The Ancien Regime and the Revolution is a comparison of revolutionary France with the despotic rule it toppled. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) is an objective commentator on both periods - providing a merciless critique of the ancien regime, with its venality, oppression and inequality, while acknowledging the reforms introduced under Louis XVI, and claiming that the post-Revolution state was in many ways as tyrannical as that of the King, its once lofty and egalitarian ideals corrupted and forgotten. Writing in the 1850s, Tocqueville aimed to expose this return to despotism (parallels to which he witnessed in his own time under Napoleon III) by illuminating the grand, but ultimately doomed, call to liberty made by the French people in 1789. His eloquent and instructive study raises questions about liberty, nationalism and justice that remain urgent today.