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The Black Jacobins
The Black Jacobins
Sep 19, 2024 6:09 PM

Author:C L R James,James Walvin,Don Gilet

The Black Jacobins

Brought to you by Penguin.

In 1791, inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution, the slaves of San Domingo rose in revolt. Despite invasion by a series of British, Spanish and Napoleonic armies, their twelve-year struggle led to the creation of Haiti, the first independent black republic outside Africa. Only three years later, the British and Americans ended the Atlantic slave trade.

In this outstanding example of vivid, committed and empathetic historical analysis, C. L. R. James illuminates these epoch-making events. He explores the appalling economic realities of the Caribbean economy, the roots of the world's only successful slave revolt and the utterly extraordinary former slave - Toussaint L'Ouverture - who led them. Explicitly written as part of the fight to end colonialism in Africa, The Black Jacobins put the slaves themselves centre stage, boldly forging their own destiny against nearly impossible odds. It remains one of the essential texts for understanding the Caribbean - and the region's inextricable links with Europe, Africa and the Americas.

© C. L. R. James 2001 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Reviews

The black Plato of our generation ... the founding father of African emancipation.

—— The Times

The Black Jacobins is not only a groundbreaking historical work; it is a masterpiece in story-telling and analysis.

—— Gary Younge

Contains some of the finest and most deeply felt polemical writing against slavery and racism ever to be published.

—— Time Out

The Black Jacobins is one of the great books of the twentieth century ... one that wrote the history of a people supposedly without history.

—— Catherine Hall

James is, quite simply, the outstanding West Indian of the twentieth century.

—— Caryl Phillips

A starting point and an intellectual inspiration ... a classic of masterly historical writing.

—— James Walvin

James is not afraid to touch his pen with the flame of ardent personal feeling - a sense of justice, love of freedom, admiration for heroism, hatred for tyranny - and his detailed, richly documented and dramatically written book holds a deep and lasting interest.

—— New York Times

Revolutionarily, the book abandoned the old narrative of black victimhood in favour of accenting the agency of the formerly enslaved who, fuelled by a desire for liberty, fought to achieve autonomy.

—— Colin Grant , Prospect

The standard and the main text through which the Haitian revolution is studied ... a book I've read back to back many times ... An incredibly brilliant book, an undeniably magnificent contribution to scholarship.

—— Akala's Great Reads

Reading and rereading The Black Jacobins, I am struck by its incredible wit and humanity, and James' determination to write a history of slavery in the Caribbean in which people of African descent appear as thinking, feeling human agents - in other words, as the protagonists of their own history and not background characters in an essentially European story.

—— Dr Liam J. Liburd, Assistant Professor of Black British History, Durham University

'This biography is a many-faceted gem'

—— Asian Review of Books

Weaving together biography and her personal narrative . . . [this is] an engaging book, with twists, turns, and detours galore'

—— Kirkus Reviews

'[Manera Sambuy's] eloquent and poetic prose enlivens the searching historiography. Original and difficult to classify, [In Search of Amrit Kaur] is a pleasure to read'

—— Publishers Weekly

Impeccable research gives the bravest of the brave the limelight they deserve

—— Ian Dear, author of Ten Commando

X Troop reads like a page-turning thriller. Cinematic in their scope and rich description, these are the heretofore unknown stories of young European Jewish emigres clawing their way out of Nazi-occupied Europe and finding refuge in the UK, only to be interned as enemy aliens in horrific camps in Canada and Australia, before being recruited by Churchill and Lord Mountbatten for their brains, brawn, languages, and anti-Nazi zeal. In Garrett's brilliant telling, based on original interviews and deep-dive archival research, their return to the continent as elite Allied super-commandos is both heart-stopping and heart-breaking

—— James Young, Founding Director Institute for Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies and author of The Stages of Memory

Thrilling . . . X Troop stands as a fitting testament to a unique band of brothers

—— Nathan Abrams , Nation Cymru

Based on declassified military records, wartime diaries, and interviews with commandos and their families, X Troop vividly charts the special unit's missions, from storming Pegasus Bridge on D-Day to successfully liberating a trooper's parents' from the Theresienstadt concentration camp to capturing escaped Nazis after the war

