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The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution | 
 enlarge | Author: C.l.r. James
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $9.01
You Save: $6.94 (44%)
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Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 21860
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Pages: 448
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0679724672
Dewey Decimal Number: 972.9403
EAN: 9780679724674
ASIN: 0679724672
Publication Date: October 23, 1989
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20080906212818T
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In 1789 the French colony of Saint Domingue was the most profitable real estate in the world. These profits came at a price: while its sugar plantations supplied two-thirds of France's overseas trade, they also stimulated the greatest individual market for the slave trade. The slaves were brutally treated and died in great numbers, prompting a never-ending influx of new slaves. The French Revolution sent waves all the way across the Atlantic, dividing the colony's white population in 1791. The elites remained royalist, while the bourgeoisie embraced the revolutionary ideals. The slaves seized the moment and in the confusion rebelled en masse against their owners. The Haitian Slave Revolt had begun. When it ended in 1803, Saint Domingue had become Haiti, the first independent nation in the Caribbean. C.L.R. James tells the story of the revolt and the events leading up to it in his masterpiece, The Black Jacobins. James's personal beliefs infuse his narrative: in his preface to a 1962 edition of the book, he asserts that , when written in 1938, it was "intended to stimulate the coming emancipation of Africa." James writes passionately about the horrific lives of the slaves and of the man who rose up and led them--a semiliterate slave named Francois-Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture. As James notes, however, "Toussaint did not make the revolution. It was the revolution that made Toussaint." With its appendix, "From Toussaint L'Ouverture to Fidel Castro," The Black Jacobins provides an excellent window into the Haitian Revolution and the worldwide repercussions it caused. --Sunny Delaney
Product Description
A classic and impassioned account of the first revolution in the Third World.
This powerful, intensely dramatic book is the definitive account of the Haitian Revolution of 1794-1803, a revolution that began in the wake of the Bastille but became the model for the Third World liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of master toward slave was commonplace and ingeniously refined. And it is the story of a barely literate slave named Toussaint L'Ouverture, who led the black people of San Domingo in a successful struggle against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces and in the process helped form the first independent nation in the Caribbean.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 16 more reviews...
 Good Read! May 9, 2008
Big Sistah Patty (USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Excellent!
At time, Mr. James annoyed me to no end. But what kept me reading was he had the balls to write truth, though at times his constantly editorializing made me roll my eyes. His work has certainly added to my body of knowledge about Haiti, Toussaint and other players.
The fact is that the Haitians kicked Bonapart and the French army's butt, coming and going! They lost over 50,000 men.
The Black Jacobins deals more with Toussaint the man, and acquaints the reader with some of the other major character, i.e. Christophe, Moise, Dessalines, Rigaud, etc. .
I highly recommend the book.
Excerpts that moved me:
"In overthrowing me, you have cut down in St. Domingo only the trunk of the tree of liberty. It will spring up again by its roots for they are numerous and deep.." Toussaint L'Ouverture
"But today as then, the great propertied interests and their agents commit the most ferocious crimes in the name of the whole people, and bluff and browbeat them by lying propaganda".
"The secret of England's impotence for the first 6 years of the way may be said to lie in the two fatal words, St. Dimingo."
"Where imperialists do not find disorder, they create it deliberately."
"That calm confidence in its capacity to deceive is a mark of the mature ruling class."
"But Dessaline could not wait. On March 24th, the third day of the bombardment, the French captured a black man and a black woman. The man said he was blind, only the whites of his eyes could be seen and he could scarcely walk, while the old black woman with him said that she was deaf. Suspecting them to be spies the French beat them mercilessly, but they only sobbed and wailed, said nothing and lay as if unable to move. Lacroix, on his rounds, took pity on them, and asked that they should be allowed to go about their business, but not until the French threatened to shoot them did they get up and walk. As soon as they were out of reach, they began to dance, and ran to the fortress to give Dessalins' order to evacuate." This was so funny to me. I laughed out loud. Grandma and Grandpapa pulled the oki doke. Or as the kid say `faked them out!"
Amazing! April 1, 2008
William Munny (Boston, MA via Brooklyn USA)
As a first generation Haitian-American I've always been fascinated by the culture of my ancestors. My father used to tell me if I wanted to understand Black America I needed to understand Haitian history. He would say, "How Haiti goes so go Black people". Reading Black Jacbins has given me a better understanding of the message he was trying to convey.
The challenges Blacks in many countries around the world face today mirror those that originated within the Haitian revolution. Beyond the issues of freedom from slavery and imperialism, Haiti is provides a glimps of the beauty of an independent Black Republic as well as its challenges within the global arena. Although other works on 20th century geo politics can provide more detailed insight into Haiti's current political state, Black Jacobins will provide the back drop for the current international stances by nations on Haiti.
