The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution

By C.L.R. James

CW: racism, graphic depictions of violence, sexual violence

This powerful, intensely dramatic book is the definitive account of the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1803, a revolution that began in the wake of Bastille but became the model for Third World liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of master toward slave was commonplace and ingeniously refined. And it is the story of a barely literate slave named Toussaint L'Ouverture, who led the black people of San Domingo in a successful struggle against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces and in the process helped form the first independent nation in the Caribbean.