Writings on Empire and Slavery
A highly readable translation of Tocqueville's writings on colonization and slavery and a useful introduction of just the right length... Tocqueville's writings on colonialism, rather than revealing the limits of his liberalism, lead one to the core of it.(Delba WinthropSociety)By offering the first translation of these documents in a single volume, Pitts has provided a valuable service to the nineteenth-century specialist. The book should enhance readers' perspectives of both European liberalism and French colonialism.(Jack B. RidleyHistory: Reviews of New Books)As Jennifer Pitts points out in an informative and perceptive introduction to her edition and translation of Tocqueville'sWritings on Empire and Slavery, his thinking remained in the mold of a nineteenth-century liberal, more sensitive to the fragility of free institutions in the French state than to the suffering of colonials.(Klaus J. HansenCanadian Journal of History)Should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of colonialism, imperialism, liberalism and Algeria...Writings on Empire and Slaveryfeatures the clarity and depth that one expects from the author ofDemocracy in America.(Michael ShurkinPatterns of Prejudice)A highly useful collection.(Daniel LazareThe Nation)A very fine piece of historical sociology. It is surprising that Tocqueville's views on empire and slavery have not been translated before; they shed light on a rather different Tocqueville—always perceptive, but here very much the empire-builder with a chauvinism not untinged with a form of racism. Here we learn not only about this new side of Tocqueville but also about Algeria as a case study in European colonization. An excellent introduction to Tocqueville the man, sociologist, and civil servant and to the early history of French Algeria.(Robert Forster, The Johns Hopkins University)