
me, I do not....57
Like so many other European thinkers of his time, including
men as diverseas Hegel and John Stuart Mill, Tocquevillebelieved
that oriental civilizations were petrified. Of India, he wrote, as
he had of Islam, that its culture had no principle which could
lead to progress, that it was in an "ltat stationnaire de l'esprit
humain."58India, despite appearancesto the contrary,had never
attained an advanced civilization. Its civil society had been immobilized by the religious laws of Hinduism so that no improvements in the sciences or arts could take place; it had never rid
itself of the caste system, which had prevented the growth of any
national consciousness and loyalty. Tocqueville's indictment of
France before the Revolution owes more than a little to his study
of India. This is particularlytrue of his analysis of the unhappy
effects of a social system which relegates entire classes of men
to a status, not only of inequality,but of permanentisolation from
their fellows. Tocqueville noted that all the conquerorsof India
had their task much simplifiedfor them by the fact that the caste
system had created, not a great nation, but a poorly united collection of different peoples. Since most of the inhabitants were
57Tocqueville,ed. Beaumont,VI, 412-413,letter to Lady TheresaLewis,
October18, 1857.
58 Tocqueville,ed Mayer,t. III, v. I, 545.
TOCQUEVILLE ON ALGERIA
387
fixed by birth in an inferior caste, they had nothing to fear, or
for that matter, to expect from their governors.
In addition Hinduism was at once the most absorbing and
the most tolerant of religions. This last characteristic,Tocqueville
thought to be closely tied to its doctrinesof caste and the inherent
inequality of men. When Tocqueville contrasted Hinduism to
Christianity,he found that the greatest differences all stemmed
from discrepantopinions about human origin and capacity. Christians believed in the common origin of humanity and in the
obligation of all men to know the true God and pray to Him.
Hence the inherent dispositionof Christian peoples to proselytize
and to persecute those who refused to accept their faith. These
were characteristicsunknown to the Hindus. But the price they
paid for this superiorityto Christianitywas that they could not
expect from their religion even that minimum function rendered
by other creeds regarded as despicable--that of inspiring the
pious fervor which opposes conquest by persons of another faith.
Here Tocqueville argued that the political justificationof religion
is its contributionto nationalism.59
As for the English conquest of India, he sought to dispel the
mystery surroundingthis series of exploits, not only by a comparative sociological analysis, but also by a detailed investigation
of the victors' strategy. The time had come, he wrote, to connect
this extraordinaryphenomenon to the general causes which rule
human events. But he added in the margin, after rereadingwhat
he had put down, "Trop ambitieux."60In fact his purpose was
more practical- to apply to the French situation in Algeria what
there was to be learned from the English experience. And in the
same vein of statecraft, Tocqueville went on to speculate about
what steps might dislodge the English from their position in India.
What impressedhim most, however, was that the English had,
as he thought, by colonialism managed to counteract national
decadence. It is clear that what Tocqueville meant by this term
had more in common with the concern of Machiavelli (in the
Discourses) and Montesquieu (in the Considerationssur les causes
de la grandeur des Romains et leur decadence) than with that of
Gobineau. That is to say that he regarded decadence not as a
permanent and irreversiblecondition, but as an undesirablestate,
59Ibid., 448-49.
60 Ibid., 445.
THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
388
susceptible to the resources at the command of the exceptionally
astute ruler or legislator. Both Machiavelli and Montesquieu had
considered foreign expeditions as means of ameliorating or relieving
difficulties at home.61 It is their influence which would seem to
have inspired Tocqueville's speculation that
There are two ways for peoples to fall into decadence and barbarism: the destruction of society by invasion; the collapse for reasons
due essentially to forces at work within themselves (the Greeks,
the Hindus). If one asks what will be the sources which one day
will destroy modern civilization, it would be a mistake to believe
that an external force is required. The Romans, before their
conquest by the barbarians, were already only half-civilized.62
Paradoxically, as a result of Tocqueville's refusal to accept any
suggestion that France was so decadent that it could not overcome
its vices of materialism and individualism, he could prescribe
colonial ventures as an antidote. Gobineau insisted that all mankind suffered from an incurable disease, racial pollution, for which
nothing could be done, not even the therapy of foreign conquests.63
In his notes on India, Tocqueville summarized the advantages
of that conquest for the British:
India. A great position, from which England dominates all Asia.
