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The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution
A remarkable intellectual history of the slave revolts that made the modern revolutionary era
The Common Wind is a gripping and colorful account of the intercontinental networks that tied together the free and enslaved masses of the New World. Having delved deep into the gray obscurity of official eighteenth-century records in Spanish, English, and French, Julius S. Scott has written a powerful “history from below.” Scott follows the spread of “rumors of emancipation” and the people behind them, bringing to life the protagonists in the slave revolution.
By tracking the colliding worlds of buccaneers, military deserters, and maroon communards from Venezuela to Virginia, Scott records the transmission of contagious mutinies and insurrections in unparalleled detail, providing readers with an intellectual history of the enslaved.
Though The Common Wind is credited with having “opened up the Black Atlantic with a rigor and a commitment to the power of written words,” the manuscript remained unpublished for thirty-two years. Now, after receiving wide acclaim from leading historians of slavery and the New World, it has been published by Verso for the first time, with a foreword by the academic and author Marcus Rediker.
The Common Wind is a gripping and colorful account of the intercontinental networks that tied together the free and enslaved masses of the New World. Having delved deep into the gray obscurity of official eighteenth-century records in Spanish, English, and French, Julius S. Scott has written a powerful “history from below.” Scott follows the spread of “rumors of emancipation” and the people behind them, bringing to life the protagonists in the slave revolution.
By tracking the colliding worlds of buccaneers, military deserters, and maroon communards from Venezuela to Virginia, Scott records the transmission of contagious mutinies and insurrections in unparalleled detail, providing readers with an intellectual history of the enslaved.
Though The Common Wind is credited with having “opened up the Black Atlantic with a rigor and a commitment to the power of written words,” the manuscript remained unpublished for thirty-two years. Now, after receiving wide acclaim from leading historians of slavery and the New World, it has been published by Verso for the first time, with a foreword by the academic and author Marcus Rediker.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2018
113 people are currently reading
2216 people want to read
About the author
Julius S. Scott
3 books6 followersJulius Sherrod Scott III was Lecturer of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution is based on Scott’s influential but previously unpublished 1986 Duke University doctoral dissertation. The book traces the circulation of news in African diasporic communities in the Caribbean around the time of the Haitian Revolution, and links the “common wind” of shared information to political developments leading to the abolition of slavery in the British and French Caribbean.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
January 15, 2024
It always strikes me how diluted (if not altogether absent) our common education is on the rebellion and resistance of slaves across the American continent. What Julius Scott uncovers in his scholarship is nothing short of remarkable. What it does is give increased agency to enslaved Africans and a better understanding of their planning and organization. I think part of the reason we're not told about these is that it is easier for settler societies and empires to dismiss resistance as random and chaotic. It's why the 2020 uprisings in the U.S. were dismissed as being led by "out-of-state agents provocateurs", and it's why Palestinian militants (Hamas, but also others) are reduced to "terrorists" who have a biological proclivity for violence. Once you begin to understand how the enslaved, the oppressed - the wretched - organized themselves to (yes, violently) break their chains, you can begin to understand modern manifestations of slave rebellions, ghetto uprisings, and national liberation movements.
When learning about the slave era of this continent, we're so frequently discussing the commercial flow of sugar, tobacco, and human cargo. Thanks to Julius Scott, we can now properly discuss the intellectual flow of knowledge, culture, and news that expanded the reach of afro-american rebellion and set the stage for future knowledge production.
When learning about the slave era of this continent, we're so frequently discussing the commercial flow of sugar, tobacco, and human cargo. Thanks to Julius Scott, we can now properly discuss the intellectual flow of knowledge, culture, and news that expanded the reach of afro-american rebellion and set the stage for future knowledge production.
i-want-money
November 5, 2018Legendary BURIED work sees fresh light of day ----
"An Underground Sensation Arrives ::
The three-decade publication saga of a revered manuscript."
By Tom Bartlett
https://www.chronicle.com/article/An-...
"An Underground Sensation Arrives ::
The three-decade publication saga of a revered manuscript."
By Tom Bartlett
https://www.chronicle.com/article/An-...
April 14, 2019
Super readable account of all the black sea-faring people of the Caribbean around the time of the French Revolution and the ways that they communicated with and influenced each other, leading up to the Haitian Revolution. It’s amazing how hard the slave owning societies had to work to keep them from helping each other out. Black sailors were super important at this time and all these places relied on them. It’s hard to control those sea going people.
Want to read
December 7, 2018Great article on background in The Chronicle of Higher Education: https://www.chronicle.com/article/An-...
December 25, 2021
One of the unfortunate facts about being interested in nearly everything is that the depth of your knowledge is bound to remain inversely proportional to its range; the more you know en masse, the less you tend to know about a particular, narrow topic. The geopolitical interplay between the slave communities in the West Indies and the Old World makes for fascinating reading, but what I know about it could safely fit into a thimble. Nevertheless, I was drawn to Julius S. Scott’s “The Common Wind” after repeatedly reading that so many branches of historical scholarship owe quite a bit to the book and its arguments, with a New York Times article describing Scott, and I quote, “a cult figure among scholars.” Unfortunately, that article was also Scott’s obituary. He passed away earlier this month, on December 6, 2021.
Scott finished “The Common Wind” in 1986, but didn’t have it published until recently. At one point, Oxford University Press approached Scott expressing interest in the book, but the would-be editor made suggestions that he refused to give in to. Eventually, in 2018, Verso offered to print it as it stood with no corrections. Scott accepted, and one of the most influential books on the social and cultural history of the West Indies in the late eighteenth century finally found a home.
Scott’s aim is to uncover the various threads that linked Spanish, British, and French colonies in the West Indies and South America through the period of the Haitian Revolution. One of Scott’s biggest successes is to flesh out the complex, interconnected, and highly cosmopolitan world of these islands, both the planter class, their “masterless men” (i.e., non-whites who maintained their freedom), and the enslaved. Cities like Kingston, Jamaica, Cap Francais, Haiti and Havana, Cuba “nurtured the most complex patterns of mobility and presented the most vexing problems of control for all the colonial powers.” As Spain, Britain, and France made vast imperial gains, the social and cultural worlds of these cities grew accordingly, thereby becoming welcome shelters for runaway slaves or others who wished to change their station in life. These are the people who really drive the narrative of Scott’s book, thereby making it very much a history of the disenfranchised underbelly of the West Indies. Much of the writing done before Scott tells this history through the lens of European intellectuals and historians, while Scott actively contemplates the wit, creativity, and inventiveness of these masterless men and escaped slave populations.
Needless to say, the diplomatic treaties or official proclamations of the time will say nothing about these people. In addition to using letters, books, journals, and newspapers, Scott encourages fellow historians to carefully trace what might be perceived as the mundane interactions between such marginalized people as slaves and women involved in commerce, as well as the steady inflow of news brought by merchant seamen and transatlantic sailors. These underground figures brought news of the Old World as well as valuable knowledge to those seeking freedom, smugglers, and even poor, disenfranchised whites trying to circumscribe the ever-evolving set of security measures deployed by the local plantation class.
Scott’s work not only brings to the forefront a whole new class of people and their circumstances which can add to our knowledge of the West Indies during this time period, but he also carefully exhorts historians to rely not only on records and correspondence, neither of which were produced in large numbers for or by Black people. Equally important, argues Scott, are the “orally transmitted accounts,” like “scraps of news, conflicting interpretations, elusive facts, and shifting rumors” that coalesce together from all over the region. In urging his fellow historians to be more perceptive and creative purveyors of historical source material, Scott expands upon the ways in which historiography is made possible for heretofore invisible historical subjects.
Scott finished “The Common Wind” in 1986, but didn’t have it published until recently. At one point, Oxford University Press approached Scott expressing interest in the book, but the would-be editor made suggestions that he refused to give in to. Eventually, in 2018, Verso offered to print it as it stood with no corrections. Scott accepted, and one of the most influential books on the social and cultural history of the West Indies in the late eighteenth century finally found a home.
