The Black Jacobins

Author C.L.R. James
Narrator Don Gilet
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Publish Date 10 November 2022
Run Time 13 hours and 35 minutes
Format Audio
Genre History of the Americas, Revolutions, uprisings, rebellions, Slavery and abolition of slavery.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

In 1791, inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution, the slaves of San Domingo rose in revolt. Despite invasion by a series of British, Spanish and Napoleonic armies, their twelve-year struggle led to the creation of Haiti, the first independent black republic outside Africa. Only three years later, the British and Americans ended the Atlantic slave trade.

In this outstanding example of vivid, committed and empathetic historical analysis, C. L. R. James illuminates these epoch-making events. He explores the appalling economic realities of the Caribbean economy, the roots of the world's only successful slave revolt and the utterly extraordinary former slave - Toussaint L'Ouverture - who led them. Explicitly written as part of the fight to end colonialism in Africa, The Black Jacobins put the slaves themselves centre stage, boldly forging their own destiny against nearly impossible odds. It remains one of the essential texts for understanding the Caribbean - and the region's inextricable links with Europe, Africa and the Americas.

© C. L. R. James 2001 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

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

The Times

The Black Jacobins is not only a groundbreaking historical work; it is a masterpiece in story-telling and analysis.

Gary Younge

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

Revolutionarily, the book abandoned the old narrative of black victimhood in favour of accenting the agency of the formerly enslaved who, fuelled by a desire for liberty, fought to achieve autonomy.

Prospect

The standard and the main text through which the Haitian revolution is studied … a book I’ve read back to back many times … An incredibly brilliant book, an undeniably magnificent contribution to scholarship.

Akala's Great Reads

Reading and rereading The Black Jacobins, I am struck by its incredible wit and humanity, and James’ determination to write a history of slavery in the Caribbean in which people of African descent appear as thinking, feeling human agents – in other words, as the protagonists of their own history and not background characters in an essentially European story.

Dr Liam J. Liburd, Assistant Professor of Black British History, Durham University

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