A glory which revives the entire English nation. What a sense of
grandeur and power this possession creates in every part of that
people. The value of a conquest ought not to be calculated only
in terms of financial and commercial considerations.64
Tocqueville apparently had no qualms about the morality of
restoring the vitality and domestic health of Western nations by
their annexations elsewhere in the world. Only progressive and
Christian societies counted in his moral calculus.
VI
Several episodes at the height of the conquest in 1845 provoked
61
Machiavelli, The Discourses,tr. L.J. Walker, (New Haven, 1950), 2 vols.,
I, Book I, vi. Montesquieu, Oeuvres completes de Montesquieu (Paris, 1949-51),
2 vols., II, 122, 141-42.
62 Tocqueville, ed. Mayer, t.
III, v. I, 509.
63
Tocqueville, ed. Mayer, t. IX, 259, letter from Gobineau to Tocqueville,
March 20, 1856.
64
Tocqueville, ed. Mayer, t. III, v. I, 478.
TOCQUEVILLE ON ALGERIA
389
widespread discussion of Bugeaud's tactics. Certain Arab tribes,
fleeing from the implacable razzias with their women and children,
sought refuge in caves. Ordered to surrender by the French, they
refused and fired upon anyone who approached. Thereupon the
French commanding officers had fires lit inside the caves, the
entrances of which were then blocked. Pelissier, Cavaignac, and
Saint-Araud each were involved in actions which killed hundreds.
Bugeaud gave full support to his subordinates. In one of his
inimitable letters, Saint-Amaud described how he had liquidated
500 Arabs so discreetly that he escaped all publicity:
And so by sealing all the exits, I created a vast cemetery where
the corpses of all these fanatics will rest forever. Only I entered
the caves, only I knew that they contain 500 bandits who will
never again cut the throats of Frenchmen. In a confidential letter
to the Marshal, I told him everything quite simply and without
dwelling upon the terrible poetry of the scene I beheld.
Brother, by taste and nature, no one is more inclined to kindness than I. From the 8th to the 12th, I have been ill, but my
conscience has not troubled me. I have done my duty as a commander and tomorrow I shall begin again; but I have begun to
loathe Africa.65
The indignation aroused by Pelissier and Cavaignac had not
yet died down when the Government's request for extraordinary
credits to support the army in North Africa sparked a debate in
the Chamber of Deputies (June, 1846). Every shade of opinion
was expressed: full approval of all that was being done in Algeria,
qualified criticism, and violent disapproval. Lamartine in a speech
of unbelievable length, denounced Bugeaud's razzias as a system
of extermination more terrible than any crime of Nero and Tiberius
because committed in a century that prided itself on its enlightenment. "Far more cruel than any practices of individuals is the
cold cruelty of a false system."66 Corcelle, Tocqueville's friend
and traveling companion to Algeria, stopped short of Lamartine's
total condemnation. Stating that he had been profoundly shocked
by the news of Pelissier's action, he nevertheless thought that France
ought to stay in Algeria. But Corcelle went on to warn the Cham5 Leroy de Saint-Arnaud (ed.), Lettres, II, 37-38. Saint-Arnaud gave the
figure of 500; Julien has stated it to be 1,500. Cf. his Histoire de l'Afrique du
Nord, op. cit., p. 632.
66 Le Moniteur universel, June
11, 1846, 1735. Lamartine's speech runs from
1733-1736.
390
THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
ber that France'sreal problemsin dealing with the Algerianswould
only begin, once the military conquest were completed. More
dangerousthan the army were the colonists. Already their newspapers in Algiers were filled with pseudoscientificnonsense which
urged the exterminationof what they regarded as inferior races.
Soon after Corcelle, Tocqueville rose to speak. On the question
of the caves he said nothing. As before, he was to view Algeria
purely in terms of French interests. Tocqueville attributedto Corcelle the naive belief that French rule could be maintained by
nothing more coercive than building up native good will. This
theory Tocqueville proceeded to dismiss, although Corcelle protested that it was a travestyof his argument. Tocqueville carefully
dissociatedhimself from any of the colonists'newspapers;he himself did not wish to see the natives exterminatedor driven en masse
from their lands. But the crux of the Algerian problemhe thought
could be reducedto two issues: the absenceof an adequate governmental structure and the need for French colonization. Marshal
Bugeaud, who commanded the army and headed the civil administration, had neither the time nor the inclination to push
colonization by establishinga well-governed society. This was a
scandal. Although Algeria was the greatest single interest France
had in the world, no statesmanhad ever thought it worth risking
the fate of his cabinet or even his own political future. Tocqueville then announced that without leaving the oppositionhe would
regard Africa as neutral terrain on which he would work together
with the Government. The very least that should be done was to
establish a separate Ministry for Algeria out of the conflicting
authoritiesshared by numerous agencies.67
In the fall of 1846, Tocqueville and three other deputies were
named to visit North Africa as representativesof the Chamber's
Committeeon AlgerianAffairs. But before Tocquevilleleft France,
his view of Algeria had already begun to change. It may be that
Corcelle, irritated by Tocqueville's speech, had at last confronted
him with those urgent questions of French justice and humanity
towards the natives that he had so inexplicably ignored. And so,
before debarking for Algeria, Tocqueville wrote Corcelle a letter
which shows his friend's influence. A new theme first developed
here was to become the central point of his committee'sreport:
67 For Corcelle's speech see Le Moniteur universel,
June 9, 1846; 1715; for
Tocqueville's, that of June 10, 1846, 1722-23.
TOCQUEVILL,E ON ALGERIA
391
The African question, for all its complexity and grandeur, may
be reduced to this: How can we succeed in creating a French
population with our laws, our mores, and our civilization and at
the same time treat the natives with the justice and humanity
to which we are pledged by our interest and by our honor. The
question has these two facets, neither of which can be considered
apart from the other. This has always been my view, and if in
the Chamber, I have emphasized one more than the other, it is
because everything cannot be said at once and so great a subject
cannot be treated in its entirety.68
Upon their arrival, Tocqueville and his fellow deputies were
taken in hand by Bugeaud who proposed that they accompany
him on a trip to the interior. To demonstrate the advantages of
his system of military colonization and government, Bugeaud had
planned a trip across the province of Algiers. Such an offer of a
guided tour could not very well be refused, and so the Marshal,
the four deputies, and two journalists went off together. None
of Tocqueville's own travel notes have survived, but fortunately
one of the correspondents recorded the events of the journey in
a widely detailed article.
Nothing they saw did much to alter Tocqueville's views.
Bugeaud's efforts to charm and impress the deputation were in
vain. A typical instance occurred at Orleansville, where the commander was Colonel Saint-Araud, the future Minister of War
at the time of Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat. During the course
of a dinner, which, at Bugeaud's instructions, was of Homeric proportions, the Marshal wished to demonstrate to the visitors the
benefits military administration conferred upon French colonists.
Turning to Saint-Araud Bugeaud said, "Tell us, Colonel, what
you do here for the civilian population?"
Feeling himself put in the position of a schoolboy called upon
to recite his lesson, Saint-Amaud responded in a way that fell
short of his superior's expectations. He lauded the superb organization and discipline imposed upon the colonists' militia. Then
he added: "For the slightest negligence I have them put headfirst into a grain pit. And that is what I do for the civilian population."69 Everyone burst into laughter at this sardonic perform68
Tocqueville, ed. Beaumont, VI, 127-128, letter to Corcelle, written at
Marseilles, October 11, 1846.
69
Bussiere, "Le Marchal Bugeaud," p. 471.
THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
392
ance, but as one of those present noted, each sought to determine
just what lay behind the smiles of his neighbor.
