The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture

Black Spartacus

The definitive modern biography of the great slave leader, military genius and revolutionary hero Toussaint Louverture 
 
The Haitian Revolution began in the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue with a slave revolt in August 1791, and culminated a dozen years later in the proclamation of the world's first independent black state. After the abolition of slavery in 1793, Toussaint Louverture, himself a former slave, became the leader of the colony's black population, the commander of its republican army and eventually its governor. During the course of his extraordinary life he confronted some of the dominant forces of his age - slavery, settler colonialism, imperialism and racial hierarchy. Treacherously seized by Napoleon's invading army in 1802, this charismatic figure ended his days, in Wordsworth's phrase, 'the most unhappy man of men', imprisoned in a fortress in France. 
 
Black Spartacus draws on a wealth of archival material, much of it overlooked by previous biographers, to follow every step of Louverture's singular journey, from his triumphs against French, Spanish and British troops to his skilful regional diplomacy, his Machiavellian dealings with successive French colonial administrators and his bold promulgation of an autonomous Constitution. Sudhir Hazareesingh shows that Louverture developed his unique vision and leadership not solely in response to imported Enlightenment ideals and revolutionary events in Europe and the Americas, but through a hybrid heritage of fraternal slave organisations, Caribbean mysticism and African political traditions. Above all, Hazareesingh retrieves Louverture's rousing voice and force of personality, making this the most engaging, as well as the most complete, biography to date. 
 
After his death in the French fortress, Louverture became a figure of legend, a beacon for slaves across the Atlantic and for generations of European republicans and progressive figures in the Americas. He inspired the anti-slavery campaigner Frederick Douglass, the most eminent nineteenth-century African-American; his emancipatory struggle was hailed by those who defied imperial and colonial rule well into the twentieth. In the modern era, his life informed the French poet Aimé Césaire's seminal idea of négritude and has been celebrated in a remarkable range of plays, songs, novels and statues. Here, in all its drama, is the epic story of the world's first black superhero.

The art of biography lies in using a life story to bring a historical moment, as well as the society and culture that shaped it, alive and to make it legible. And in this, Hazareesingh succeeds admirably ... beautifully written and deeply engag­ing, connecting the many remarkable writings by and about Louverture in a symphonic narrative

This is an erudite and elegant biography with a message that resonates strongly in our own time

remarkable ... the sharpest portrait yet of Louverture ... Black Spartacus is a triumph. It takes a nearly impossibly complex history and weaves it into a compelling and accurate narrative that reads like fiction.

Black Spartacus is a tour de force: by far the most complete, authoritative and persuasive biography of Toussaint that we are likely to have for a long time...an extraordinarily gripping read.

There is no better literary contribution to the year of Black Lives Matter than Sudhir Hazareesingh's Black Spartacus, an authoritative biography of Toussaint Louverture, who led the successful "slave revolt" in Haiti and paved the way for Haitian independence.

an outstanding biography that breaks fresh ground and scrapes the crust of folklore, and cliché, from the Toussaint story ... scrupulous and absorbing ... After the summer of 2020, there could hardly be a more urgent and valuable book.

This thrilling, magisterial, superb biography, full of new material, tells the extraordinary swashbuckling, bloodspattered, inspirational life of Toussaint, brilliant leader of the Haitian slave revolt against France

Lustrous pearls ... scattered throughout Black Spartacus, turn this detailed, blow-by-blow account of Toussaint's military exploits into a dazzling, complicated narrative ... a breath-taking picture of the decade of Toussaint's dream

Sudhir Hazareesingh's engrossing new life is the story of an island as well as a man ... Hazareesingh brings to the task a voracious appetite for original sources and a discerning ear for those that have the ring of truth. He also has a gift for tracing those threads that reveal a previously unrecognised pattern in the fabric of a life.

With Black Spartacus, Sudhir Hazareesingh has produced the fourth - and best - biography of Toussaint Louverture since the bicentenary of Haitian independence ... The book deftly tackles the early stages of the slave uprising and gives one of the most convincing accounts yet of Toussaint's likely role in its opening moves.

This superb new history of Louverture and his legacy portrays Saint-Domingue as the most profitable slave colony the world had ever known ... with rare narrative verve, Hazareesingh conjures his subject's extraordinary life.

This is a balanced, yet sympathetic, biography which throws light on Toussaint's personality and acknowledges the importance of his political ideals ... Toussaint is now a global figure, a byword for Black empowerment, and as such he has become a hero for our times.

Hazareesingh presents a deeply researched, energetic, and comprehensively reenvisioned study of the extraordinary life and still-growing influence of Haiti's liberator and founding father.

a timely study of Toussaint Louverture, hero of Haiti's slave revolt

This timely biography digs deeper into archival material to reveal Louverture's uniquely modern views.

engaging ... a vivid portrait of a complex, captivating and sometimes contradictory leader.

Based on meticulous research in the French archives, Hazareesingh's scholarship deserves the highest praise.

Sudhir Hazareesingh's remarkable book is a sparkling example of the role history can play in society today and, in particular, the importance of shining a light on the often-overlooked experiences of the past.

