History: In 1831 Gustave de Beaumont set out for the United States with his best friend, Alexis de Tocqueville, and wrote to his father how the destinies of both men were "intertwined and always shall be". Beaumont was the senior figure, three years older, more eloquent, and already at the age of 29 a senior magistrate in Paris.
The 10-month journey, ostensibly to write a report on prison reforms, culminated in the publication of a novel and a masterpiece four years later. The novel was Beaumont's Marie, or Slavery in the United States, a book which captured the dark side of American society, won critical acclaim and sold well. The masterpiece was the first volume of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, which transformed how people viewed the emerging nation and instantly became a classic. Beaumont would never again be the senior figure in the relationship.
Elected to the French parliament, both men searched for literary follow-ups. They visited Ireland for six weeks in 1835 and were immediately struck by the possibilities. Rivalry threatened their friendship. And so in 1836 they came to an agreement. Beaumont would have England and Ireland to write about, Tocqueville could develop his work on the United States. In the summer of 1837 Beaumont again visited Ireland, this time with his wife, and his research formed the basis of this book, which was published in France in 1839. Later the same year it was translated into English by William Cooke Taylor. It was an immediate success, earning Beaumont a medal from the French Académie.
This version, brought together and introduced by the UCD academics, Tom Garvin and Andreas Hesse, is the first time the entire work has been reprinted in English since then. True, the first part was reprinted in 2002 as part of the Political and Cultural Analyses of Ireland series, but the introduction by Michael Hurst was eccentric and it suffered from ignoring the later parts. This version, beautifully produced by Harvard University Press, includes the full work. It is not a new edition. Rather, Garvin and Hesse are presenting Taylor's translation, although Garvin does provide his own translation for the 1863 preface which includes Beaumont's important reflections on the Famine.
The book was Beaumont's attempt to do for Ireland what Tocqueville had done for the US. Except, where Tocqueville found much to admire in American society, Beaumont found little to agree with in the Irish system. Garvin and Hesse recognise this in their introduction and suggest that a more appropriate title might well have been Tyranny in Ireland. The most famous and often-quoted lines are the evocative description: "I have seen the Indian in his forests, and the negro in his chains, and thought, as I contemplated their pitiable condition, that I saw the very extreme of human wretchedness; but I did not know then the condition of unfortunate Ireland."
Beaumont's work is a bleak and pessimistic account, full of anger at the Protestant Ascendancy for its misrule and full of resentment about the injustices of colonisation.
While Garvin and Hesse are to be commended for making Beaumont once more accessible to a wide audience, there remain serious problems with this version. Their introduction, at nine pages, is woefully inadequate for a work which runs to 400. It is also uncritical. Beaumont has much to say about Ireland, but he is not always right. Other scholars have recognised that Beaumont could only hear the cries of the oppressed. But Garvin and Hesse are also ruled by their hearts, as seen by their opening sentences: "Ireland in the 1830s was an agrarian country controlled by an aristocracy alien in nationality, language, religion, and culture from the vast majority of the population. The landlords despised the lower orders, who returned the compliment with a ferocious blend of covert contempt and hatred." If "Discuss" was added afterwards this would make for an excellent exam question. But good exam questions do not always make for good history, and there is some seriously debatable history being offered here.
Beaumont's translator and editor, Taylor, is also unfairly neglected. The historical introduction in Ireland, which runs to more than 100 pages, is an intriguing dialogue between Taylor and Beaumont. Taylor was himself the author of 16 historical works, including a controversial history of Islam, and was awarded a doctorate from Trinity College Dublin in 1835. In the footnotes Taylor engages with Beaumont's argument, sometimes supplementing it with his own detailed evidence, sometimes correcting some faulty information.
Beaumont's Ireland was hailed upon publication as a work to rival Tocqueville. But he himself recognised its limitations and said that he would rather have written one half of Democracy than two Irelands. He accepted his destiny to be for ever in the shadow of his friend.
Patrick M Geoghegan teaches on the Trinity Access Programme and in the Department of History, Trinity College Dublin. He has published on the Irish Act of Union and Robert Emmet and is currently working on a book on William Pitt and Ireland
Ireland: Social, Political and Religious By Gustave de Beaumont, edited and translated by WC Taylor. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 403pp. £22.95