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  • Published: 31 May 2001
  • ISBN: 9780141937083
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 384
Categories:

The Black Jacobins

Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution




The iconic study of the Haitian revolution by one of the founding fathers of Caribbean scholarship, now in Modern Classics for the first time

In 1789 the West Indian colony of San Domingo supplied two-thirds of the overseas trade of France. The entire structure of what was arguably the most profitable colony in the world rested on the labour of half a million slaves. In 1791 the waves of unrest inspired by the French Revolution reached across the Atlantic dividing the loyalties of the white population of the island. The brutally treated slaves of Saint Domingo seized at this confusion and rose up in rebellion against masters. In thisclassic work, CLR James chronicles the only successful slave revolt in history and provides a critical portrait of their leader, Toussaint L'Ouverture, 'one of the most remarkable men of a period rich in remarkable men'.

  • Published: 31 May 2001
  • ISBN: 9780141937083
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 384
Categories:

About the author

Cyril Lionel Robert James

C L R James, historian, novelist, cultural critic and political activist, was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad in 1901. In 1932 he joined his friend Learie Constantine in Britain, where he became cricket correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. A central figure in the Pan-African movement and the struggle for colonial emancipation, he returned to Trinidad in 1958 in its run-up to independence. He later went back to London, where he died in 1989.

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