Scott’s aim is to uncover the various threads that linked Spanish, British, and French colonies in the West Indies and South America through the period of the Haitian Revolution. One of Scott’s biggest successes is to flesh out the complex, interconnected, and highly cosmopolitan world of these islands, both the planter class, their “masterless men” (i.e., non-whites who maintained their freedom), and the enslaved. Cities like Kingston, Jamaica, Cap Francais, Haiti and Havana, Cuba “nurtured the most complex patterns of mobility and presented the most vexing problems of control for all the colonial powers.” As Spain, Britain, and France made vast imperial gains, the social and cultural worlds of these cities grew accordingly, thereby becoming welcome shelters for runaway slaves or others who wished to change their station in life. These are the people who really drive the narrative of Scott’s book, thereby making it very much a history of the disenfranchised underbelly of the West Indies. Much of the writing done before Scott tells this history through the lens of European intellectuals and historians, while Scott actively contemplates the wit, creativity, and inventiveness of these masterless men and escaped slave populations.
Needless to say, the diplomatic treaties or official proclamations of the time will say nothing about these people. In addition to using letters, books, journals, and newspapers, Scott encourages fellow historians to carefully trace what might be perceived as the mundane interactions between such marginalized people as slaves and women involved in commerce, as well as the steady inflow of news brought by merchant seamen and transatlantic sailors. These underground figures brought news of the Old World as well as valuable knowledge to those seeking freedom, smugglers, and even poor, disenfranchised whites trying to circumscribe the ever-evolving set of security measures deployed by the local plantation class.
Scott’s work not only brings to the forefront a whole new class of people and their circumstances which can add to our knowledge of the West Indies during this time period, but he also carefully exhorts historians to rely not only on records and correspondence, neither of which were produced in large numbers for or by Black people. Equally important, argues Scott, are the “orally transmitted accounts,” like “scraps of news, conflicting interpretations, elusive facts, and shifting rumors” that coalesce together from all over the region. In urging his fellow historians to be more perceptive and creative purveyors of historical source material, Scott expands upon the ways in which historiography is made possible for heretofore invisible historical subjects.
July 12, 2025
"Furthermore, the very commercial growth which planters and merchants welcomed opened new avenues of mobility. Cities grew and matured, attracting runaway slaves and sheltering a teeming underground with surprising regional connections. Expanding commercial links sanctioned the comings and goings of ships of all sizes and nations. Island ports required pilot boats with experienced navigators to guide the incoming merchantmen to safe anchorages, and they needed a network of coastal vessels and skilled sailors to support their busy markets. This web of commerce brought the region’s islands into closer and closer contact as the century progressed, providing channels of communication as well as tempting routes of escape."
So elegantly dialectical. Expansion of slavery germinated the seed of its destruction <3
So elegantly dialectical. Expansion of slavery germinated the seed of its destruction <3
September 2, 2020
Julius Scott's The Common Wind is billed in the copy as "a remarkable intellectual history of the slave revolts that made the modern revolutionary era," which is only partly true. Intellectual history is above all concerned with content, whereas Common Wind's focus is overwhelmingly on the means and networks of transmission, the content only heard in vaguest outline and usually from its enemies (e.g., colonial officials talking of "whisperings of Sedition among our Negroes," and so on.) This is only to slight the copy, though, not Scott's dissertation-cum-book; a proper intellectual history of these almost entirely oral networks - an examination of the particular ideas that were transmitted in detail, the assumptions they rested on, and the arguments that were mustered for one position or another - would be extremely methodologically difficult. Perhaps with methodological or archival advances, such a book could be written.
What we have here is something that, due to its influential pre-publication history (better covered elsewhere, though it is certainly a word of solace to my own unpublished dissertation,) may seem in some ways very familiar: one can see how certain things - just as analytically true but perhaps bearing the status of cliches - such Atlantic history, "Black Atlantic" especially, histoire croisse, and so on bear its stamp. But while this book has thus contributed to an immense theoretical edifice, it itself is - I hate to say "antitheoretical," but definitely prefers to the show rather than tell, something that makes it fresh. Scott's clear dogged persistence with the archives combined with an eye for the telling or riveting anecdote give an account that is persuasive and never boring. One sees news travel like lightning, hope and fear played out, the whole Atlantic at motion, speeding up like a whirlwind.
A theme of contemporary relevance that has nothing to do with race that emerged was the ineffectiveness of censorship: colonial officials are always busy engaging in elaborate measures to prevent the spread of news and ideas; these measures basically always fail, and enslaved people usually know political developments relevant to them (whether colonial rebellions or metropolitan reforms) at least as soon as their captors do. Much contemporary debate on this subject assumes that it is effective, whether pro (because we need it to stop white nationalist propaganda, or whatever) or anti (because it will soon redound on everyone else.) I can sympathize with both concerns, but if censorship isn't even effective in the most total system of control ever implemented in human history, it probably isn't going to have much effect in a world with less chattel slavery and much more wifi.
The accumulation of these telling anecdotes has another, to me rather surprising effect: although the subject matter is serious and approached seriously, the overall mood approaches something like the picaresque. The emotions that overwhelmingly emanate from the book's protagonists - black slaves, of course, but also whites who've gotten a bit of the runaway slave condition like mutineers, convicts, and professional revolutionaries - are pluck, sophisticated trickery, and daring; those that emerge from its villains are overwhelmingly fear, astonishment, and rage. The result is something of the strange dissonance of that other great literature of the historical Caribbean, the pirate story, in that you find yourself cheering on the romantic adventures of the plucky underdogs despite everyone constantly being whipped, locked in dungeons, shot, dying of tropical diseases, and so on.
But that's not a fault against the book either. It may just be that that's my personal experience (I am a rather unserious person, on the whole,) and it's good that alongside the histories of slavery emphasizing it as an experience of overwhelming victimization, there's also histories emphasizing the role of agency like this - and, after all, the natural response to high-agency stories of oppression is "what an adventure!," which is, after all, why we like to tell them so much.
All in all, glad it was finally published, and glad I read it.
What we have here is something that, due to its influential pre-publication history (better covered elsewhere, though it is certainly a word of solace to my own unpublished dissertation,) may seem in some ways very familiar: one can see how certain things - just as analytically true but perhaps bearing the status of cliches - such Atlantic history, "Black Atlantic" especially, histoire croisse, and so on bear its stamp. But while this book has thus contributed to an immense theoretical edifice, it itself is - I hate to say "antitheoretical," but definitely prefers to the show rather than tell, something that makes it fresh. Scott's clear dogged persistence with the archives combined with an eye for the telling or riveting anecdote give an account that is persuasive and never boring. One sees news travel like lightning, hope and fear played out, the whole Atlantic at motion, speeding up like a whirlwind.
A theme of contemporary relevance that has nothing to do with race that emerged was the ineffectiveness of censorship: colonial officials are always busy engaging in elaborate measures to prevent the spread of news and ideas; these measures basically always fail, and enslaved people usually know political developments relevant to them (whether colonial rebellions or metropolitan reforms) at least as soon as their captors do. Much contemporary debate on this subject assumes that it is effective, whether pro (because we need it to stop white nationalist propaganda, or whatever) or anti (because it will soon redound on everyone else.) I can sympathize with both concerns, but if censorship isn't even effective in the most total system of control ever implemented in human history, it probably isn't going to have much effect in a world with less chattel slavery and much more wifi.
The accumulation of these telling anecdotes has another, to me rather surprising effect: although the subject matter is serious and approached seriously, the overall mood approaches something like the picaresque. The emotions that overwhelmingly emanate from the book's protagonists - black slaves, of course, but also whites who've gotten a bit of the runaway slave condition like mutineers, convicts, and professional revolutionaries - are pluck, sophisticated trickery, and daring; those that emerge from its villains are overwhelmingly fear, astonishment, and rage. The result is something of the strange dissonance of that other great literature of the historical Caribbean, the pirate story, in that you find yourself cheering on the romantic adventures of the plucky underdogs despite everyone constantly being whipped, locked in dungeons, shot, dying of tropical diseases, and so on.