If Saint-Araud's command failed to impressthe visitors,they
for their part did not please him. Saint-Arnaud described the
little group of deputies as "done up like a carnival, and lacking
bearing, dignity, and sense of station." Of its leader he wrote,
"Tocqueville,the strongest,or the least weak, posed as a methodical
observer, profound, reflective-that is to say, barren."70 This
scornwas echoed by an administratorwho thus describedthe party:
"Led into the wildest places, they had dust thrown in their eyes
-yes, that's the word for it. And so they left with the belief
that they had seen, and were perhaps even convinced that they
knew, a country of which in fact they had not the slightest
notion."71
VII
Saint-Arnaud,Bugeaud, and their colleagues were more than
a little shaken when they discoveredwhat this despisedgroup had
found to tell their committee. For two reportswritten by Tocqueville as rapporteur subjected the military administrationto merciless and unanswerable criticism. Bugeaud's cherished scheme of
military colonies was treated in a way that led the government
to withdraw its request for funds to support them. Thus Tocqueville was directlyinvolved in the subsequentresignationof Bugeaud.
These two reports bear Tocqueville's mark although he spoke
for a committee. His correspondencerevealshow, after thoroughly
ransackingthe French official documents, he turned to his wellplaced friends in England to learn how the British administered
India. Tocqueville discovered how the British were beginning to
develop trained civilian officials, how they arranged relations between the army and the civil administration.72All such information, togetherwith his own researchand observation,he integrated
into his reports. Perhaps more than anything else Tocqueville
70Quatrelles L'Epine, Le Mar6chal de Saint-Arnaud (Paris, 1928), I, 41314, letter from Saint-Araud to his brother.
71
Campagnes d'Afrique, 1835-1848, Lettres adressees au MarJchal de Cas-
tellane (Paris, 1898), pp. 503-504, letter from M. Dussert to Castellane,January
1, 1847.
72
Tocqueville,
ed. Mayer, Correspondance Anglaise, I, 92-94, letters to
Henry Reeve, March 23, 1846, and April 4, 1846.
TOCQUEVILLE ON ALGERIA
393
ever wrote, his work on Algeria reveals how easily and incisively
his mind worked when confrontedby the hard details and organizational puzzles of day-to-day government. His reports are very
far indeed from the abstractionsof a salon philosopher, indeed
they have the professionalquality of a modem Royal Commission
or a Hoover task force on administration. It is true that Tocqueville's characteristicpolitical ideas appear but these general principles of liberalism and decentralizationare applied brilliantly to
specific cases.
What preciselywas the scope of his concerns? The first report
covers French rule over the conquerednatives as well as the system
of governmentapplied to Europeans. The changes in the administration proposed by Tocqueville can be summed up under five
headings: to reduce the number of powers exercised over Algeria
by Paris; to decentralize power further by sharing the functions
of the Governor-Generalin Algiers with his subordinates;to introduce simplicity,hierarchy,and unity into a ramshackleadministrative structure;to grant local authoritiesmuch greater power; and
to appoint a separate head for the civilian organization rather
than to gather it with the military under the Governor-General.
As things stood, too many powers were in the hands of various
ministries in Paris, thus necessitating numerous communications
and intolerabledelays. In Algiersitself, there were too many chiefs
making policy, and not nearly enough subordinatesin the field
to apply what had been decided. Because local authoritieswere
not delegated power, they usurped it by irregular practices that
sapped administrativeresponsibility.73
Military rule, the regime of the sabre, came in for telling
criticism. Tocqueville pointed out that neither civil liberties nor
property rights were recognized by the army. All judges could
be removed at the pleasure of the Governor-General,who also
could banish anyone he deemed dangerous to the security of
Algeria. In mixed territories,the Governor-Generalcould expropriate any individual'slands and reimbursehim with bonds payable at a later date. And nothing like freedom of the press existed.
Given so insecure an atmosphere, how could Frenchmen be expected to settle in Algeria? The committee recommended that
the liberties of the Metropole be establishedin North Africa.74
73Tocqueville, ed. Beaumont, IX, 446-460.
74Ibid., 461-2, 466.
