The Black Jacobins

by C.L.R. James

This powerful and impassioned history of the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1803 is the classic account of the largest successful revolt by enslaved people in history.

“One of the seminal texts about the history of slavery and abolition. . . . Provocative and empowering.” –The New York Times Book Review

The Black Jacobins, by Trinidadian historian C. L. R. James, was the first major analysis of the uprising that began in the wake of the storming of the Bastille in France and became the model for liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of plantation owners toward enslaved people was horrifyingly severe. And it is the story of a charismatic and barely literate enslaved person named Toussaint L’Ouverture, who successfully led the Black people of San Domingo against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces—and in the process helped form the first independent post-colonial nation in the Caribbean.

Paperback | 464 pages | Penguin Random House | 1989