THE VISITOR
In 1831 a twenty-five-year-old French aristocrat crosses the Atlantic on a pretext, to study American prisons, and spends nine months trying to understand the strangest country on earth.
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In 1831 a twenty-five-year-old French aristocrat crosses the Atlantic with a pretext in his luggage. Alexis de Tocqueville is officially there to study American prisons. He and his friend Gustave de Beaumont have nine months. He was taught that a people with no king and no aristocracy must fall into chaos. Town after town, it fails to happen in front of him, and he cannot say why. A town meeting. A church. A jury. A frontier cabin. A prison. A slave market. Each one is a piece of the answer, and he believes France's future depends on putting them together before he has to go home and say it.
Who it follows
Alexis de Tocqueville is a junior magistrate from an old royalist family, uneasy under the new French king, traveling with his friend Gustave de Beaumont.
What goes wrong
Everything he was taught to expect, that a people without a king or an aristocracy must fall into chaos, fails to happen in front of him, and he cannot explain why.
What is at stake
He believes France's future depends on understanding what he is seeing, and he has nine months before he has to go home and say it.
What keeps it running
Each episode is a new town, a new stranger and a new piece of the answer: a town meeting, a church, a jury, a frontier cabin, a prison, a slave market.
What you take away
A free people is held together by habits, not by laws.