Description

‘James is a titan of twentieth-century politics and culture’ Sunday Times

‘The Black Jacobins is not only a groundbreaking historical work; it is a masterpiece in storytelling and analysis’ Gary Younge

The iconic study of the Haitian revolution, by one of the most important historians of the twentieth century

C. L. R. James’s pioneering account of the 1791 San Domingo slave revolt and the creation of the republic of Haiti changed the way colonial history was written. By putting the experiences of the slave rebels, led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, centre stage, James made them agents of their own story. His work, written as part of the fight to end colonialism in Africa, helped inspire radical liberation movements worldwide, from Black Power to Castro’s revolution in the Caribbean.

With an Introduction by Christienna Fryar

Publisher Review

The black Plato of our generation ... the founding father of African emancipation. * The Times * The Black Jacobins is not only a groundbreaking historical work; it is a masterpiece in story-telling and analysis. -- Gary Younge Contains some of the finest and most deeply felt polemical writing against slavery and racism ever to be published. * Time Out * The Black Jacobins is one of the great books of the twentieth century ... one that wrote the history of a people supposedly without history. -- Catherine Hall James is, quite simply, the outstanding West Indian of the twentieth century. -- Caryl Phillips A starting point and an intellectual inspiration ... a classic of masterly historical writing. -- James Walvin James is not afraid to touch his pen with the flame of ardent personal feeling - a sense of justice, love of freedom, admiration for heroism, hatred for tyranny - and his detailed, richly documented and dramatically written book holds a deep and lasting interest. -- New York Times Revolutionarily, the book abandoned the old narrative of black victimhood in favour of accenting the agency of the formerly enslaved who, fuelled by a desire for liberty, fought to achieve autonomy. -- Colin Grant * Prospect * The standard and the main text through which the Haitian revolution is studied ... a book I've read back to back many times ... An incredibly brilliant book, an undeniably magnificent contribution to scholarship. -- Akala's Great Reads Reading and rereading The Black Jacobins, I am struck by its incredible wit and humanity, and James' determination to write a history of slavery in the Caribbean in which people of African descent appear as thinking, feeling human agents - in other words, as the protagonists of their own history and not background characters in an essentially European story. -- Dr Liam J. Liburd, Assistant Professor of Black British History, Durham University