This book examines the memoir of Toussaint Louverture—a former slave, general in the French army, and leader of the Haitian Revolution—and the memoir of his son, Isaac. The Revolution and its leaders have been studied and written about extensively. Until recently (2004), however, the memoir of Toussaint has received little attention—and only as a historical document. This is the first study that explores the 1802 work foremost as a literary text, a creative production that deploys the techniques of fiction and drama to make truth claims about the past; moreover, this is the first book-length study of Isaac Louverture’s memoir. The two texts are read as examples of how black men thought of themselves as “men” (citizens) and, therefore, how they expressed their masculinity, at that historical moment, as experiences of mourning and loss. This study builds upon three areas of scholarship: the tradition of memoir writing; historicist readings of Toussaint’s memoir; and descriptions and theories of men and masculinity within the black Atlantic. The study distinguishes itself in ways that will make it of interest to more than just historians: in addition to using the intersection of race and masculinity as an analytical tool, it speaks to the nature of literary creativity and it draws from studies examining the relationship between history, memory, and fiction. As a result, scholars and students in literary and cultural criticism, as well as those in gender and diasporic studies, will also find this study of interest and value.

At the end of the 1700s, French Saint Domingue was the richest and most brutal colony in the Western Hemisphere. A mere twelve years later, however, Haitian rebels had defeated the Spanish, British, and French and declared independence after the first—and only—successful slave revolt in history. Much of the success of the revolution must be credited to one man, Toussaint Louverture, a figure about whom surprisingly little is known. In this fascinating biography, Madison Smartt Bell, award-winning author of a trilogy of novels that investigate Haiti’s history, combines a novelist’s passion with a deep knowledge of the historical milieu that produced the man labeled a saint, a martyr, or a clever opportunist who instigated one of the most violent events in modern history. The first biography in English in over sixty years of the man who led the Haitian Revolution, this is an engaging reexamination of the controversial, paradoxical leader.

A powerful and impassioned historical account of the largest successful revolt by enslaved people in history: the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1803 “One of the seminal texts about the history of slavery and abolition.... Provocative and empowering.” —The New York Times Book Review The Black Jacobins, by Trinidadian historian C. L. R. James, was the first major analysis of the uprising that began in the wake of the storming of the Bastille in France and became the model for liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of plantation owners toward enslaved people was horrifyingly severe. And it is the story of a charismatic and barely literate enslaved person named Toussaint L’Ouverture, who successfully led the Black people of San Domingo against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces—and in the process helped form the first independent post-colonial nation in the Caribbean. With a new introduction (2023) by Professor David Scott.

A literary history of the Haitian Revolution that explores how scientific ideas about ‘race’ affected 19th-century understandings of the Haitian Revolution and, conversely, how understandings of the Haitian Revolution affected 19th-century scientific ideas about race.

The definitive biography of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture, leader of the only successful slave revolt in world history

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