Hill contends it is “foundational for all subsequent investigation of the revolution” (xiii). James Archives series by Duke University Press, the book’s fifty-two-page introduction, nineteen chapters, and three appendices remind us that James’s definitive contribution to the history, historiography, and interpretation of the Haitian Revolution has yet to be superseded as an engine of literary and scholastic imagination. Published with a beautiful cover in the C. They impress upon us why his story matters more than ever now, on a planet of violent migrations and rising oceans.įor sure, this exhaustive collection of essays, reflections, and introductions to James’s epic treatment of the Haitian Revolution will be the authoritative companion to his history for decades to come. Many of the chapters unfold and examine the conditions and implications of James’s layered space-times. This exchange beckons to the timeliness of Charles Forsdick and Christian Høgsbjerg’s collection. In reply, James returns to the scene of 1930s London, adding that the book was “a forecast of what would take place in Africa.” To this, Turkel asserts that James “wrote about the past writing about present and future” (340). James and Studs Terkel from 1970, printed in the first appendix of The Black Jacobins Reader, Turkel remarks to James that his 1938 magnum opus The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution “deals with the reality of today, too” (339).

The black jacobins first edition