Black Spartacus by Sudhir Hazareesingh ..... on the wireless ..... all this week

Now a long time ago I came across the book Black Jacobins, Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution.

The book was written in 1938 book by Trinidadian historian C. L. R. James, a history of the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804. 

It examines the brutal conditions of slavery as well as the social and political status of the slave-owners, poor or "small" whites, and "free" blacks and mulattoes leading up to the Revolution. 

The work explores the dynamics of the Caribbean economy and the European feudal system during the era before the Haitian Revolution, and places each revolution in comparative historical and economic perspective. Toussaint L'Ouverture becomes a central and symbolic character in James' narrative of the Haitian Revolution.*

And all this week there is a fresh look at Toussaint L'Ouverture on the wireless.

"Toussaint Louverture summed up the inhumanity of slavery in its systematic tendency ‘to tear away the son from his mother, the brother from his sister, the father from his son’.

In this first episode, Sudhir Hazareesingh looks at what little is known of Toussaint's early life, his progress to coachman and his education by the Jesuits.

As an intelligent man who could read, it is likely he was key in shaping the strategy of the slave uprising in 1791, but he was also a man of mystery and there is very little documented material of his life. He spread misinformation about himself and had a complex extended family with possibly 16 children.

Toussaint was a tactical leader and, after the uprising, he took time to consolidate his military position and as a rebel leader declared, ‘I was the first to favour a cause that I have always upheld ...what we have begun, I will finish’.Author: Sudhir Hazareesingh,  Abridger: Libby Spurrier, Reader: Adrian Lester, Producer: Celia de Wolff

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4"

Picture; A portrait of Toussaint Louverture, oil on Canvas, signed and dated 'Girardin a Nantes an '13'. (L’an XIII du calendrier républicain, correspond aux années 1804 et 1805 du calendrier grégorien.)

Source allposters.com AuthorAlexandre-François-Louis, comte de Girardin

*The Black Jacobins, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Jacobins

**Black Spartacus by Sudhir Hazareesingh, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000pff1