Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Supporting your high street Find out how »
Black Spartacus : The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture, Hardback Book

Black Spartacus : The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture Hardback

Hardback

Item not Available

Description

** WINNER of THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE, 2021 **Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, 2020 Shortlisted for the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, 2020Finalist for the American Library in Paris Book Award, 2021Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Biography, 2021 Shortlisted for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize, 2020Finalist for the Pen/Jacqueline Bogard Weld Award for Biography, 2020Shortlisted for the Prix Chateau de Versailles du Livre d'Histoire, 2021Shortlisted for the Prix Jean d'Ormesson, 2021'A triumph' Financial Times'Extraordinarily gripping ... a tour de force' GuardianThe Haitian Revolution began in the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue with a slave revolt in August 1791, and culminated a dozen years later in the proclamation of the world's first independent black state.

After the abolition of slavery in 1793, Toussaint Louverture, himself a former slave, became the leader of the colony's black population, the commander of its republican army and eventually its governor.

During the course of his extraordinary life he confronted some of the dominant forces of his age - slavery, settler colonialism, imperialism and racial hierarchy.

Treacherously seized by Napoleon's invading army in 1802, this charismatic figure ended his days, in Wordsworth's phrase, 'the most unhappy man of men', imprisoned in a fortress in France. Black Spartacus draws on a wealth of archival material, much of it overlooked by previous biographers, to follow every step of Louverture's singular journey, from his triumphs against French, Spanish and British troops to his skilful regional diplomacy, his Machiavellian dealings with successive French colonial administrators and his bold promulgation of an autonomous Constitution.

Sudhir Hazareesingh shows that Louverture developed his unique vision and leadership not solely in response to imported Enlightenment ideals and revolutionary events in Europe and the Americas, but through a hybrid heritage of fraternal slave organisations, Caribbean mysticism and African political traditions.

Above all, Hazareesingh retrieves Louverture's rousing voice and force of personality, making this the most engaging, as well as the most complete, biography to date. After his death in the French fortress, Louverture became a figure of legend, a beacon for slaves across the Atlantic and for generations of European republicans and progressive figures in the Americas.

He inspired the anti-slavery campaigner Frederick Douglass, the most eminent nineteenth-century African-American; his emancipatory struggle was hailed by those who defied imperial and colonial rule well into the twentieth.

In the modern era, his life informed the French poet Aime Cesaire's seminal idea of negritude and has been celebrated in a remarkable range of plays, songs, novels and statues.

Here, in all its drama, is the epic story of the world's first black superhero.

Information

Other Formats

Save 25%

£25.00

£18.59

Item not Available
Item not Available
Sign in to add to wishlist
 
Free Home Delivery

on all orders

 
Pick up orders

from local bookshops

Information