After finishing his examine for Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville became to the French consolidation of its empire in North Africa, which he believed deserving of comparable cognizance. Tocqueville all started learning Algerian background and tradition, making journeys to Algeria in 1841 and 1846. He speedy grew to become one in all France's preferable specialists at the kingdom and wrote essays, articles, reliable letters, and parliamentary reviews on such various themes as France's army and administrative guidelines in North Africa, the folks of the Maghrib, his personal travels in Algeria, and the perform of Islam. all through, Tocqueville continually defended the French imperial venture, a place that stands in stress together with his admiration for the advantages of democracy he witnessed in America.

Although Tocqueville by no means released a book-length research of French North Africa, his quite a few writings at the topic supply as worthy a portrait of French imperialism as Democracy in America does of the Early Republic interval in American background. In Writings on Empire and Slavery, Jennifer Pitts has chosen and translated 9 of his most vital dispatches on Algeria, which provide startling new insights into either Tocqueville's political idea and French liberalism's attitudes towards the political, army, and ethical points of France's colonial enlargement. the amount additionally comprises six articles Tocqueville wrote throughout the related interval calling for the emancipation of slaves in France's Caribbean colonies.