Episode 24
February 14, 2020
The Black Jacobins
Hosted by Chris Piuma and Suzanne Conklin Akbari
The slaves destroyed tirelessly. Like the peasants in the Jacquerie or the Luddite wreckers, they were seeking their salvation in the most obvious way, the destruction of what they knew was the cause of their sufferings; and if they destroyed much it was because they had suffered much. […] From their masters they had known rape, torture, degradation, and, at the slightest provocation, death. They returned in kind. […] They, whose women had undergone countless violations, violated all the women who fell into their hands, often on the bodies of their still bleeding husbands, fathers and brothers. ‘Vengeance! Vengeance!’ was their war-cry, and one of them carried a white child on a pike as a standard.
And yet they were surprisingly moderate, then and afterwards, far more humane than their masters had been or would ever be to them.
The Revolution cluster begins! C.L.R. James’s The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution is a remarkable book about the history of the Haitian Revolution (1794–1803) and the astonishing man who led the revolution, Toussaint L’Ouverture. First published in 1938, it remains read today, both for its historical insight and for the vividness of its writing. (It has even recently been optioned to be adapted into a tv series!) Suzanne and Chris grapple with the genre of history writing, the way revolution acts as a protagonist in this book, and the exceptional life and work of its author.
![[Episode artwork]](/images/podcast/art/s/spouter.png)
The Spouter-Inn C.L.R. James’s history of the Haitian Revolution. More episodes
Show Notes.
C.L.R. James: The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. [Bookshop.]
Other C.L.R. James books mentioned: Beyond a Boundary; Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We LIve in; Minty Alley; The Life of Captain Cipriani; and the play that preceded The Black Jacobins.
An interesting review of the new edition of that play.
Abolqasem Ferdowsi: Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings.
Thomas Carlyle: The French Revolution.
Edward Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Herodotus: The Histories.
Thucydides: The History of the Peloponnesian War.
The Black Jacobins radio play from 1971.
The Black Jacobins has been optioned for television.
A 1970 interview with C.L.R. James about The Black Jacobins.