Tocqueville: Democracy in America (Summer Repeat)

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2024

⏱️ 52 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) and his examination of the American democratic system. He wrote De La Démocratie en Amérique in two parts, published in 1835 and 1840, when France was ruled by the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe. Tocqueville was interested in how aspects of American democracy, in the age of President Andrew Jackson, could be applied to Europe as it moved away from rule by monarchs and aristocrats. His work has been revisited by politicians ever since, particularly in America, with its analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of direct democracy and its warnings of mediocrity and the tyranny of the majority.

With

Robert Gildea Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford

Susan-Mary Grant Professor of American History at Newcastle University

and

Jeremy Jennings Professor of Political Theory and Head of the School of Politics & Economics at King's College London

Producer: Simon Tillotson

In Our Time is a BBC Sounds Audio Production

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Rory Stewart and I want to talk about ignorance. I will die without having read
0:08.2	everything that was written in classical Latin. Because ignorance isn't simply the opposite of knowledge.
0:14.7	It's part of what it means to be human.
0:17.5	Just about every game I can think of involves ignorance.
0:22.1	There's no adventure without ignorance. There's no there's no narrative.
0:25.0	The long history of ignorance from Confucius to Kianan
0:29.0	with me Rory Stewart,
0:31.0	listen on BBC Sounds.
0:35.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:38.0	In our times on its annual break and we'll be back on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds on the 19th of September.
0:45.0	Until then, each week we're offering an episode chosen from our archive of more than a thousand
0:50.0	programs which I hope you'll enjoy. Have a good summer.
0:53.0	Hello, in 1831, Alexis de Tocville sailed from France to America to learn how its democracy worked
1:00.0	and therefore what his own country might might expect when inevitably as he saw it
1:03.9	democracy spread there. An Irishocrat he was worried that American democracy
1:08.7	valued equality more than liberty that the majority could tyrannize the minority once averted being one and that the majority could tyrannize the minority once
1:13.6	averted being one and that the people could easily elect a despotic
1:16.9	charismatic leader who would undermine democracy. In 1835 Tocbills report
1:22.1	Democracy in America was published and with this he hoped that France could avoid the same traps as it moved
1:28.2	falteringly onwards from monarchy and aristocracy after Revolution and Napoleon.
1:33.0	With me to discuss Stockville's Democracy in America are Robert Gilday,
1:37.0	Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford,
	...

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