Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture
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About this ebook
Winner of the 2021 Wolfson History Prize
“Black Spartacus is a tour de force: by far the most complete, authoritative and persuasive biography of Toussaint that we are likely to have for a long time . . . An extraordinarily gripping read.” —David A. Bell, The Guardian
A new interpretation of the life of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture
Among the defining figures of the Age of Revolution, Toussaint Louverture is the most enigmatic. Though the Haitian revolutionary’s image has multiplied across the globe—appearing on banknotes and in bronze, on T-shirts and in film—the only definitive portrait executed in his lifetime has been lost. Well versed in the work of everyone from Machiavelli to Rousseau, he was nonetheless dismissed by Thomas Jefferson as a “cannibal.” A Caribbean acolyte of the European Enlightenment, Toussaint nurtured a class of black Catholic clergymen who became one of the pillars of his rule, while his supporters also believed he communicated with vodou spirits. And for a leader who once summed up his modus operandi with the phrase “Say little but do as much as possible,” he was a prolific and indefatigable correspondent, famous for exhausting the five secretaries he maintained, simultaneously, at the height of his power in the 1790s.
Employing groundbreaking archival research and a keen interpretive lens, Sudhir Hazareesingh restores Toussaint to his full complexity in Black Spartacus. At a time when his subject has, variously, been reduced to little more than a one-dimensional icon of liberation or criticized for his personal failings—his white mistresses, his early ownership of slaves, his authoritarianism —Hazareesingh proposes a new conception of Toussaint’s understanding of himself and his role in the Atlantic world of the late eighteenth century. Black Spartacus is a work of both biography and intellectual history, rich with insights into Toussaint’s fundamental hybridity—his ability to unite European, African, and Caribbean traditions in the service of his revolutionary aims. Hazareesingh offers a new and resonant interpretation of Toussaint’s racial politics, showing how he used Enlightenment ideas to argue for the equal dignity of all human beings while simultaneously insisting on his own world-historical importance and the universal pertinence of blackness—a message which chimed particularly powerfully among African Americans.
Ultimately, Black Spartacus offers a vigorous argument in favor of “getting back to Toussaint”—a call to take Haiti’s founding father seriously on his own terms, and to honor his role in shaping the postcolonial world to come.
Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize | Finalist for the PEN / Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography
Named a best book of the year by the The Economist | Times Literary Supplement | New Statesman
Sudhir Hazareesingh
Sudhir Hazareesingh was born in Mauritius. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and has been a Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford, since 1990. He has written extensively about French intellectual and cultural history, and among his books are The Legend of Napoleon, In the Shadow of the General and How the French Think. He won the Prix du Mémorial d'Ajaccio and the Prix de la Fondation Napoléon for the first of these, a Prix d'Histoire du Sénat for the second, and the Grand Prix du Livre d'Idées for the third.
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Reviews for Black Spartacus
11 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5An engrossing exploration of the turmoil in Saint-Domingue - what was to become Haiti - in the 18th & early 19th century as black slaves struggled for freedom. There were slave revolts and alliances with nearby Spanish Santo Domingo (a slave owning country), French republicans unsure whether to emancipate slaves or not, and even British forces invited in by the local French slave owners to bolster their position. The whole region was a confused shambles of conflicting interests. Enter freed slave Toussaint Louverture who fought to free the slaves and against colonial oppression, always advocating equality between black, mixed-race and white inhabitants – to the extent of granting amnesties to white colonists in the face of opposition from his fellow republicans.The book is a bit of a hagiography but can’t disguise the fact that he was a self-serving opportunist at many points. He hung back from the slave revolt at first, swapped sides between Spain and France for advancement, disrespected and undermined colonial administrators sent out from republican France in order to get his own men in place, in fact, he played politics with the revolution, garnering political as well as military power to himself and creating an Assembly to rubber-stamp his constitution. As self-proclaimed governor he took dictatorial control over all aspects of life, taking wealthy plantations for himself or distributing them to favoured cronies, and forcing freed blacks back to the plantations in very harsh conditions which, while not actual slavery – they were paid – were at the very least forced labour.Of course, Buonaparte and the French couldn’t allow a black man to set himself up as governor of one of their colonies, so sent an invasion force who were certainly planning on restoring slavery as they had done in many other Caribbean colonies. After fighting them to a standstill Toussaint managed to negotiate a truce, but was tricked and imprisoned in France, where poor treatment caused his death in 1803. After his death his remaining forces managed to drive the French from Saint-Domingue, which henceforth became the free nation of Haiti.This book is a fascinating study, not just of one man who fought for freedom from slavery, but of a whole movement. Recommended.