But that's not a fault against the book either. It may just be that that's my personal experience (I am a rather unserious person, on the whole,) and it's good that alongside the histories of slavery emphasizing it as an experience of overwhelming victimization, there's also histories emphasizing the role of agency like this - and, after all, the natural response to high-agency stories of oppression is "what an adventure!," which is, after all, why we like to tell them so much.
All in all, glad it was finally published, and glad I read it.
December 22, 2020
A seriously impressive work of scholarship. The depth and breadth of research that went into this is staggering.
Julius S. Scott's "The Common Wind" is a fascinating examination of the mobility of ideas, rumours, and news during the age of revolution in the late 1700s. The Atlantic World, and especially Afro-America, come to life through this work's exploration of the networks of communication that were simultaneously a source of great interest and hope for the oppressed peoples of the Caribbean, and a source of anxiety for the authorities and planter-class.
I briefly entertained notions about giving this four stars, partially because, in terms of form, the book is quite academic and thus not always the easiest read. It sometimes feels like you are taking in a barrage of facts, and that might feel repetitive. However, considering the fact that this book is an adaptation of Dr. Scott's PhD dissertation, it would hardly be fair to expect many rhetorical flourishes.
"The Common Wind" taught me so much, in a mere 211 pages, about a topic and part of the world that I knew almost nothing about.
Scott's research unveils a treasure trove of correspondence- private and public, official and unofficial- that displays the constant anxiety that characterized slave societies. Colonial governments attempted to censor movement, correspondence, and ideas but to little avail. Crucially, Dr. Scott's work also serves to emphasize the historical agency that enslaved populations had, despite their circumstances. Escape, dissent, and rebellion were constant features of Caribbean society. These underlying forms of dissent were greatly exacerbated by news from Europe, and the arrival of ships in a port city could set the tongues and minds of townspeople aflutter.
"Though British abolitionism and Spanish reformism challenged the future of colonial slavery in the late 1780s, only the French Revolution exerted the overwhelming social and ideological pressure which would lead eventually to black freedom in the Americas. A revolution which pitted class against class in a struggle over the ideals of 'liberty, equality, and fraternity' presented obvious problems for societies based upon white solidarity and slavery. So even before the fall of the Bastille signaled the final days of the ancien regime in France, officials began to take measures to assure that the spirit of inquiry and change alive in Europe did not affect the French Caribbean. As early as the fall of 1788, the Crown issued orders to 'abolish every press' in Saint-Domingue 'in order to keep the flame of liberty from spreading to the Colonies."
Spread it did. The revolt of the Haitian slaves and their revolution stand not only as the ultimate expression of the universalism that late 18th century radicalism swore to represent. The Haitian Revolution also permanently altered politics in the Atlantic World, and made incredible contributions to the abolition of slavery in Latin America. There are, unfortunately, historical silences around the Haitian Revolution, but then again there are books like "The Black Jacobins" or "The Common Wind". Ça ira
Julius S. Scott's "The Common Wind" is a fascinating examination of the mobility of ideas, rumours, and news during the age of revolution in the late 1700s. The Atlantic World, and especially Afro-America, come to life through this work's exploration of the networks of communication that were simultaneously a source of great interest and hope for the oppressed peoples of the Caribbean, and a source of anxiety for the authorities and planter-class.
I briefly entertained notions about giving this four stars, partially because, in terms of form, the book is quite academic and thus not always the easiest read. It sometimes feels like you are taking in a barrage of facts, and that might feel repetitive. However, considering the fact that this book is an adaptation of Dr. Scott's PhD dissertation, it would hardly be fair to expect many rhetorical flourishes.
"The Common Wind" taught me so much, in a mere 211 pages, about a topic and part of the world that I knew almost nothing about.
