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The Black Jacobins

  • Imprint: Penguin

  • ISBN: 9780140299816

  • Length: 384  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 17mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 266g

  • RRP: £14.99

The Black Jacobins

  • Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution

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 this classic 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'.

  • Imprint: Penguin

  • ISBN: 9780140299816

  • Length: 384  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 17mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 266g

  • RRP: £14.99

Reviews

  • The black Plato of our generation ... the founding father of African emancipation.

    The Times

  • Contains some of the finest and most deeply felt polemical writing against slavery and racism ever to be published.

    Time Out

  • The Black Jacobins is one of the great books of the twentieth century ... one that wrote the history of a people supposedly without history.

    Catherine Hall

  • James is, quite simply, the outstanding West Indian of the twentieth century.

    Caryl Phillips

  • A starting point and an intellectual inspiration ... a classic of masterly historical writing.

    James Walvin

  • James is not afraid to touch his pen with the flame of ardent personal feeling - a sense of justice, love of freedom, admiration for heroism, hatred for tyranny - and his detailed, richly documented and dramatically written book holds a deep and lasting interest.

    New York Times

More from this Author

About the Author

C. L. R. James

C. L. R. James was born in Trinidad in 1901 and was one of the prominent figures in the West Indian diaspora. He wrote extensively on Caribbean history, Marxist theory, literary criticism, Western civilisation, African politics, cricket and popular culture. He died in 1989.

C. L. R. James

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