Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic Democracy in America is widely recognized as one of the most definitive accounts of American society and political culture. However, his thoughts on the US Constitution have often been overlooked. In this chapter, Jeremy D. Bailey argues that this neglect is unfortunate insofar as Tocqueville’s view of the US Constitution diverges in significant ways from the authoritative rendition of The Federalist. Rather than echoing classic explanations of the workings of the US Constitution by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, Tocqueville’s understandings of federalism, Congress, US elections, the presidency, and the Supreme Court are more influenced by the constitutional interpretation of Thomas Jefferson. Despite his extensive discussion of other parts of the US Constitution, however, Tocqueville has little to say about the Bill of Rights. This apparent oversight may be explained by the fact that he sees a respect for rights as emerging from political culture rather than any specific institutional framework.

While interest in Democracy in America has been centered in the West, James T. Schleifer describes in this chapter how Japanese interest in Democracy in America began as early as the late nineteenth century during the period of the Meiji Restoration. By way of contrast, Chinese interest in Tocqueville’s writings emerged only in the past few decades and has focused more on his Old Regime and the Revolution. These two case studies are exemplary of growing international interest in Tocqueville’s writings as thinkers outside the West wrestle with his lessons about the future possibilities of equality, political rights, and democratic liberty.

Democracy in America focuses mainly on the history of the United State and the prospects for Anglo-American democracy. However, it is important to remember that Tocqueville’s celebrated thoughts on the unique qualities of American democracy did not go unnoticed by Spanish American thinkers in the nineteenth century. Like Tocqueville’s France, Latin American nations struggled with similar questions of how to secure the institutional and cultural prerequisites for self-government. As José Antonio Aguilar Rivera reveals in this chapter, there is an important tradition of reading and applying the lessons of Democracy in America in the “other America.” Latin American countries sought to emulate the United States’ success with constitutionalism and representative government, and leading political thinkers turned to Tocqueville for guidance. Despite widespread interest in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Chile, however, these applications of Democracy in America diverged widely from one national context to another. Aguilar Rivera shows how interpreters drew on different arguments, often selectively ignoring others, depending on the unique circumstances and political debates of each country.

Alexis de Tocqueville is often described as a critic of American culture and modern democracy. Yet, as Alan Levine argues, there is an important difference between Tocqueville’s friendly criticisms of parts of American culture he finds wanting and other ideological critiques by “anti-American” thinkers such as Martin Heidegger and the Frankfurt School. Several factors separate Tocqueville from this European tradition of “Anti-Americanism.” Tocqueville’s criticisms are balanced by an appreciation of the virtues of American democracy and a recognition that these defects are hardly unique to America. His criticisms also take their root in empirical considerations of the complexities of American culture. Although the Frankfurt School and other influential critics often claim Tocqueville as inspiration for their complaints about mass society, they are ideologically motivated, ignore America’s redeeming virtues, and fault America uniquely for widely shared flaws of modernity.

In this chapter, Aurelian Craiutu documents key elements of Tocqueville’s political thought that are either anticipated or shared by the so-called Generation of 1820. Like Tocqueville, this cohort came of age in France during the time of the Bourbon Restoration. It included figures such as Théodore Jouffroy, Charles de Rémusat, Félicité Robert de Lamennais, and others who struggled like Tocqueville to make sense of the dawning tide of democratic equality. Their writings also reckon with problems of individualism, skepticism, and the loss of authority that all regarded as characteristic of the democratic age. Most importantly, however, Craiutu suggests in this chapter that many of Tocqueville’s insights – including his interest in the United States – may be explained by the influence of his kinsman François-René de Chateaubriand, whose earlier visit to America and subsequent writings shared much with Tocqueville’s vision.

Reading Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America alongside Toni Morrison’s 2008 novel A Mercy reveals striking similarities and differences in how the two authors treat the entanglement of indigenous, black, and white histories from seventeenth-century America to the present. Both texts use vivid literary imagery to make concrete some of the intersectional dilemmas of race and gender. In Tocqueville’s case, the purpose is to instruct; in Morrison’s, however, it is to reinhabit the lives of those previously overlooked. Notwithstanding the similarity of their subject matter, the two texts are strikingly different insofar as Tocqueville’s presentation gives no room for the voices and perspectives of the victims of injustice. Nor does his fatalistic narrative suggest the possibility of concrete alternatives to these histories. Taken together, these two works raise broader questions about the sufficiency of fiction as a way of identifying and resolving dilemmas of race and exclusion in American society. In contrast to the inadequacy of Tocqueville’s “new science of politics,” Morrison seeks to project through her fiction a new world that points her readers toward novel ways of conceiving of freedom.

Chapter 2, “Urban Development and Decline, Fourth–Fifteenth Centuries,” tracks the development of the city’s infrastructure and monumental public architecture from the period of its fourth-century foundation to its fifteenth-century collapse, noting periods of prosperity and decline together with the transformation from an ancient to a medieval urban center.

The Introduction situates the reader in our present social and environmental era, specifically in a globally enmeshed United States. It explains our conception of the book’s three central terms: America, Environment, and Literature. It gives an overview of the history of ecocriticism, especially pertaining to North America, and how our authors contribute to, and innovate, that tradition. It ends with a summary of each chapter.

Chapter 16, “Schools and Learning,” offers an overview of Constantinople as an educational center. It considers the city’s role as an imperial center in attracting scholars, outlines the organization of the educational system, and examines the types of opportunities available to students.