The Black Jacobins

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by C.L.R. James

A classic and impassioned account of the first revolution in the Third World.

This powerful, intensely dramatic book is the definitive account of the Haitian Revolution of 1794-1803, a revolution that began in the wake of the Bastille but became the model for the 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.

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Our favourite quote from The Black Jacobins

When history is written as it ought to be written, it is the moderation and long patience of the masses at which men will wonder, not their ferocity.

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When history is written as it ought to be written, it is the moderation and long patience of the masses at which men will wonder, not their ferocity.

— C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins