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Alexis de Tocqueville was a French politician who was bitterly opposed to the seizure of power by Napoleon III in 1851 which put an end to his political career. The rest of his life was devoted to the study of French society and the ways in which it had been affrected by the revolution of 1789. Tocqueville's work showed that the revolution of 1789 was not so much a new start as a development of trends already present. It remains to this day both a brilliant investigation of its subject and a relevant comment on the problems of preserving the freedom of the individual within the modern state. [via]