5
Tocqueville, Hancock, and
the Sense of History
Henry Ergas
If Alexis de Tocqueville’sDemocracy in Americacan claim a special place in
shaping America’s vision of itself, so Hancock’sAustraliahas long been a point
of reference in Australian political thought.‘All the works of stature since
1930 ’, Manning Clark said of Hancock’s book,‘stem in part from the tree he
grew’(Clark 1968, p. 332); while Neville Meaney, in his retrospective assess-
ment of Hancock’s‘remarkable achievement’, described the book as‘...the
greatest work in the canon of Australian historical scholarship’, with the‘mark
of its greatness [being] that most subsequent Australian historians have been
engaged, either directly or indirectly, in elaborating or refuting the themes
which Hancock laid out inAustralia’(Meaney 1985, p. 10).
But whileDemocracy in Americaremains omnipresent in American intellec-
tual life, informing not merely scholarly discussion but also that country’s
always vigorous battle of ideas,Australia’s presence is a faint shadow, with an
impact confined largely to academia and, even there, more often cited
than read. It is unlikely an American student could complete a liberal arts
degree without absorbing at least some chapters of Tocqueville’s great work;
Hancock’s, by contrast, languishes, rarely touched, in university libraries.
Tocqueville’s work has been continuously in print since itfirst appeared;
Hancock’s was last republished in 1966. And while there has been a great
revival of interest in Tocqueville over the last two generations, the generous
reviews that greetedAustralia’s last republication did not herald new life but a
decline into the ranks of antiquarianism.
No doubt, that contrast is partly due to the works’respective merits.
Tocqueville’s sweep is vast, tackling questions whose global salience is at
least as great today as it was in 1835 (see, for instance, Atanassow and Boyd
2013). And every student of society is enriched by reading and rereading