ABSTRACT
In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville did not see how a multiracial society could be constructed in the United States. He thought that a race war was inevitable in North America unless the blacks were given a country of their own. And this was not the only time that he indulged in less than egalitarian racial views. In his writings on French Algeria, Tocqueville came out in favour the destruction of the farms and foodstuffs of the Arabs in the name of pacifi cation and colonization. So, was Tocqueville a racist in the modern sense, as a few scholars have indeed argued?1
