Tocqueville’s Savages

Abstract

A comparative study of Democracy in America and Tocqueville’s writings on Algeria reveals a striking divergence in how Tocqueville responds to the devastation wrought on indigenous peoples by European settlers. In the American case, Tocqueville deplores the “tyrannical” and “atrocious” treatment of Amerindians, whereas in Algeria he describes the ruination of natives as an “unfortunate necessity” and largely refuses to criticize French conduct on moral grounds. As part of a larger attempt to reconcile Tocqueville’s liberalism with his unapologetic defense of colonial domination, this article offers a critical account of Tocqueville’s representations of foreign others. It ends by suggesting that because Tocqueville’s conceptualization of the Algerian “other” is grounded in the implicit identification of the international realm with pure power politics, he is able to utilize a discourse specific to times of war that evades normative considerations. By contrast, insofar as the Amerindians are situated within American domestic space, they elicit normative thinking about their status and treatment.