Tocqueville’s Compass

Abstract

This chapter argues that Tocqueville’s narration stages his travel as an inquiry into human history. It addresses Tocqueville’s own position as a European traveler but also point out the various narrative and rhetorical ways comparisons are drawn in order to establish and reason for a historical narrative of race conflict. A Fortnight in the Wilds tells human history as a history of races. The term race is omnipresent in the short narration. It is a historical term that is used synonymously as ‘people’ or ‘nation’ and refers to whole populations that become actors in the history they advance. The basic tension between wilderness and civilization also has a decisive influence on the narrative set-up ofA Fortnight in the Wilds. It is often normalized as a one-dimensional and autobiographical first-person narration despite its well-planned arrangement. The narration is arranged into an observational apparatus in which civilization and wilderness are always already related to each other as comparison-inducing structures.