394
THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
As for the remaining major issues, the committee made two
suppositions: the first, that the conquest was substantiallycompleted; the second, that active colonization by Frenchmen was
necessaryand desirable. It was for the Chamber of Deputies to
specify what should be the goals and the animating spirit of
France's policy in Algeria; then the executive should be given
full power to apply such principles. For too long there had been
a basic incoherencein French behavior towards the natives, who
on occasion had been treated generously immediately after a
revolt, and at other times had been deprived of their lands for
no valid reason. And it was equally necessarythat the conquering
power decide on the basis of sound informationjust what was its
attitude towards the religious and social institutions of its North
African subjects. Moslem society, argued Tocqueville, was not
barbaric,but backwardand imperfect. Its educationaland charitable institutions should, therefore, be reformed and made into a
chosen instrumentof French policy instead of being badly treated
as in the past. The committee quite explicitly rejected all racial
theoriesbased on the permanentdepravityof the indigenouspopulation. Yet France as a conqueror could not adopt too idealistic
a line towards the natives. What was dictated by its interest, its
position in Algeria, and its moral obligationsto the conqueredwas
a policy at once just and stern.
Half-civilizedpeoplesdo not easilyunderstandpatienceand generosity but justice is well within their grasp. Justice, exact but
rigorous,ought to be our principleof conducttowardsthe native
population.... What we owe them at all times is good government. By this termwe mean a powerwhich directsthem not only
to achieveour interests,but their own as well; which searchesin
all sincerityfor means appropriateto such ends; which is concerned with their well-beingand their rights; which continually
works with order to develop their imperfectcivilization;which
does not believe that our task is confinedto obtainingsubmission
and taxes, and which in the final analysisgovernsbut does not
exploit them.75
These general principles are meaningful only when applied
to such problems as how title to the land of Algeria ought to be
decided. Clearly Western notions of propertyapplied not too well
to tribal ownership,Moslem law, and the obscurequestion of what
75 Ibid., 438.
TOCQUEVILLE ON ALGERIA
395
rights the Turks formerly exercised. The quality of French rule
would be determinedby its decisions on such points. Tocqueville
thought that it was possible for the government to reconcile the
interests of the natives with the encouragement of settlers from
across the Mediterranean. Thus he gave the state in Algeria a
sphere of activities at once greater and different in kind from
what he thought appropriate in France itself. In North Africa,
the state was to play an active part by mediating and adjusting
rival interests. At the same time, Tocqueville favored decentralization of authority and giving a greater voice to the colonists.
Perhaps because civilians were then so subordinateto the military
power, he did not consider that an administrationin the hands
of the French settlers might be less than impartial in adjusting
their interests to those of the native inhabitants. It would seem
that Tocqueville's general preference for a liberal state which
governed little was not really compatible with what he declared
necessaryin Algeria: a state with the power to compel submission
to its concept of the general interest. Seeing the natives and the
colonists as the victims of military administration,he thought that
the interestsof both could be served by a well-organizedcivilian
administration.
Such an impartial and energetic state in Algeria, although it
could not eliminate, might assuage,hostilitytowardsFrance. Even
if French rule would never be loved, it could be made to seem
a good deal less onerous. Everything depended on a policy skillfully calculatedto connect inextricablynative and French interests.
It would not be very wise to believethat we can succeedin binding the nativesto us by a communityof usages,but we may hope
to do so by buildinga communityof interests.Alreadyin many
placesthis type of tie is cominginto existence.... Everywherethe
nativesreceivehigher prices for their crops and labor becauseof
our presence.On the other hand, our farmerswillingly employ
indigenouspopulation.The Europeanneeds the native to increase
the value of his land; the Arab needs the Europeanto obtain a
highersalary.Thus interestmay bringtogethertwo men otherwise
far apart.76
Two things must be said about Tocqueville's notion of connecting the two peoples by their interests: first, an employer's
wage payment to an employee does not mean that both profit
76 Ibid., 442.
396
THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
equally; second, even if the conquerorcould demonstratethat the
native is better off than before, the latter may not accept this
judgment. The good faith of colonial powers became highly
suspect. In Algeria the indigenousinhabitantswere depressedinto
an agriculturalproletariat. This occurredafter Tocqueville'sdeath.
Whether his real intention was precisely this, or some other and
more equitable arrangement,no one can say. The fact is that his
proposalswere never given a hearing. At the time he made them,
Guizot and Louis Philippe once again resortedto their usual delaying tactics. The next year was 1848.
