What I Am Reading: "The Black Jacobins" by C.L.R. James

“If a revolution carries high overhead expenses, most of them it inherits from the freed of reactionaries and the cowardice of the so-called moderates. (p.141)

The Black Jacobins has been on my reading list, officially or unofficially, for years, and the Black Lives Matter protests earlier this year spurred me to finally read it, as well as other works on Black history by Black writers. The book is a history of the Haitian Revolution, written in the '30s by Marxist historian C.L.R. James; and is noteworthy not only for being a groundbreaking history of the subject, but also for linking that subject, in parentheticals, to the age in which it was written. As such, there is a wealth of subsequent commentary on the subject, some of which I believe I have on my future reading list. This post will thus be confined to my highlights on the book, but: the book did not disappoint, and lived up to its reputation.

Much of the Haitian Revolution depends on Toussaint L'Ouverture, its leader. In the beginning, C.L.R. James claims that the book will be in the vein of the Great Man theory of history, saying, "Great men make history, but only such history as it is possible for them to make. Their freedom of achievement is limited by the necessities of their environment. To portray the limits of those necessities and the realisation, complete or partial, of all possibilities, that is the true business of the historian." (p.x). Indeed, in the end of the book, the Great Man is the one who drops the ball, and the true motivators of the revolution are the masses, dragging their leaders along with them. But more on that later.

Saint-Domingue, or San Domingo as James has it, was the French colony encompassing the western half of Hispaniola. The colony imported slaves to produce sugar. As I learned about in The Black Count, France's not-entirely-terrible racial laws allowed for a mixed race society to build up on the island (James uses the term "mulatto," which I will henceforth use), alongside the "small whites" and the planter elite. This planter elite cooperated and was made up of the "maritime bourgeoise," as James terms them, who agitated for their interests in the Ancien Régime and in the Revolution. Most of them were transients only in the colony a limited time to get rich; and most were debauched, and murderous in the normal manner of slave-owners who need terror to maintain the racial hierarchy. The mulattoes, meanwhile, held an increasing amount of wealth and economic power; and the planters and small whites needed to co-opt them against the Black slaves while maintaining their own power through the color line, a tense state of affairs.

This was the situation in San Domingo when the French Revolution came. Despite their racial solidarity, the white underclass of non-planters had many of the same grievances as the peasants and proletariat of the metropole, and they, with some elements of the planters and middle class (since the French Revolution was a bourgeoise revolution to start with) rose against the royalist elements, who now looked to the mulattoes in class solidarity.

The revolutionaries, called the "Patriots" here, gained ground until a slave uprising began in the summer of 1791. Toussaint L'Ouverture, a 45-year old slave with some education who held some responsibilities on his plantation, joined the fighting after a month of looking after his master's family. He's given a portrayal that rings a little exaggerated:

"His post as steward of the livestock had given him experience in administration, authority, and intercourse with those who ran the plantation...He had read Caesar's Commentaries, which had given him some idea of the politics and the military art and the connection between them... [from other readings] he had a thorough grounding in the economics and politics, not only of San Domingo, but of all the great Empires of Europe which were engaged in colonial expansion and trade... Besides his knowledge and experience, through natural strength of character he had acquired a formidable mastery over himself, both mind and body... While still a child he determined to acquire not only knowledge but a strong body, and he strengthened himself by the severest exercises... He could swim across a dangerous river, jump on a horse at full speed and do what he liked with it." (p.91-92).

Toussaint L'Ouverture joined the slave uprising, and quickly rose to a position of command, training his own highly-effective elite guerilla unit. The slaves fought on behalf of the Royalists against the Patriots, led by their Assembly. This was pure political calculation, as many of the slave bands still organized themselves by the watchwords and ideals of the Revolution, they just expected the King to be the one to defend their rights against the revolting planter elite. Interestingly, when the first of many Commissions arrived from Revolutionary France, the fighting was not going well for the slaves, and Toussaint and other leaders were willing to end the fighting and restore slavery in exchange for amnesty. However, no matter the concessions they were willing to make, the Assembly would not agree, and they had their hearts set on repression. The Legislative Assembly in Revolutionary France, meanwhile, was willing to grant rights to mulattoes; defying the Patriots and gaining an ally against their potential anti-mercantalist drive for independence.

