America Through European Eyes

Aurelian Craiutu is Associate Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of Liberalism Under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires (2003) and editor/translator of Tocqueville on America After 1840 (2009).Jeffrey C. Isaac is James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. His books include Democracy in Dark Times (1998).

• ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Europeans in Search of AmericaAurelian Craiutu and Jeffrey C. IsaacPart One: America’s Many Faces1.The Idea of America in the History of European Political Thought: 1492–9/11Alan LevinePart Two: America and the Enlightenment2.Notes on Bishop Berkeley’s New WorldCostica Bradatan3.From Voltaire to Raynal and Diderot’s Histoire des deux Indes: The French Philosophes and Colonial AmericaGuillaume Ansart4.On the Political Efficacy of Idealism: Tocqueville, Schoelcher, and the Abolition of SlaveryNick NesbittPart Three: French Views of America5.A Precursor of Tocqueville: Victor Jacquemont’s Reflections on AmericaAurelian Craiutu6.Tyranny and Tragedy in Beaumont’s MarieChristine Dunn Henderson7.French Visions of America: From Tocqueville to the Civil WarJeremy Jennings

“Many have read Tocqueville’s observations of Jacksonian America, but how did other visitors from Europe respond to early American institutions and customs? This excellent volume discusses fine and highly varied insights from European visitors such as Gustave de Beaumont, George Berkeley, James Bryce, Michel Chevalier, G. K. Chesterton, Victor Jacquemont, and Frances Trollope. This volume is a superb introduction to the topic of European reactions to America’s new democracy.”—Roger Boesche, Occidental College, author of The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville and Tocqueville's Road Map: Methodology, Liberalism, Revolution, and Despotism