Travels in America: French Liberals and the American Experience.

Alexis de Tocqueville was only one of many French liberals who visited America in the nineteenth century, and yet his account of America is read to the almost total exclusion of those presented by his fellow French writers. In the spirit of trans-disciplinarity, this paper will turn away from Tocqueville's Democracy in America as a work of political theory in order to focus upon the experience of travel as a factor informing Tocqueville's vision of America. More than this, however, this paper will seek to locate Tocqueville's journey within the broader context of the other voyages to America undertaken and written about by his French contemporaries, thereby spanning the period from the early 1830s to the period immediately after the Civil War. Some of these accounts were written by friends and acquaintances of Tocqueville, some by those he saw as rivals and competitors. Into the first category fall J-J Ampère, whose 2 volume Promenades en Amérique was published in 1856 and Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne, author of Huit mois en Amérique: lettres et notes de voyage (1864-65). In the latter fall Michel Chevalier, author of Lettres sur l'Amérique du Nord (1836) and the unlikely-named Guillaume-Tell Poussin, author of several books on America, including Considérations sur le Principe démocratique qui régit l'Union Américaine (1841) and of De la Puissance Américaine (1843). In this way the paper intends to cast light on the 'mirage' of America and the long-cherished European hope of finding not just a lost paradise but the possibility of establishing and founding a new civilization and ideal republic. Yet as these accounts make clear, if American reality could be embellished so as to provide an image of a radiant future, it also gave intimations of the dangers that the future held in store. To that extent the collapse of the American dream was foretold in its very beginnings. However, by focussing upon these travel writings the intention is to show how the lived experience of America shaped the views of these writers about the nature of a democratic society and how this in turn shaped their perceptions of the possibilities in their own country. The paper will conclude by comparing these accounts with the most recent travelogue/philosophical analysis provided about America from the pen of a French liberal: Bernard Henri-Lévy's American Vertigo. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]