Sudhir Hazareesingh's account of what he dubs the "epic life" of Toussaint Louverture provides a meticulous biography of his subject and, at the same time, a comprehensive new introduction to the Haitian Revolution ... Black Spartacus is compellingly written and presents its rich source material, both historiographic and archival, with a welcome lightness of touch. ... the definitive English-language life of Louverture

Sudhir Hazareesingh's stellar, deeply engrossing Black Spartacus still thrums with great potential for our contemporary moment. [Toussaint] shines incandescent in Hazareesingh's tour de force, which has brought an immense amount of new material into the general public domain. The distinguished author, who is a fellow at Oxford's Balliol College, previously specialized in French intellectual and cultural history, and admits in his acknowledgements that he had "never ventured into the history of French colonialism in the Caribbean." But there's also an intriguing biographical element- his roots in the Indian ocean island of Mauritius - that has worked rather serendipitously. As far as this reader is concerned, it's that perspective which has wound up yielding the most original and penetrating insights in Black Spartacus.

This book  weaves all these threads into a compelling narrative. Reality trumps fiction on every page.

Sudhir Hazareesingh was born in Mauritius. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and has been a Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford, since 1990. He has written extensively about French intellectual and cultural history; among his books are The Legend of Napoleon, In the Shadow of the General and How the French Think. He won the Prix du Mémorial d'Ajaccio and the Prix de la Fondation Napoléon for the first of these, a Prix d'Histoire du Sénat for the second, the Grand Prix du Livre d'Idées for the third and the Wolfson History Prize and American Library in Paris Award for the fourth. In 2020, he became a Grand Commander of the Order of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean (G.C.S.K.), the highest honour of the Republic of Mauritius.

The Haitian Revolution began in the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue with a slave revolt in August 1791, and culminated a dozen years later in the proclamation of the world's first independent black state. After the abolition of slavery in 1793, Toussaint Louverture, himself a former slave, became the leader of the colony's black population, the commander of its republican army and eventually its governor. During the course of his extraordinary life he confronted some of the dominant forces of his age - slavery, settler colonialism, imperialism and racial hierarchy. 
 
Black Spartacus draws on a wealth of archival material, much of it overlooked by previous biographers, to follow every step of Louverture's singular journey. Sudhir Hazareesingh shows that Louverture developed his unique vision and leadership not solely in response to imported Enlightenment ideals and revolutionary events in Europe and the Americas, but through a hybrid heritage of fraternal slave organisations, Caribbean mysticism and African political traditions. Above all, Hazareesingh retrieves Louverture's rousing voice and force of personality, making this the most engaging, as well as the most complete, biography to date.

An Affectionate Portrait of an Intellectual People

How the French Think

There could be no wiser or more witty guide to the problems of France today.

A first-rate book... Sudhir Hazareesingh, brings an engaging personal angle to his ambitious cavalcade through four centuries of French intellectual thought... This vast, opinionated and wholly original book reminds us that ideas still count and that intellectual endeavour still has resonance in the face of the mercantile plutocracy that so much defines the way we live now.

This book depicts Parisian society like a Cambridge party in which everyone knows the jokes, and everyone knows where the bodies are buried. You will read it not just with fascination, but with relish.

Times Literary Supplement (Books of the Year)

Sudhir Hazareesingh was born in Mauritius. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and has been a Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford, since 1990. He has written extensively about French intellectual and cultural history; among his books are The Legend of Napoleon, In the Shadow of the General and How the French Think. He won the Prix du Mémorial d'Ajaccio and the Prix de la Fondation Napoléon for the first of these, a Prix d'Histoire du Sénat for the second, and the Grand Prix du Livre d'Idées for the third. In 2020, he became a Grand Commander of the Order of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean (G.C.S.K.), the highest distinction in the Mauritian honours system.

WINNER OF THE GRAND PRIX DU LIVRE D'IDÉES 
 
The French: serious and frivolous, charming and infuriating, rational and mystical, pessimistic, pleasure-loving - and perhaps more than any other people, intellectual. This original and entertaining book shows exactly what makes the French so ... French.

Sudhir Hazareesingh

[An] absorbing and revelatory history of black resistance to the transatlantic trade ... a marvel of historical analysis and research. Hazareesingh maintains that Enlightenment ideals alone did not abolish slavery, and shifts the focus away from Christian abolitionists who often derided African culture to the agency of Afro-Atlantic insurgents and conspirators. [He] emphasises the role played by women as disruptors and warrior figures in the cause of freedom

A sweeping history of black resistance from 1500 to 1900 … Studded with novelistic vignettes of insurrection, it doubles as a brisk history of Atlantic slavery. Hazareesingh writes with a wry lucidity, [showing how] enslaved men and women fought their bondage long before enlightened philosophes in Parisian salons decried it … [the book is] enlivened with colloquialisms [and] succeeds on the strength of its remarkable cache of evidence

This stunning revisionist saga [is] a remarkable reorientation of the history of the modern world