VIII
No political theorist is immune from the ideologies that mask
the ugly facts on which all systems of government are to varying
degrees based. But nevertheless there is a temptation to judge
Tocqueville severely. Because he came so close to understanding
the thought and action of others,we more than half expect him to
have understoodhimself. He did not. In fact, his liberalismcould
not be squaredwith his colonialism,even if he believedthat violence
in Algeria was but a means of achieving an end equally profitable
to the natives and the French. But this assumption flew in the
face of his own experience and theory. In America he had seen
clearlyenough that settlersof Europeanorigin cannot be kept from
using their superiorpower to exploit or despoil the originalinhabitants. And he might have rememberedthat when he wrote his
report on the abolition of slavery, despite his effort to strike a
judicious balance, he had been violently denounced by the slaveowners' newspapers. "But you know what colons are; they are
all alike, to whatevernation they may belong. They become furious
as soon as one speaksof justice to their negroes."77 Thus Tocqueville had few reasonsto support the position central to his report:
that the colonization of Algeria by Frenchmen was fully compatible with justice to its native inhabitants. None of the governments during the July Monarchy was strong enough to play the
impartial and disinterestedrole projected by Tocqueville. It is a
historicalirony that the only regime that ever attempted to protect
native rights, was the Second Empire, which was influenced by
77Tocqueville,
ed. Mayer, Correspondance Anglaise, I, 326, letter to J.S.
Mill, November 14, 1839.
TOCQUEVILLE ON ALGERIA
397
the army's antipathy at that time to the French colonists. What
then can be concluded about Tocqueville'sbelief in the superiority
of Europe and a foreign policy of grandeur? It must be said that
he was deceived. Political societies,no more than individuals, can
be saved from their internal crises by committing aggressionupon
those weaker than themselves. Whatever were the weaknessesof
the July Monarchy,they could not be redeemed merely by changing its foreign policy.
Tocqueville's support of the Algerian conquest was also inconsistentwith one of his deepest convictions,which took the form
of a theodicy, justifyingthe ways of God, or providence,to man.
In almost all of his works, there can be detected a half-suppressed
theology based on the belief that man is bound by a kind of
natural order, which, if not observed,takes its revenge. In politics,
good comes only from good; and evil, only from evil. In the
Democracy, he illustrated this point by telling of his encounter
with an old white Southernerwho had had several children by
one of his slaves. By the laws of the state, not only were his
own offspring his slaves, but it was almost impossible for him
to emancipate them. The old man was tormentedby the thought
that after he died, his own sons would be sold to strangers. "When
I saw him he was a prey to all the anguish of despair, and I then
understood how nature can avenge itself for the breaches made
in its order by bad laws."78It is this same theory which underlies
two of Tocqueville's most striking predictions: the first, that if
the natives of Algeria were not treated justly, that there would
be a war to the death between them and the French; the second,
that because the Second Empire had gained power by the use of
arms,that it would likewiseperishin a war. In the Ancien Regime,
Tocqueville made his point in a way that could be given a more
functionaland secularmeaning. The Frencharistocracy,he argued,
had lost its place, not because of its privileges, but because it no
longer performedthe positive functions which had in the Middle
Ages justified its special position.79 Tocqueville's moralism now
appears to be somewhat self-indulgent. Max Weber was more
realisticwhen he wrote: "He who lets himself in for politics, that
is for power and force as means, contractswith diabolical powers,
and for such action it is not true that good can follow only from
78Tocqueville, ed. Mayer, De la dimocratie en Amirique, I, 378.
79Tocqueville, ed. Mayer, L'ancien regime et la Rivolution, I, 189.
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THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
good and evil only from evil. Often the opposite occurs."80 But
assume the validity of Tocqueville's thesis. It then follows that
the French, having seized Algeria by force, were bound to be
expelled in the same way. In fact, Tocqueville suppressedfrom
his consciousnessthe brutalityof the conquest. He desiredcolonies,
but without the consequencesimposed upon MetropolitanFrance
by the taking and occupationof Algeriaby a large army. Although
his analytical tools were uniquely well fitted to produce understanding, he could not or would not use them.
80Max Weber, "Politics as a Vocation," in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright
Mills, trs. and eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York, 1946).
p. 123.