
“This is the most authoritative confirmation to date of the intellectual stature of C. L. R. James and the prophetic grandeur of his great classic, The Black Jacobins. Some eighty years after its first publication, readers of different generations and across a diversity of national origins document their admiration of the depth and spontaneity of James’s analytical interpretation of the Haitian Revolution. It was the first and only example in modern history of a successful slave revolt when a population of enslaved Africans defeated three European armies and converted a slave plantation into the Independent Republic of Haiti. The nineteenth century had judged it inconceivable; and ever since it has survived a universal silence.” — George Lamming
“The Black Jacobins, with its unforgettable story of Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, is one of the great books of the twentieth century. The Black Jacobins Reader provides us with a rich selection of reflections on C. L. R. James’s achievement and his own rethinkings over time. Whether understood as a cultural history of revolution before cultural history; a classic text for revolutionaries; a meditation on universal history; a pioneering Marxist analysis of the slave trade, slavery, and modern capitalism; an inspiration for generations of historians; an exploration of what it means to be ‘West Indian’; a disruption of orthodox notions of historical temporality or a provocation to think about the relation between the past and the present; or indeed any combination of these; it is undoubtedly a book that continues to inspire many. Black activists in U.S. prisons, writers, and historians are amongst those who remind us, in different ways, of the power of a text such as this—one that wrote the history of a people supposedly without history.” — Catherine Hall
Containing a wealth of new scholarship and rare primary documents, The Black Jacobins Reader provides a comprehensive analysis of C. L. R. James’s classic history of the Haitian Revolution. In addition to considering the book’s literary qualities and its role in James’s emergence as a writer and thinker, the contributors discuss its production, context, and enduring importance in relation to debates about decolonization, globalization, postcolonialism, and the emergence of neocolonial modernity. The Reader also includes the reflections of activists and novelists on the book’s influence and a transcript of James’s 1970 interview with Studs Terkel.
Haiti / David M. Rudder xxi
Acknowledgments xxiii
Introduction: Rethinking The Black Jacobins / Charles Forsdick and Christian Høgsbjerg 1
Part I. Personal Reflection
1. The Black Jacobins in Detroit: 1963 / Dan Georgakas 55
2. The Impact of C. L. R. James’s The Black Jacobins / Mumia Abu-Jamal 58
3. C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins, and The Making of Haiti / Carolyn E. Fick 60
4. The Black Jacobins, Education, and Redemption / Russell Maroon Shoatz 70
5. The Black Jacobins, Past and Present / Selma James 73
Part II. The Haitian Revolution: Histories and Philosophies
6. Reading The Black Jacobins: Historical Perspectives / Laurent Dubois 87
7. Haiti and Historical Time / Bill Schwarz 93
8. The Theory of Haiti: The Black Jacobins and the Poetics of Universal History / David Scott 115
9. Fragments of a Universal History: Global Capital, Mass Revolution, and the Idea of Equality in The Black Jacobins / Nick Nesbitt 139
10. “We Are Slaves and Slaves Believe in Freedom”: The Problematizing of Revolutionary Emancipation in The Black Jacobins / Claudius Fergus 162
11. “To Place Ourselves in History”: The Haitian Revolution in British West Indies Thought before The Black Jacobins / Matthew J. Smith 178
Part III. The Black Jacobins: Texts and Contexts
12. The Black Jacobins and the Long Haitian Revolution: Archives, History, and the Writing of Revolution / Anthony Bogues 197
13. Refiguring Resistance: Historiography, Fiction, and the Afterlives of Toussaint Louverture / Charles Forsdick 215
14. On “Both Sides” of the Haitian Revolution? Rethinking Direct Democracy and National Liberation in The Black Jacobins / Matthew Quest 235
15. The Black Jacobins: A Revolutionary Study of Revolution, and of a Caribbean Revolution / David Austin 256
16. Making Drama our of the Haitian Revolution from Below: C. L. R. James’s The Black Jacobins Play / Rachel Douglas 278
17. “On the Wings of Atalanta” / Aldon Lynn Nielsen 297
Part IV. Final Reflections
18. Afterword to The Black Jacobins‘s Italian Edition / Madison Smartt Bell 313
19. Introduction to the Cuban Edition of The Black Jacobins / John H. Bracey 322
Appendix 1. C. L. R. James and Studs Terkel Discuss The Black Jacobins on WFMT Radion (Chicago), 1970 329
Appendix 2. The Revolution in Theory / C. L. R. James 353
Appendix 3. Translator’s Foreword by Pierre Naville to the 1949 / 1983 French Editions 367
Bibliography 383
Contributors 411
Index 415