Why you should give a fuck and read C.L. R. James

A few months ago, I had been brushing up on French grammar to pass the time with what would otherwise feel like a wasted investment, when I started reading Mark Steel's Vive La Revolution! on impulse, seeing it in Barnes & Noble and trying to give some context to the language I was working on. This led to thinking about the Haitian Revolution again, and finally splurging the $4 on Amazon to get a pristine used copy of C.L.R. James' The Black Jacobins. As an intellectual wanna-be, whose only access to a circle of people who read beyond comic books (not to diss comic books, like anything, there's some good stuff out there) is directly from college, I've been facing the realization that I lack knowledge of any histories whatsoever (including those of the United States), aside from what I have gleaned sideways from reading a lot of literature and a few literary theory/analytical works. Despite my experience of every lit. professor I had trumpeting the worth of reading the literary works we discussed in their historical contexts (new historicism, I think it's called), almost none of the, I dunno, at least 12 relevant course syllabi assigned had any actual 'history' texts in a full, comprehensive book format. I mean, I understand, expecting a 'comprehensive' book on anything is asking a lot, but even if I define a history as the bare minimum of recounting wars, popular political events, movements, clashes, revolutions, demonstrations, strikes and riots that shape societies, and putting dates next to these and framing it in a larger (worldwide and time) context, I can't say I've been asked to read anything that fits this criteria. Thank you professors. Thank you public and private education.

Why The Black Jacobins is valuable

The book's merit stands on it's own and doesn't need my input, but here it is.... James, as a writer is unique in that his paragraphs are broken up into concise, logical sections that build up the reader's understanding of the global actions leading up to Haitian independence in 1804. Not only is the writing tight, but it is also passionate and compelling, which motivates you to read further. He is morally uncompromising when dealing with slave-traders and the bourgeois classes that benefited from it, which seems a rare trait in a lot of writers, but for all the wrong reasons. He juxtaposes the struggle of newborn Republican France against Monarchy with the slaves of Saint Domingue struggle for liberty, who were inspired by the French masses' assertion of their own rights, and analyzes the global forces at work, most notably those of France, Britain, Spain and the United States, and how they all share in their practice of imperialism, capitalism and hypocrisy. While there have been accusations that James wrote a hagiography of Toussaint L'Ouverture, chronicling his life as if he were a 'holy person,' even if it was true, it makes moral sense given the vast amount of silenced black heroes and the cult of black inferiority that underwrites most literature and scholarship of the period and now. The same could be said of popular revolutionary figures in general. In fact, one of the pleasures of reading James is how he connects the events of revolutionary Haiti with the struggles for African independence, and how on point he is indeed, seeing that The Black Jacobins was published in 1938 and the second edition, which James only lightly revised, was put out in 1963, in the midst of the dawn of African independence movements. James even participated in these movements, serving as an editor and in other capacities publishing political material. In this book, James refuses to fall into racial romanticism and presents a more complex view of the intrigue, rivalries, betrayals, confusion, deception and dissembling that dotted the struggle of the mulattoes and blacks in Saint Domingue in navigating the many tensions (status, class, racial) between the French aristocratic bureaucrats and the colonists who each sought to divide and conquer, making any alliance that was convenient to the moment as long as it eventually meant the return of slavery and more profit for themselves. James shows how the institution of slavery was maintained by systematized force and barbarity, and especially fear and terrorism. He deserves props for making explicit the necessary international connections that shaped Haiti's history and analyzing them in the context of the late 18th century. His extensive use of documents directly taken from the players in the revolution makes the machinations of the colonial machine and the resistance carry the weight of immediacy. It's a great book for how it manages to take the story of the most profitable colony in the world at the time and show how slaves actualized their own liberty and also for it's implications and lessons for the future struggles of the labouring poor.