Gustave de Beaumont

A contemporary study of the early American nation and its evolving democracy, from a French aristocrat and sociologist. In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and ambitious civil servant, set out from post-revolutionary France on a journey across America that would take him 9 months and cover 7,000 miles. The result was Democracy in America, a subtle and prescient analysis of the life and institutions of 19th-century America. Tocqueville looked to the flourishing democratic system in America as a possible model for post-revolutionary France, believing that the egalitarian ideals it enshrined reflected the spirit of the age and even divine will. His study of the strengths and weaknesses of an evolving democratic society has been quoted by every American president since Eisenhower, and remains a key point of reference for any discussion of the American nation or the democratic system.

Gustave de Beaumont's 1835 work, Marie: or, Slavery in the United States, is structured as a fascinating essay on race interwoven with a novel. It is the story of socially forbidden love between an idealistic young Frenchman and an apparently white American woman with African ancestry. The couple's idealism fades as they repeatedly face racial prejudice and violence and are eventually forced to seek shelter among exiled Cherokee people. Notable as the first abolitionist novel to focus on racial prejudice rather than bondage as a social evil, Beaumont's work was also the first to link prejudice against American Indians to prejudice against blacks. This translation, with a new introduction by Gerard Fergerson, provides modern readers with interesting insights into the inconsistencies and injustices of democratic Jacksonian society.

Gustave de Beaumont a écrit Marie ou l'esclavage aux Etats-Unis au retour d'un voyage d'étude de dix mois effectué en compagnie d'Alexis de Tocqueville. Il choisit d'aborder l'exposé des moeurs américaines à partir du statut des minorités. Il s'intéresse au sort des esclaves et, plus précisément, à celui de l'individu de couleur libre. Ce deuxième tome rassemble les notes et appendices de Gustave de Beaumont et, en annexe, des extraits de textes d'Alexis de Tocqueville.