Black Spartacus

 

I recently perused Sudhir Hazareesingh's Toussaint Louverture book and found it very worthwhile. It is a welcome change from some of the more reactionary and questionable interpretations of Toussaint Louverture, as Hazareesingh seems to be more aligned with C.L.R. James. Of course, like many liberals, Hazareesingh seems most comfortable when stressing the revolutionary republicanism of Toussaint, particularly its promise of a multiracial fraternity that never really or deeply materialized. To his credit, he also stresses the various African and Creole (or "Caribbean") elements in Toussaint Louverture's politics, kinship practices, spirituality, and social relations, so he cannot really be accused of overly Westernizing Toussaint. However, one could do without the unfounded claims of "Amerindian" influences on Haitian Vodou. Perhaps the growing contradiction between the masses of ex-slaves and Toussaint's emerging elite could have also been more worthy of scrutiny, even though external threats probably made it increasingly difficult for the revolutionary leadership to imagine a world of peasant proprietorship. But overall a fine synthesis of the latest scholarship on the Haitian Revolution and provocative work on the legacy of Toussaint Louverture for Haiti and the rest of humanity.