**A powerful and impassioned historical account of the largest successful revolt by enslaved people in history: the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1803“One of the seminal texts about the history of slavery and abolition.... Provocative and empowering.” —The New York Times Book Review**The Black Jacobins, by Trinidadian historian C. L. R. James, was the first major analysis of the uprising that began in the wake of the storming of the Bastille in France and bec...

C.L.R. James was a leading figure in the independence movement in the West Indies, and the black and working-class movements in both Britain and the United States. As a major contributor to Marxist and revolutionary theory, his project was to discover, document, and elaborate the aspects of working-class activity that constitute the revolution in today’s world. In this volume, Noel Ignatiev, author of How the Irish Became White, provides an extensive introduction to James’ life an...

“Marxists envisage a total change in the basic structure of human relations. With that change our problems will not be solved overnight, but we will be able to tackle them with confidence. Such are the difficulties, contradictions, and antagonisms; and in the solution of them society moves forward and men and women feel they have a role in the development of their social surroundings. It is in this movement that we have the possibility of a good life.” —C.L.R. James, from Modern Politi...

A classic and impassioned account of the first revolution in the Third World.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 but became the model for the Third World liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of master toward slave was commonplace and ingeniously refined. And it ...

Over sixty years ago, C.L.R. James and a small circle of collaborators making up the radical left Johnson-Forest Tendency reached the conclusion that there was no true socialist society existing anywhere in the world. Written in collaboration with Raya Dunayevskaya and Grace Lee Boggs, this is another pioneering critique of Lenin and Trotsky, and reclamation of Marx, from the West Indian scholar and activist, C.L.R. James. Originally published in 1950, this definitive edition includes the ...

An extraordinary graphic novel of a groundbreaking playWhen C.L.R. James's Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History opened in London featuring Paul Robeson in 1936, it was the first time black actors starred on a British stage in a play written by a black playwright. But after this extraordinary play ended its run, the script was lost for almost 70 years. Then a draft copy was found among James's archives, and now this groundbr...

"To travel through the nineteen works of poetry and prose in this remarkable anthology is to experience Trinidad and Tobago through a kaleidoscopic lens. The writings are grouped into four historically significant periods ('Leaving Colonialism,' 'Facing Independence,' 'Looking In,' and 'Losing Control'). It's an effective construct; the reader experiences island culture and history as a part of its time, formed by a pastiche of nationality, culture, and social class. Standouts abound."

Originally published in England in 1938 (the same year as his magnum opus The Black Jacobins) and expanded in 1969, this work remains the classic account of global black resistance. Robin D.G. Kelley’s substantial introduction contextualizes the work in the history and ferment of the times, and explores its ongoing relevance today.“A History of Pan-African Revolt is one of those rare books that continues to strike a chord of urgency, even half a century after it w...