The Black Jacobins
Book by C. L. R. JamesWikipedia
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Search complete. 15 mentions across 10 episodes found for "The Black Jacobins".
Oct 27, 2026
Shawn GudeGUEST
I would say that the Jacobin that the founder and one of the early founders, Bhaskar Sankara, and one of the early editors, Rameke Forbes, they're both from the Caribbean originally.
Shawn GudeGUEST
And they kind of took the name from this book called The Black Jacobins, which is a book by a Trinidadian socialist named C.L.R. James.
Shawn GudeGUEST
And that's about the Haitian Revolution.
Shawn GudeGUEST
And it's kind of using the Haitian Revolution in this book, which is a fantastic book.
Shawn GudeGUEST
I would say that the Jacobin that the founder and one of the early founders, Bhaskar Sankara, and one of the early editors, Rameke Forbes, they're both from the Caribbean originally.
Shawn GudeGUEST
And they kind of took the name from this book called The Black Jacobins, which is a book by a Trinidadian socialist named C.L.R. James.
Shawn GudeGUEST
And that's about the Haitian Revolution.
Shawn GudeGUEST
And it's kind of using the Haitian Revolution in this book, which is a fantastic book.
LenoreHOST
He studies under C.L.R. James, who is, of course, is the the author of
JacobHOST
Black Jacobins.
LenoreHOST
Yeah, Black Jacobins.
LenoreHOST
Goodness, a blank there for a second.
LenoreHOST
The same year that he graduates, when he's 24, he has a kid, his first son, Shaka, with his future wife, Patricia, who you have met, Rahab.
EmmanuelHOST
You see what I'm saying? So legendary figures.
EmmanuelHOST
C.L.R. James who wrote Black Jacobins and gave us all that information about Haiti and the revolution.
EmmanuelHOST
Like legendary figures, man, that were here on the soil.
EmmanuelHOST
You know what I'm saying? Rest in peace to the great man.
UrbanHOST
And that is the Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Isabel the Catholic.
UrbanHOST
Okay, this book titled The Black Jacobins, and it talks about the overthrow of San Domingo, the San Domingo Revolution.
UrbanHOST
This is from 1989.
UrbanHOST
It talks about the economic prosperity and profound social degradation of the French Caribbean colony of San Domingo before the outbreak of 1789 revolution through a brutal system of chattel slavery, half a billion enslaved Africans and white people produced massive wealth for European powers on the back of horrific violence, overwork and disease.
UrbanHOST
That's what we're getting into next.
UrbanHOST
Here's another book.
UrbanHOST
It's called Confronting Black Jacobins by Gerald
UrbanHOST
Thorne.
DanHOST
I don't know.
DanHOST
And it's so like, you know, there's a really great, great quote from CLR James in the Black Jacobins, which is the rich are never defeated until they are running for their lives.
DanHOST
And I think that's one that we should keep in our minds more often.
DanHOST
So
Josh LandyHOST
reportHe knew French, British, and Spanish imperialists for the insatiable gangsters that they were.
Holly J. McDedeCORRESPONDENT
That passage is from The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James.
Holly J. McDedeCORRESPONDENT
It's an account of the 1791 Haitian Revolution.
Charles ForsdickSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
It's a very popular book on the British left that many read knowing nothing about Haiti, but having an interest in radical politics and in Atlantic history.
David McNallyGUEST
The general strike of the slaves breaks the back of the Confederacy and puts 200,000 Black men under arms in the Union Army and Navy.
David McNallyGUEST
Then three years later, C.L.R. James, the great Trinidadian Marxist, produces his landmark study, The Black Jacobins, on the revolution in Haiti.
David McNallyGUEST
And he insists that the Haitian Revolution is of the stature of the English Revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revolution is shaping our world.
David McNallyGUEST
And he shows that under the extraordinary leadership of Toussaint Louverture, who built an army of tens of thousands formerly enslaved people and defeated the British, the Spanish, and the French empires to establish Haitian independence, James shows us the Haitian Revolution from below.
David McNallyGUEST
But that legacy that Du Bois laid out 90 years ago Its recovery and its extension has been the greatest contribution to the study of slavery in, in the United States.
David McNallyGUEST
And really, it's been absent from the new history of capitalism, which is one of the reasons why my book is forcing, I hope, those folks doing the new history of capitalism to come to terms with this African American tradition of history from below in the United States.
David McNallyGUEST
So if people wanted to really start, uh, just getting familiar with these areas, start with chapter four of Du Bois's book on the general strike of the slaves in Black Reconstruction in America, and always read CLR James' The Black Jacobins.
David McNallyGUEST
It's a mind-blower.
Tony WarnerGUEST
I won some prize, they gave me a book on Toussaint, on the Haitian Revolution.
Tony WarnerGUEST
Um, actually it was, um, The Black Jacobin by, um, CLR James.
Tony WarnerGUEST
Um, but yeah, you, you, you got some history about the island you were in, um, but you didn't get any history about Africa before European arrival.
Tony WarnerGUEST
So you only got history from a, a European.
Ralph GonsalvesGUEST
The last occasion in the Caribbean as a whole before that was Fidel's overthrow of Batista in, in 1959.
Ralph GonsalvesGUEST
And, and, and before that was Toussaint Louverture leading the Black Jacobins, um, in Haiti, the former slaves, former enslaved African bodies, and overthrew French colonialism in, and established the Haitian state system, 1804.
Ralph GonsalvesGUEST
So Grenada was quite impactful.
Ralph GonsalvesGUEST
It was a socialist-oriented, um, anti-imperialist, um, revolution.