Alexis de Tocqueville: At the Crossroads of History

Abstract

In the nineteenth and down into the twentieth century, France and the United States offered two contrasting images to each other, one of the past, the other of the future. Both considered themselves as exceptional societies. But the term exceptional differed in the two countries. Exceptional, in France, meant uncommon, a civilization uniquely marked by its culture. Exceptional, for the United States, meant a fate different from the historical course of degeneration of other nations.