Editing Alexis de Tocqueville (section)

=== Opposition to the invasion of Kabylia ===
[[File:Tocqueville by Daumier.jpg|thumb|250px|1849 caricature by [[Honoré Daumier]]]]
In opposition to Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, Jean-Louis Benoît said that given the extent of racial prejudices during the colonization of Algeria, Tocqueville was one of its "most moderate supporters". Benoît said that it was wrong to assume Tocqueville was a supporter of Bugeaud despite his 1841 apologetic discourse. It seems that Tocqueville modified his views after his second visit to Algeria in 1846 as he criticized Bugeaud's desire to invade [[Kabylia]] in an 1847 speech to the Assembly.{{citation needed|date=July 2020}} Although Tocqueville had favoured retention of distinct traditional law, administrators, schools and so on for [[Arab]]s who had come under French control, he compared the Berber tribes of Kabylia (in his second of ''Two Letters on Algeria'', 1837) to Rousseau's concept of the "noble savage", stating:

<blockquote>If Rousseau had known the Kabyles ... he would not have spouted so much nonsense about the Caribbean and other American Indians: He would have looked to the Atlas for his models; there he would have found men who are subject to a kind of social police and yet almost as free as the isolated individual who enjoys his wild independence in the depths of the woods; men who are neither rich nor poor, neither servants nor masters; who appoint their own chiefs, and scarcely notice that they have chiefs, who are content with their state and remain in it<ref name="Travels in Algeria, Alexis de Tocqueville">{{cite book|author=Alexis de Tocqueville|translator=Yusuf Ritter|title=Travels in Algeria, The United Empire Loyalists|publisher=Tikhanov Library|isbn=978-1-7776460-9-7|pages=17}}</ref></blockquote>

Tocqueville's views on the matter were complex. Although in his 1841 report on Algeria he applauded Bugeaud for making war in a way that defeated [[Abdelkader El Djezairi|Abd-el-Kader]]'s resistance, he had advocated in the ''Two Letters'' that the French military advance leave Kabylia undisturbed and in subsequent speeches and writings he continued to oppose intrusion into Kabylia.<ref name="Travels in Algeria, Alexis de Tocqueville"/> In the debate about the 1846 extraordinary funds, Tocqueville denounced Bugeaud's conduct of military operations and succeeded in convincing the Assembly not to vote funds in support of Bugeaud's military columns.<ref>Tocqueville, {{lang|fr|Oeuvres completes}}, III, 1, Gallimard, 1962, pp. 299–300.</ref> Tocqueville considered Bugeaud's plan to invade Kabylia despite the opposition of the Assembly as a seditious act in the face of which the government was opting for cowardice.<ref>Tocqueville, {{lang|fr|Oeuvres completes}}, III, 1, Gallimard, 1962, p. 303.</ref><ref>Tocqueville, {{lang|fr|Œuvres complètes}}, III, 1, Gallimard, 1962, pp. 299–306.</ref>