Reconciling History with Sociology?

Abstract

This analysis of Tocqueville’s thought is based on John R. Hall’s strategies of sociohistorical inquiry. Historical sociologists have recognized Tocqueville as a master of the ‘contrast-oriented comparison’. However, in Democracy in America, he also deploys a ‘universal history’, which posits the existence of four ages, with the United States arriving at an age of despotism despite the fact that the historical trajectory of the United States differed from France’s. A reconstruction of Tocqueville’s universal history is presented as a prelude to how the findings of his contrast-oriented comparison of the United States with France fit with those of his universal history. In seeking to assimilate both the United States and France to a universal history, Tocqueville’s key analytical concepts, such as ‘old regime’ and ‘revolution’, are rendered highly ambiguous, resulting in surprising silences with regard to critical political events in pre-revolutionary France and in the pre- and post-revolutionary United States.