The Black Jacobins

C.L.R. James, a Trinidadian historian, recounts the Haitian Revolution, the uprising of enslaved people in the French colony of San Domingo. He sets it against the French Revolution and centers it on Toussaint L'Ouverture, born a slave, who embraced the revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality, led the Black people of the colony against successive French, Spanish and English invasions, and helped create the Caribbean's first independent nation. James examines the brutal conditions of slavery, the status of the slave owners, the poor whites and the free Black and mulatto population, and the economy of the Caribbean. He researched the work in Paris, where he met the Haitian military historian Alfred Auguste Nemours.

Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, called it by far the best book on Toussaint L'Ouverture.