introduction

Part 1
Chapter 1: Conflicting Judgments About the Revolution When It Occurred
Chapter 2: In what ways was the ultimate and fundamental purpose of the Great Revolution not, as commonly believed, to destroy religious authority and weaken political power?
Chapter 3: How did the French Revolution become both a political and a religious revolution, and why?
Chapter 4: How did most of Europe come to have the same institutions, and why were they destroyed almost everywhere?
Chapter 5: What are the unique achievements of the French Revolution?

Part 2
Chapter 1: Why were feudal levies considered more severe in France than elsewhere?
Chapter 2: In what ways is administrative centralization an institution of the ancien régime, rather than, as is often said, a product of the Great Revolution or the Empire?
Chapter 3: How What Is Called Administrative Supervision Today Is an Institution of the Ancien Régime
Chapter 4: In what ways are administrative trials and civil servant immunity institutions of the ancien regime?
Chapter 5: How Centralization Could Position Itself in the Heart of Old Powers and Push Them Out Without Destroying Them
Chapter 6: Administrative Customs of the Ancien Régime
Chapter 7 How France Became the Country in Europe Where the Capital Overwhelmed the Provinces and Where It Absorbed the Entire Territory
Chapter 8: In what ways has France become the country where people are most alike?
Chapter 9: How People So Similar Came to Become More Strange and Indifferent to One Another
Chapter 10: How the Destruction of Political Liberty and the Separation of Classes Produced Almost All the Abuses That Collapsed the Ancien Régime
Chapter 11: On the Types of Freedom Appearing in the Ancien Régime and Their Influence on the Great Revolution
Chapter 12: How, Despite the Advances of Civilization, the Condition of the French Peasant Was Sometimes Worse in the Eighteenth Century Than in the Thirteenth

Part 3
Chapter 1: How did writers become key political figures in the mid-18th century, and what were the consequences?
Chapter 2: How did anti-religious sentiment become a common and dominant passion in 18th-century France, and what influence did it have on the character of the Revolution?
Chapter 3: How the French Wanted Reform Before They Wanted Freedom
Chapter 4: In what ways was the reign of Louis XVI the most prosperous of the old monarchies, and how this very prosperity hastened the Revolution.
Chapter 5: How Trying to Alleviate the People's Suffering Only Infuriated Them
Chapter 6: Some Government Practices That Helped Complete the Revolutionary Education of the People
Chapter 7: How a Great Administrative Revolution Preceded a Political Revolution, and What Were the Results?
Chapter 8: How the Great Revolution arose naturally from previous events.

Appendix to the provinces of the Order, especially Languedoc
Tocqueville's commentary

Alexis de Tocqueville and the Old Regime and the French Revolution / Georges Lefebvre
Ancien Régime administrative map
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commentary
About the author
Author's chronology
About the translator

A month before the February Revolution broke out in France in 1848, there was a noble politician who foresaw the coming fury of revolution, warning in parliament that if the ruling class did not reform itself, the popular anger would soon explode.
He predicted that the severe social unrest caused by political inequality and the polarization of rich and poor would eventually lead to another French Revolution.
He is Alexis de Tocqueville.

According to Tocqueville, members of modern society have an ambivalent attitude toward equality.
It is the 'valiant and just passion for equality' that leads the weak to the ranks of the strong, and the 'depraved taste for equality' that causes the weak to bring the strong down to their level.
Tocqueville examines the trends of modern democratic society from this perspective, and unfortunately, he sees the second attribute as one that tends to become more deeply ingrained in people's minds than the first.
Materialism and individualism, born of a "depraved taste for equality," lead people to willingly give up their freedom for comfort, thereby expanding political power, while also corroding the public spirit and fostering political apathy.
As the people try to elect leaders who are advantageous to their own interests, politics becomes an arena for partisan struggles, and the quality of politicians declines.
Tocqueville's argument is that when anyone takes advantage of the people's political apathy and steps forward to represent their voice, a dictatorship disguised as democracy will emerge.
He finds the cure to eradicate these harms and abuses in the restoration of 'political freedom.'
Only political freedom can rescue the members of a community from personal apathy and political indifference and lead them into a public world filled with virtue and responsibility.

According to "The Old Regime and the French Revolution," written from this perspective, the French Revolution promoted democratic consciousness among the people and gave them the appearance of sovereignty by putting forward the principle of freedom in opposition to the absolute monarchy and feudal aristocracy. This equalization of political power inevitably led to social equalization.
However, the French Revolution failed to establish freedom due to the people's excessive desire and passion for equality.
His diagnosis is that the old principles of authority, which had been overthrown and seemed to have disappeared in the early days of the revolution, were revived and ultimately brought about Napoleon's military dictatorship.

This book goes beyond a simple chronological overview of the state of the ancien régime and the unfolding of the revolution.
Tocqueville dedicated four years to writing this book, visiting archives in Paris and the provinces, meticulously examining writings, official documents, minutes, petitions, etc. of the time, and even going on a field trip to Germany to compare and study the political structure of the Ancien Régime.
Therefore, it is a classic that allows us to vividly see aspects of society at the time that could not be seen in existing writings, and at the same time, it provides a perspective that allows us to look into the future through past history, with the historian's insight into the past and the thinker's perspective contemplating the present in an appropriate harmony.