Toussaint Louverture: The French Revolution and the Colonial Problem

This book is the long-overdue publication in English of Aimé Césaire’s account of Toussaint Louverture, the legendary leader of the revolution in Saint-Domingue - a slave revolt against French colonial rule that led to the founding of the independent republic of Haiti. Saint-Domingue was the first country in modern times to confront the colonial question in practice and in all its complexity. When Toussaint Louverture burst onto the historical stage, various political movements already existed for political autonomy, free trade and social equality. But the French Revolution established a compelling understanding of universal liberty: the Declaration of Human Rights opened up the possibility of claims to liberty and equality by wealthy free Black men in the colony, claims which, when they could not be realized, led to the armed uprising of enslaved Blacks. A battle for the liberation of one class in colonial society resulted in a revolution to achieve equal rights for all men. And for universal emancipation to be possible, Saint-Domingue itself had to become independent.

Toussaint Louverture put the Declaration into practice unreservedly, demonstrating that there could be no pariah race. He inherited bands of fighters and united them as an army, turning a peasant revolt into a full-scale revolution, a population into a people and a colony into an independent nation-state.

Aimé Césaire’s historical and analytical gifts are magnificently displayed in this highly original analysis of the context and actions of the famous revolutionary leader. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of critical and cultural theory and of Latin American history as well as anyone concerned with the nature and impact of colonialism and race.

Aimé Césaire (1913-2008) was born in Basse-Pointe, Martinique, and was an anticolonial theorist, activist, writer and poet.