The Black Jacobins

About The Black Jacobins

A classic and impassioned account of the Haitian Revolution—the first revolution in the Third World and the model for the liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. 

“One of the seminal texts about the history of slavery and abolition. . . . Provocative and empowering.” –The New York Times Book Review

This powerful, intensely dramatic book is the definitive account of the Haitian Revolution of 1794-1803, a revolution that began in the wake of the Bastille. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of master toward slave was legendary. And it is the story of a barely literate slave named Toussaint L’Ouverture, who led the black people of San Domingo in a successful struggle against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces and in the process helped form the first independent nation in the Caribbean.