After events of the French Revolution took their course, the new legislature, the National Convention, was more radical and was willing to support the slaves. The mulattoes assisted a new expeditionary force that landed in 1792 against the Royalist forces. When these revolutionaries came to the verge of defeat, they promised freedom to the slaves in exchange for assistance. Despite this, Toussaint and his band fought for the Royalists and their allies the Spanish, and would not return to the French side of the lines regardless of promises by the local Revolutionary leadership.

National-level promises were another matter, however, and Toussaint switched sides to fight for the French after the National Assembly abolished slavery in 1794. This was a major event, one that would shape the Haitian revolution to its end: the ideals of the French Revolution, liberty, equality, and fraternity, put into practice. This earned the long-lasting, if not undying, loyalty of many former slaves to the French government. Toussaint and others now carried the fight against the Royalists and against an invading British force that had landed in 1793. He was skilled in dealing with former planters and other whites, and in politicking with various independent bands of slaves and maroons.

After the British were fought off, Toussaint and others cooperated with the French administration, under governor Étienne Laveaux. Politics were still complicated, as the mulatto communities, especially in the southern part of the colony, were pro-British, and plotted unsuccessfully against Toussaint and Laveaux in 1796, another example of class divisions transcending racial concerns.

Mainland French politics continued to play a role in the colony's administration, as the ascension of the Directory brought the "maritime bourgeoise" back into influence. After Toussaint encouraged Laveaux to run for and serve in the National Assembly to both provide a pro-Black legislator and remove a rival, the colony was administered by Sonthonax, another radically antiracist revolutionary. He built up a popular power base, but he, too, was outmaneuvered and sent home by Toussaint in 1797 (to make several long stories short). At this point, Toussaint knew that with the directory that some sort of backlash was coming, and wanted to make sure that the island had as many resources as possible to stand up to it. He was torn between two concerns: precluding any return to slavery, and operating within the French Revolutionary framework that had made abolition possible. He deposed the next French governor who had made moves toward disarmament and slavery reinstatement, but still did not want to fight the French. That governor, Gabriel Hédouville, attempted to stir up discord between the freed slave establishment and the mulatto establishment in the south. James says,

"Hédouville and his superiors belonged to the same breed as [the British who had attempted to sew discord between the slaves and the French]. Uninhibited, they wallowed with zest in the filth and mire of their political conceptions and needs, among the very leaders of their society, but nevertheless the very dregs of human civilization and moral standards. A historian who finds excuses for such conduct by references to the supposed spirit of the times, or by omission, or by silence, shows thereby that his account of events is not to be trusted. Hédouville after all was a product of the great French Revolution.... [contemporary reformers] were living lives which to [the British elite] made them into subversive enemies of society. They have their reasons. So have their counterparts of to-day. They fill our newspapers and our radios. The type is always with us, and so are their defenders." (p.223).

After Hédouville was sent packing, the situation was uncertain. Toussaint moved against his internal enemies in the south and made overtures to receive British and American trade, but still wished for rapprochement with the French. James describes Toussaint as moving into despotism as he pacified the southern mulattoes by 1800, dealt with other subversive elements, and prepared to march on the Spanish half of the island in 1801. He purged the military and shot some of his own officers in an effort to consolidate against his mulatto enemies, though James says that "all things considered he had been singularly humane." (p.236).

Everything went well for a few years after this, as Toussaint improved the island's infrastructure and education system, made its laws more just, and did other enlightened things. He was tireless and omnicompetent, dashing all across the country and having the undying love of the people. He and Napoleon played diplomatic games, with Toussaint never fully recognized as leader. Despite his heroic accomplishments, he was still taciturn and withdrawn, and this is what James views as his major error: he did not explain his policies. His power base among the military and the freed slaves saw him place whites, including former planters, including those who had fought him, in positions of authority and influence, because (as James says) he needed their skills to build up the colony's position. The policy itself wasn't the problem, the problem was that the masses, the proletariat, the freed slaves in this case, didn't understand it. They resented the influence of those they had fought to be free of. James says,

It was in method, and not in principle, that Toussaint failed. The race question is subsidiary to the class question in politics, and to think of imperialism in terms of race is disastrous. But to neglect the racial factor as merely incidental as an error only less grave than to make it fundamental… The black labourers saw only the old slave-owning whites. (p.283)

James says that Lenin would later do this the right way: he explained to the communists why he used the bourgeoise for his own purposes, while keeping a close eye on them. Toussaint alienated himself from his own power base in the name of using the old planters, to the point of putting down a revolt of his own troops, executing his own nephew whom they had hoped to empower. James says that the masses do the fighting in a revolutionary war, and Toussaint was alienating them instead of using them. In the short term, things were going fine, but Toussaint was not building his ground game for the long term problems.

James finds that Toussaint's other major error while waiting for Napoleon's reaction was that he was unwilling to make the full break with France, despite his efforts to build up the island in the face of inevitable French backlash. The French Revolution was too essential to his framework and designs (p.290). He still thought that he could outmaneuver Napoleon politically within the system. He did not raise the masses by telling them that the French were coming to re-enslave them (which they were, for economic reasons. Napoleon had considered leaving Toussaint alone and in power, but then he was rebuffed from his adventures in the East when the Czar died, and needed another income source). He extolled France and the Revolution, so when the time came, some of his own allies would not fight against it. Toussaint was too much of a Black Jacobin for his own good.

Napoleon's forces finally landed in early 1802. They were met with much confusion and indecisiveness, not least because their orders were to land peacefully and try to exile the leaders before re-establishing slavery. Some isolated units fought them, others, in the absence of leadership, submitted, or were tricked into doing so. By the time Toussaint and his followers had rallied and decided to go full scorched-earth on the invaders, the French troops had made considerable progress, and the Haitians retreated into the mountainous interior. Even during the heavy guerilla fighting and repulsion of attacks, Toussaint still hoped for peace with Napoleon. Surprisingly, this worked, and a truce was called after a few months of war.

Toussaint suffered further losses in confidence, especially from his Black generals. One of these, the independence-minded Jean-Jacques Dessalines, pretended to cooperate with the French, to the point of using his troops to put down other "brigands" still resisting French rule. Viewing Toussaint as the weak link, he manipulated the French to expedite their plan to capture him, and Toussaint was sent to France in May of 1802. The Black generals were not willing to make the jump back to fighting yet, even as guerilla fighting continued and the former slaves grew uneasy as slavery was re-established in other French colonies (James excerpts many letters from the French general, Leclerc, who deplores this destabilizing policy as he begs for more men, losing many to guerilla raids and to yellow fever). This is where I think James (non-explicitly) casts off the Great Man view, as he says that "It is the curse of the masses always, now as then, that those who have shouted most always quail when the time for action arrives, or worse still find some good reason for collaborating with the enemy." (p.338). "A black general dining with [French General] Lacroix pointed to his two daughters and asked him, 'Are these to go back to slavery?' It was as if they could not believe it. So your liberal or social-democrat hesitates and dithers until the sledge-hammer of Fascism falls on his head, or a Franco launches his carefully prepared counter-revolution." (p.347). The masses knew what needed doing, though their leadership did not.

Finally, in October of 1802, they rose. The Generals had heard too many times from the colonists arriving from France that slavery must be reinstated. James decided not give a full blow-by-blow account of the war, but Dessalines ended up as the Emperor at the end, massacring remaining whites at the suggestion of the British, who were still trying to cause division. Toussaint L'Ouverture, meanwhile, died in jail on April 7th, 1803, after his captors made every effort to weaken his health.

James connects this history many times to contemporary events, and connects it in the end to his hopes for liberation of Africa, even from those European powers that practice democracy. This is reinforced by the appendix in my 1963 edition of the book, which discusses independence and economics in the West Indies, as well as how the Haitians eventually cast off French influence in favor of Negritude, a connection to African culture. This African connection drove many West Indian independence leaders, even though they often had never set foot in Africa.

This book was dense, occasionally grandiose, and clearly had an ideological agenda. I thought it was great, and that it definitely lived up to its reputation. There are other side-elements that I didn't cover in this brief summary, such as how the British, under the Pitt administration, supported ending the slave trade because doing so would impoverish the French in their sugar-producing colony, while the British could still rely on the sugar from India.. It is both fun to read an explicitly Marxist view of history and jarring, as it places the book clearly as a historical artifact from when Marx and Lenin were praised (James’ view, quoted above, that class was more important than race in politics would certainly be the subject of more debate today). Regardless of this, and regardless of its place in the African diaspora canon as a foundational work that others built off of, The Black Jacobins was a very enlightening read on its own merits, and not just as an artifact of its time.