Home › Books › Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louve…
Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture
by
83/99
Critics' Rating Index
62/99
Readers' Rating Index
94/99
Scholars' Citation Index
94/99
Volume of Reviews
52/99
Volume of Reader Ratings
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
About This Book
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.
Reviews
"Tracing the growth of Louverture from revolutionary leader to mythic figure, this engrossing read reveals and recovers the historic place both he and the country of Haiti deserve to occupy in the story of the Atlantic world's creation and re-creation."
"the story of an island as well as a man ..."
"It is not without its own very strong point of view, presenting Toussaint above all as a fierce and effective opponent of slavery."
"Hazareesingh gives us a breathtaking picture of the decade of Toussaint's dream—a dream unlike any other, and one that must never be forgotten, because it still awaits its finale."
"It refutes those historians who have sought to place him uniquely in a French Enlightenment and republican tradition, arguing that much of his inspiration came from the Caribbean and from his experience of slavery as a young man."
"The narrative takes wing in these climactic sections."
"Though not entirely accessible to general readers, the book is evenhanded in its treatment of Toussaint and will be a useful addition to library collections ..."
"British-Mauritian writer Sudhir Hazareesingh writes a mesmerizing biography of fellow creole Toussaint Louverture ..."
"While previous attempts have often misinterpreted Louverture's deep relationships with the Europeans as some kind of racial or revolutionary betrayal, Hazareesingh illuminates his subject's ability to incorporate political and military strategies from various cultures and recast them in a more powerful form."
"In concisely written pages, Hazareesingh rescues Louverture from the ideological and political aggrandisements that so often misrepresented him in the past ..."
Preview
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!