Hazareesingh rips away the screen of white saviorism to reveal a compelling history of enslaved people fiercely and collaboratively seizing freedom with their own hands

A much-needed and sure-to-be-influential addition to the literature of African enslavement

Daring to be Free is a sweeping history of the rebellions, escapes, and everyday acts of defiance by enslaved Africans and their descendants across the Atlantic world. From African battlefields and maroon strongholds to the Haitian Revolution and spiritual resistance, Sudhir Hazareesingh restores the voices and strategies of those who fought relentlessly for autonomy, dignity, and liberation. Drawing on rich archival and oral sources, he reframes abolition as the achievement of the enslaved themselves — a centuries-long struggle driven by courage, solidarity, and an unyielding will to be free

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,  Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University

Daring to Be Free is a sweeping, powerful history of centuries of refusal and political imagination. Hazareesingh weaves together eloquent re-interpretations of famous revolts with a multitude of lesser-known, and revelatory, examples of resistance across the Atlantic World. He opens our eyes to the communities and worlds created by the enslaved, inviting us to craft a different future built on these unfinished struggles for true freedom

Laurent Dubois, author of Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution

A truly sweeping and magnificent history of abolition and enslaved resistance ... Daring to Be Free proves without doubt that the first abolitionists were enslaved and captive Africans themselves. No other synthesis of transatlantic slavery’s ultimate destruction can match this one in terms of the period and geographical locales covered or the number and quality of sources, but more importantly, in terms of the author’s determination to highlight the agency and ingenuity of the enslaved people who, bracing every obstacle, ultimately brought the system of slavery to a grinding standstill

Marlene L. Daut, author of The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe

Rebellion and Resistance of the Enslaved in the Atlantic World

The ending of the slave trade and abolition of slavery by European powers during the 19th century is generally told as the work of enlightened liberals fighting against entrenched slaving interests in Africa, the Caribbean, and European capitals. Sudhir Hazareesingh here turns this narrative on its head, showing how the enslaved resisted their oppressors from the earliest years of the Atlantic slave trade in the 16th century until the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865, and how this opposition was the driving force for change. 
 Daring To Be Free portrays the struggle for liberation from the perspective of the enslaved, wherever possible in their own words. It shines a light on the lives of revolutionaries like Toussaint Louverture, José Antonio Aponte, Nat Turner, and the pregnant rebel Solitude; freed writers of narrative accounts like Frederick Douglass and Ottobah Cugoano; and the countless maroons, insurgents and conspirators whose acts of defiance destabilised the slave order in the colonies and galvanized the movement for abolition in France, Britain, and the United States. Hazareesingh gives particular emphasis to the powerful roles of women as campaigners, disruptors and warriors. 
 
Drawing on written archives and oral history, as well as a rich body of secondary sources, the book traces the networks of cooperation that connected runaway settlements, covert rebellions and organized uprisings from Haiti, Jamaica, Brazil and Cuba to Mauritius and the United States. It shows us how the struggle for liberty was shaped not only by western Enlightenment ideals but by the spiritual, martial, and religious influences from the lives of the enslaved in Africa before the Middle Passage – and by the inspiring example of Haiti, the first successful anticolonial revolution and the first independent black state, which echoed down the 19th century. 
 
Daring To Be Free reshapes our understanding of Atlantic slavery by portraying how enslaved lives were defined not by their dehumanisation at the hands of colonialists and slavers but by their own resilience, solidarity, and commitment to freedom. It also examines the afterlife of the slave trade in contemporary discussions about the legacy of slavery and possibilities for redress, reparations, and memorial in our own time.

Sudhir Hazareesingh

Praise for Daring to be Free

[An] absorbing and revelatory history of black resistance to the transatlantic trade ... a marvel of historical analysis and research. Hazareesingh maintains that Enlightenment ideals alone did not abo ...

A sweeping history of black resistance from 1500 to 1900 … Studded with novelistic vignettes of insurrection, it doubles as a brisk history of Atlantic slavery. Hazareesingh writes with a wry lucidity, ...

This stunning revisionist saga [is] a remarkable reorientation of the history of the modern world

[An] absorbing and revelatory history of black resistance to the transatlantic trade ... a marvel of historical analysis and research. Hazareesingh maintains that Enlightenment ideals alone did not abo ...

A sweeping history of black resistance from 1500 to 1900 … Studded with novelistic vignettes of insurrection, it doubles as a brisk history of Atlantic slavery. Hazareesingh writes with a wry lucidity, ...

This stunning revisionist saga [is] a remarkable reorientation of the history of the modern world

[An] absorbing and revelatory history of black resistance to the transatlantic trade ... a marvel of historical analysis and research. Hazareesingh maintains that Enlightenment ideals alone did not abo ...

A sweeping history of black resistance from 1500 to 1900 … Studded with novelistic vignettes of insurrection, it doubles as a brisk history of Atlantic slavery. Hazareesingh writes with a wry lucidity, ...

This stunning revisionist saga [is] a remarkable reorientation of the history of the modern world

Books by Sudhir Hazareesingh

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter