The French Revolution is undoubtly one of the most significant events in world history, one whose repercussions still affect Western society today, two hundred years later. The most important contribution to our understanding of the French Revolution was written almost one hundred years ago by Alexis de Tocqueville, who is recognized today as one of the greatest political thinkers of the nineteenth century. Tocqueville's Democracy in America was only one part of the study of democracy to which he devoted his life; the second, and to his mind more important, part was to be a monumental study of the French Revolution, its origins, course, and consequences.
