African Presences in C.L.R. James’s The Black Jacobins

• In Event: African-Caribbean Connections

Description for Program

The eminent Marxist historian CLR James makes constant reference to colonial Africa in his classic history of Toussaint Louverture, The Black Jacobins. For James, the participation of Africa-born captives in the Saint-Domingue masses importantly galvanized the inevitable revolution, with Toussaint Louverture himself connected to Africa by way of his father, "son of a petty chieftain in Africa," and endowed with a set of skills that would set him apart from other captives on the Bayon de Libertat plantations. In a text so often about the exceptional character of individuals, Africa and Africanness play an essential role in characterizing the Haitian masses' will toward freedom and their unwillingness to bend to authority. At the same time, the specter of uncontrollable, irrational mass behavior also haunts James’s text. Thus, this paper ultimately argues that the slave masses' Africanness occupies an ambiguous position in The Black Jacobins, contributing significantly to the anti-autocratic spirit of the rebellion but also playing a role in the socioeconomic logjams that characterized Louverture's policy.

Author

• Xavier Lee, University of California Davis