The Black Jacobins: the Haitian revolution against slavery — intro speech

A speech by Dan Davison, a labour activist and sociology PhD student at the University of Cambridge, for a talk on C.L.R. James and the Haitian Revolution held in July 2020. Future meetings: https://workersliberty.org/meetings Read online: https://workersliberty.org/story/2020-08-26/black-jacobins-haitian-revolution-against-slavery All audio: https://workersliberty.org/audio Cyril Lionel Robert James (CLR James) was born in Trinidad in 1901. He wrote his first book, a novel called Minty Alley in the 1920s (published in 1936), while a school teacher in Trinidad; the book is a critique of class and colonialism, and indicated a lifelong interest in integrating race and class struggles. James, spent six years in the UK before the Second World War, joining the ranks of British Trotskyism. In 1938 he travelled to the US at the invitation of the American Socialist Workers’ Party and stayed for 15 years. In the same year The Black Jacobins was published. James left the Trotskyist movement in 1951 and from that time, until his death in 1989, James had a long and varied socialist and literary “career”, remaining a Marxist but also heavily influenced by Pan-Africanism. The Black Jacobins is the story of the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804, focusing on the life and leadership of the ex-slave leader Toussaint L’Ouverture. It is also a history of European colonialism, the slave plantation system, the huge sugar factories of the French colony of San Domingue (the eastern half of the island that is now Haiti). Slave resistance came first in the form of flight to the mountains and forming of maroon band. But the French Revolution created a political conflict in the colony, one of many dimensions, including of whites against the French monarchy, of the free people of colour as well as the slaves. One ex-slave Toussaint Breda, later Toussaint L’Ouverture (meaning opening to liberty) joined up with the expanding slave army in the mountains; they created a disciplined fighting force. What happened next is a complex story of shifting alliances, increasing radicalisation, the end of slavery, and a war for independence.