Book – The Black Jacobins by CLR James

 Introduction

This is a profound book that indirectly unveiled authentic spirituality, its role in fuelling collective resilience under adversity and its implacable feeding of resistance to uphold human dignity under oppression. Although a historical text, its strongest scent is located in hope and truth. Even though the main characters and victims are Africans under the most brutal slave regimes, the critical point is that the human spirit is indomitable and indefatigable.

Summary

CLR James set out to explore the complex historiographical dimensions of  San Domingo/Haiti, the richest place in the western hemisphere under pre-revolutionary France. This stratified racist society with enslaved Africans at the bottom was ruled with injustice, marginalisation, oppression and death. The enslaved were spiritually fed from the springs of African religion with crumbs of oppressor’s Catholicism. Whites occupy the top, followed by the mixed race (mullatoes). For the French elite, the African is less than human both in law and in fact! Uneven power and unequal spatial relations defined the place and system.

Within the rigid structures of unequal relations, periodic flows of latent humane exchanges between peoples occurred. These were exchanges in virtues, intelligibility, truth, goodness, beauty and love. In isolated spaces and scarce times; movements of the Spirit defiantly overflowed in attention, intelligence, reason and responsibility. The oppressed were neither isolated nor lacking in hope, truth, knowledge, wisdom, love, dignity, management, military science, strategy and faith. Conventional wisdom of every age dissolve the expectation that oppressed peoples could rise up and overthrow imposition irreversibly.

Then French revolution removed the monarchy unleashing multiple processes that led to the abolition of slavery in the empire including San Domingo/Haiti. The human spirit knows freedom inherently and once it is secure will only be surrendered on the altar of death. It is this liberation from slavery and the collective fear of returning that sowed the seeds of the Haitian revolution under a former slave, General Toussaint L’Ouverture, the quintessential authentic spiritual person. Once Napoleon Bonaparte reintroduced slavery in the empire, war between evil and good was inevitable. How can a people clothe in dignity deliberately relinquish their freedom? Either freedom in life or death with dignity. A true revolution from below spiced with pressure from without!

Napoleon prioritised ignorance and ego with the sole purpose of reinstating slavery in San Domingo. A combination of variables united to frustrate the British army in their comprehensive military defeat by L’Ouverture in 1796 and the revolutionary defeat of French General Leclerc by a former Haitian slave, General Dessalines. 1802 independence rose from the ashes of sacrifice, blood and death. The biggest weapon of the revolution were collective investment in authentic spirituality, total commitment to dignity and defiant hope to resist evil.  

The living and the dead bore indescribable sufferings, industrial-scale genocides, redoubtable resilience, resistance in fortitude, total commitment to hope and authentic spirituality in revolution. The former enslaved snatch revolutionary freedom by defeating an evil empire clothe in arrogance. This is a beautiful insight on the human spirit and an unvarnished celebration of truth. Moreso the African in every age. I encouraged you to read the text.

Life is beautiful!