—— Smithsonian Magazine

Garrett recounts in this dramatic and deeply researched history the WWII exploits of X Troop, a British commando unit made up of Jewish refugees from Austria, Germany, and Hungary . . . Garrett folds vivid profiles of Lord Mountbatten, Lord Lovat, and other prominent military figures into the story, and skilfully draws from war diaries and interviews with surviving X Troopers. This scrupulous history shines a well-deserved spotlight on its heroic subjects

—— Publishers Weekly

This dramatic, previously untold story of extraordinary covert valor and victory takes readers all across the European front, culminating in the shock of the Terezin concentration camp. This tale of profoundly motivated and capable men of action on a noble mission, each profiled in condensed biographies, is a rousing and redefining portrait of an, until now, overlooked group of dedicated warriors who played an outsized role in defeating the Third Reich. Garrett has added a crucial chapter to the always relevant and ever-deepening history of WWII and the Holocaust

—— Booklist

X Troop is the fiercest British Second World War commando unit you have likely never heard of... The page-turning account is replete with astounding feats that were unknown until now, thanks to the author's success in declassifying long-sealed, top-secret British military records... [Garrett's] experience researching and writing vividly about combat shines through in X Troop

—— Renee Ghert-Zand , Jewish News

[A] thrilling story

—— Daily Telegraph, *Summer Reads of 2021*

Garrett is to be commended for bringing to life this little-known tale of extraordinary wartime heroism by this group of Jewish refugees in the service of Britain

—— History of War


Vivid and starkly unsentimental... X Troop is a gripping story of Jewish courage and empowerment in the midst of darkness and sorrow

—— Jewish Review of Books

The Lion House presents a historical universe that captivates and astonishes and is near-impossible to put down. A superb example of historical literature and research

—— RICHARD WHATMORE, Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews

Full of breath-taking events at the cross-roads of empires at a moment in history when notions such as Europe, Asia, Christianity and Islam were infinitely more fluid and permeable than they are today

—— KEREM OKTEM, Professor of International Relations at Ca' Foscari University, Venice

Original... de Bellaigue... offers a vivid presentation of events, re-imagined as scenes and episodes... a different, literary kind [of history]

—— Noel Malcolm , Times Literary Supplement

De Bellaigue writes with impecable scholarship, piecing together contemporary accounts to create a thrilling narrative

—— Church Times

De Bellaigue is an expert stylist, sensitive to rhythm and vocabulary, and passionate in his pursuit of the fugitive detail that gives meaning to a whole episode

—— Literary Review

An exhilarating read

—— Rose Shepherd , Saga Magazine

An engrossing book... This is history turned into drama and poetry, awesomely spectacular yet also intensely intimate

—— Yasmin Alibhai-Brown , iNews

The world of Suleyman the Magnificent...is brought to life in this history

—— The Times, *The Year’s Top 50 Non-Fiction Books*

A masterpiece

—— Monty Don

Jessie Child's The Siege of Loyalty House turns an English Civil War stand-off into a fable of murderous polarisation: gripping, timely history

—— Spectator, *Best Books of 2022 I*

The Siege of Loyalty House ... tingles with a discerning historical imagination

—— Spectator, *Best Books of 2022 II*

[A] thrilling tale of war

—— Mail on Sunday

[A] gripping tale of a royalist house standing its grown against the Roundheads ... Atmospheric, unflinching, and at times extraordinarily witty

—— UK Daily News, *Best History and Politics Books of 2022*

[A] poignant book... the story is timeless

—— Economist, *Books of the Year*

Compelling

—— Spectator, *Books of the Year 2022*

Exhaustively researched and beautifully written, [The Siege of Loyalty House] tells the story of the epic two-year siege of Basing House, a royalist mansion finally captured by Oliver Cromwell in 1645.

—— Daily Express, *Books of the Year 2022*

When you are as good a writer as Jessie Childs, and as assuredly immersed in the archives, the pages zing with the technicolour of celluloid. ... [A] masterpiece.

—— Critic, *Non-fiction books of the year 2022*

Childs writes an engrossing, spellbinding narrative while laying out a clear and comprehendible history

—— New York Journal of Books

The broad subject of this poignant book is what happens to people during civil war: how quickly and imperceptibly order becomes chaos and decency yields to cruelty. In other words, how close to inhumanity humanity always is. The focus is on an episode in the English civil war, but the story is timeless

—— Economist

A gripping account of the agony at Basing, The Siege of Loyalty House is also a potted social history of the civil wars and how they started. Jessie Childs, [is] a gifted storyteller

—— London Review of Books
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