Other reviewers have enjoyed the book but have written that it contains to much of a marxist slant. To them I would say, if you have ever been to Haiti you would know that even today the country is highly structured based on class. This is, as C.L.R James illustrates, a product of the european colonialism. I'll go even further to say, if those same critics don't believe we live in a class based society in America they are very naieve. Nontheless, I recommend this book to those who not only enjoy carribean history but world history.
 Too much Marx June 3, 2007
Dan King (USA)
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
'The Black Jacobins', by C.L.R. James, is so sodden with Marxist cant as to be nearly useless. He can't get the story straight through all the verbiage. A far better account of Toussaint is found in Richard Gillespie's book, Papa Toussaint.
The other problem with James' book is he almost completely ignores military engagements. One can read the entire book and almost never learn of the War of the Knives. Given Toussaint's obvious military genius, this is a serious weakness. Again, Gillespie has the correct balance.
I've written a book set in modern Haiti, though it is fictional. It's entitled Naked in Haiti: A sexy morality tale about tourists, prostitutes & politicians. It's about politics & sex tourism, but mostly it is meant as entertainment.
Caribbean person's review of Black Jacobins February 9, 2007
Frederick Collins (Guyana)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
My interest the book was kindled by Michener's reference to it in his book 'THe Caribbean' which I only read recently.
When I would see black people holding high office in the US army I would see it as evidence of the enlightened attitude of the American society. I now know that that 'enlightenment' wast the result of a lesson taught by Haitians since the 1790's.
An excellent work which should be read by all especially Caribbean blacks!
 TOUSSAINT AND THE BLACK LIBERATION STRUGGLE January 24, 2007
Alfred Johnson (boston, ma)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The French Revolution, as all great revolutions, had effects on world politics and the struggle of other peoples whom awoken to political life in the afterglow of that event. The fight for freedom in French Santo Domingo (now Haiti, the name that I will use to avoid confusion hereafter) led by Toussaint to a point just short of independence is a prime example of that effect. Without the revolution in the metropolis it is very unlikely that at that time the struggle in Haiti could have been successful. The history of the times was replete with unsuccessful slave rebellions. Why it was successful in Haiti and how that success was accomplished, mainly under the leadership of Toussaint in its decisive phases, is the subject of the eccentric Marxist, later Pan-Africanist historian C.L.R. James. Although originally written in 1938 Black Jacobin is still the best biography of Toussaint in English.
The freedom struggle in Haiti, a tropical island well suited to intensive agricultural development for the new international market in those goods necessary for the embryonic industrial system, was above all the struggle for the abolition of slavery. The fight against that servile condition that even many revolutionaries, white and black, and former revolutionaries of the time broke their teeth on. Today that freedom struggle, successful in its way in the Haiti of the early 19th century, remains a shining example of the only really successful fight against slavery by the slaves. So it pays to pay particular attention to the fight.
The forces which pushed the French Revolution forward in the metropolis had their its own set of priorities, among them the fight to move the population from a condition of subjugation to a monarch to citizens of a democracy. I have noted elsewhere how important that changed social status was to the historical and psychological development of modern humankind. Nevertheless that same psychology applies to the struggle in Haiti although even more so under conditions of chattel slavery. Thus, the events in French had their reflection in the colonies particularly in Haiti. One can observe in France the changes in attitude and policy from the early revolutionary days when all classes were good fellows and true through the rise of the leftist Robespierre regime based on the plebian masses, its eventually overthrow and establishment of the Directory and then the various manifestations of the regimes of Napoleon. That regime and its treacherous colonial policy attempting was a very far drop down hill from the early heady days when even moderate revolutionaries were in both places prepared to go quite far to eliminate slavery in Haiti.
There is something of a truism in the statement that great revolutions throw up personalities fit for the times. Certainly revolutions shake up the traditional order of things and let some who might have stayed dormant rise to the occasion. That is the case with Toussaint. For most of his life he was a middle level functionary on his master's estate respected by not slated for greatness. Early on, as the struggle against slavery heated up among the black slaves he exhibited the military, social, political diplomatic and other skills that would eventual thrust him into the leadership of the liberation struggle, This is really saying something special about the man because in the context of that Haitian revolution with the initial disputes between British Spanish and French interests and then the conflicting interests on the island itself between white, black and mulatto would have driven a lesser man around the bend. That it did not do so and that in his errors that which at times were grievous, especially around his seemingly obsessive commitment to maintain the French connection, does not take away from the grandeur of the experience. A cursory look at the latter developments on the island and the seemingly never ending series of tin pot despots who in their turn devastated the island only brings out Toussaint's fascinating role, warts and all, in the earlier liberation struggle in broader relief.
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