Tocqueville’s Search for Home

His nine-month trip led him to cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, as well as to the frontier in Michigan and rapidly growing Ohio. It was then from the other side of the Atlantic, through reflection and research, he had to discern how best to depict what he saw. Similarly, to accurately convey the conditions of England, Algeria, Germany, or Italy—all of which he traveled to and wrote on, but not in book form—he had to see and reflect on them. This included “historical” travel: to reveal the sources of the French Revolution in the Ancien Regime, he immersed himself in the regional archives of Tours, in the Loire Valley. Tocqueville’s projects then were deep yet panoramic, and Jennings takes on this subject in his own panoramic style.