Scott's research unveils a treasure trove of correspondence- private and public, official and unofficial- that displays the constant anxiety that characterized slave societies. Colonial governments attempted to censor movement, correspondence, and ideas but to little avail. Crucially, Dr. Scott's work also serves to emphasize the historical agency that enslaved populations had, despite their circumstances. Escape, dissent, and rebellion were constant features of Caribbean society. These underlying forms of dissent were greatly exacerbated by news from Europe, and the arrival of ships in a port city could set the tongues and minds of townspeople aflutter.
"Though British abolitionism and Spanish reformism challenged the future of colonial slavery in the late 1780s, only the French Revolution exerted the overwhelming social and ideological pressure which would lead eventually to black freedom in the Americas. A revolution which pitted class against class in a struggle over the ideals of 'liberty, equality, and fraternity' presented obvious problems for societies based upon white solidarity and slavery. So even before the fall of the Bastille signaled the final days of the ancien regime in France, officials began to take measures to assure that the spirit of inquiry and change alive in Europe did not affect the French Caribbean. As early as the fall of 1788, the Crown issued orders to 'abolish every press' in Saint-Domingue 'in order to keep the flame of liberty from spreading to the Colonies."
Spread it did. The revolt of the Haitian slaves and their revolution stand not only as the ultimate expression of the universalism that late 18th century radicalism swore to represent. The Haitian Revolution also permanently altered politics in the Atlantic World, and made incredible contributions to the abolition of slavery in Latin America. There are, unfortunately, historical silences around the Haitian Revolution, but then again there are books like "The Black Jacobins" or "The Common Wind". Ça ira
December 18, 2022
A longer review will come with a second reading.
The Common Wind covers the phenomena of the growing Atlantic World and the belief in the connections between countries and people in this region. Scott adds the growing histography (and honestly, if this had been published earlier, he would have been THE trailblazer) of the interconnectedness of the Atlantic world. Looking at the movement of information from mariners and other common folk to enslaved and other stationary people. A work of intellectual history, The Common Wind sets itself in the age of the Haitian Revolution. Stemming for Scotts' dissertation, the book has short chapters packed with a lot of information.
Second Reading:
The Common Wind examines mobile figures and the largely invisible runaway railroad which shows how news, ideas and social excitement travelled around the Atlantic in the late 18th century. Scott shows readers how mobile people used webs of commerce and their own autonomous mobility to form subversive networks that the ruling class might not have been aware of. He shows that the towns were network centers and places where masterless people dwelled. Caribbean port cities specifically were magnets for people seeking personal independence. Shows and seafaring skills allowed for long rand communication and access. Sailors and Blacks generally had amiable relationships and confidence in each other. Many runaways had sea experience and would go to ships. Multilingual Blacks were a threat, as they were able to transmit ideas of freedom across language barriers.
Julius Scott was ahead of his time in the 1980s, I wonder how much father the historiography would have been if it had been published then instead of over 30 years later. I'd say Scott focuses his argument on the Angl-Caribbean and brings in the Spanish and French Caribbean to help with his arguments. He does focus on how the Haitian revolution affected the Atlantic World but he does not focus on the people in Haiti, but rather those who interacted with or ran to Haiti. I think his first chapters are his strongest and the later chapters have weaker arguments and conclusions. Reading through the work, one can tell it probably needed more polishing but it is good nonetheless that it was published at all. To sum it up - Scott shows readers how rulers tried to deny Black rebels access to the sea to limit the spread of revolution, masterless people still showed up everywhere despite the restrictions, and free Blacks migrated to Haiti during the revolution and long afterwards.
The Common Wind covers the phenomena of the growing Atlantic World and the belief in the connections between countries and people in this region. Scott adds the growing histography (and honestly, if this had been published earlier, he would have been THE trailblazer) of the interconnectedness of the Atlantic world. Looking at the movement of information from mariners and other common folk to enslaved and other stationary people. A work of intellectual history, The Common Wind sets itself in the age of the Haitian Revolution. Stemming for Scotts' dissertation, the book has short chapters packed with a lot of information.
