What is perhaps the most important work on the Haitian revolution to date?
The Black Jacobins by the Trinidadian Marxist historian Cyril Lionel Robert James, first published in 1938. CLR James (1901-1989) was, of course, more than just the author of The Black Jacobins. A towering Pan-Africanist intellectual and activist, he was also a pioneer of the modern West Indian novel, a literary critic, playwright, sports writer and, perhaps most critically, one of the 20th century’s outstanding representatives of the revolutionary democratic tradition of “socialism from below”.5 Nevertheless, The Black Jacobins, one of the grandest of “grand narratives” ever penned, stands as perhaps James’s magnum opus and has long won for itself the status of a classic, and not simply among Marxists. As the historian James Walvin notes, The Black Jacobins not only “remains the pre-eminent account” of the Haitian Revolution “despite the vast accumulation of detail and argument advanced by armies of scholars” since, but also stands as the ideal “starting point” for understanding the experience of slavery in general.6 It is impossible to do justice to The Black Jacobins or the Haitian Revolution itself, and the continuing profusion of scholarship about them, in a short article like this.7 Rather this article aims to encourage readers who have not yet already had the privilege of reading James’s masterful classic of historical literature to do so, for The Black Jacobins, as the best possible introduction to the Haitian Revolution itself, stands as a timeless and indispensable reminder of the inspiring revolutionary spirit and tradition of the Haitian people, a rich resource of hope they will need to draw strength from now as much as ever.
(via mochente)