Christienna Fryar on a groundbreaking account of the Haitian Revolution
One of the great uprisings, the Haitian Revolution – which ended with the creation of that independent nation in 1804 – overturned the pervasive belief that the enslavement of millions of Africans in the Americas was natural and permanent. More than 80 years after it was first published, The Black Jacobins – written by Trinidadian journalist and political activist CLR James – remains an essential account of this extraordinary revolution, and I’ve had the honour of writing a new introduction for the 2022 modern classics edition of the book.
In Black Jacobins, James sweeps us up in the revolutionary maelstrom. He explains how enslaved fighters took advantage of the political confusion caused by the French Revolution to topple slavery in the French colony of SaintDomingue. And he details how, over the years that followed, they demanded first their permanent freedom and then emancipation in all French colonies.
The book is also a compelling character study of Toussaint Louverture, the revolution’s fiercely intelligent leader. The Louverture depicted by James is a tragic hero undone by his attempts to secure freedom and autonomy while keeping Saint-Domingue within the French empire. By the time Haiti became the first Black state in the Americas, Louverture had been dead for nearly a year.
James tells a complex story well, always with an eye for its radical implications. Just as he hoped it would inspire independence movements in Africa and (by the 1963 second edition) the Caribbean, it can inspire us now in the era of Black Lives Matter.
Christienna Fryar is lecturer in Black British history at Goldsmiths, University of London