Second Reading:
The Common Wind examines mobile figures and the largely invisible runaway railroad which shows how news, ideas and social excitement travelled around the Atlantic in the late 18th century. Scott shows readers how mobile people used webs of commerce and their own autonomous mobility to form subversive networks that the ruling class might not have been aware of. He shows that the towns were network centers and places where masterless people dwelled. Caribbean port cities specifically were magnets for people seeking personal independence. Shows and seafaring skills allowed for long rand communication and access. Sailors and Blacks generally had amiable relationships and confidence in each other. Many runaways had sea experience and would go to ships. Multilingual Blacks were a threat, as they were able to transmit ideas of freedom across language barriers.
Julius Scott was ahead of his time in the 1980s, I wonder how much father the historiography would have been if it had been published then instead of over 30 years later. I'd say Scott focuses his argument on the Angl-Caribbean and brings in the Spanish and French Caribbean to help with his arguments. He does focus on how the Haitian revolution affected the Atlantic World but he does not focus on the people in Haiti, but rather those who interacted with or ran to Haiti. I think his first chapters are his strongest and the later chapters have weaker arguments and conclusions. Reading through the work, one can tell it probably needed more polishing but it is good nonetheless that it was published at all. To sum it up - Scott shows readers how rulers tried to deny Black rebels access to the sea to limit the spread of revolution, masterless people still showed up everywhere despite the restrictions, and free Blacks migrated to Haiti during the revolution and long afterwards.
Read
September 13, 2023incredibly interesting topic with really detailed and fascinating research - it's just missing compelling and skillful writing to tie it all together. i'm definitely still glad I read this book, but there were moments were I was just so frustrated by how this book was written - it skipped from idea to idea and topic to topic, and the conclusions Scott drew were so rarely effective (or at least effectively communicated). the reader mostly has to do a lot of the work, and I definitely think this book could be so much more impactful if the writing were there to match the research (which is again, really amazing).
The ideas reminded me of ideas found in Anticolonial Eruptions by Geo Maher and the paradoxical weakness of colonliasm. The necessity of colonialism and empire depended upon trade, but this trade brought with it the opportunity for the ones that colonialism depends on - exploited and enslaved labor - to spread news and counter-colonial information. Despite the attempts at limiting this sharing - they literally couldn't stop people or ships moving because then their economies would collapse and so would their systems!
The ideas reminded me of ideas found in Anticolonial Eruptions by Geo Maher and the paradoxical weakness of colonliasm. The necessity of colonialism and empire depended upon trade, but this trade brought with it the opportunity for the ones that colonialism depends on - exploited and enslaved labor - to spread news and counter-colonial information. Despite the attempts at limiting this sharing - they literally couldn't stop people or ships moving because then their economies would collapse and so would their systems!
December 10, 2024
Atlantic history is one of the most fruitful and rich subfields around, and books like this are the reason why. Scott looks through the famously fragmented archive of the pre-emancipation Caribbean to unearth the “masterless” sea and the networks that spread news and thoughts of revolution. A brilliant intellectual history, and a landmark for a reason.
February 12, 2019
Exciting read on the Haitian Revolution
Scott tells an exciting history of how peoples of African heritage and “masterless men” influenced and shaped events around the Americas before, during, and after the Haitian Revolution.
Scott tells an exciting history of how peoples of African heritage and “masterless men” influenced and shaped events around the Americas before, during, and after the Haitian Revolution.
March 10, 2022
For those who are interested in Atlantic history: this is a great history from below, based on a breadth of resources in multiple languages, about the currents of mobility, communication, revolution and turmoil stretching across the Atlantic from France to the Caribbean. Scott shows how runaway slaves, deserters, sailors and other freemen, the "masterless men of the Caribbean" spread rumors about freedom across seas and from island to island, contributing to the political ferment in the Age of Revolution that toppled the ancien regime in France but also the slave society of Haiti. Groundbreaking when it first came out in the eighties and still a very original book of global history avant la lettre.
May 12, 2019
"Live free or die"
October 9, 2025
Bored to death by the first three chapters, but the fourth and fifth were pretty good. I can see why academic historians get excited about this, but I’m just some organizer.
In a deviation from my standard practice of focusing on the content over the audiobook production, I must say it’s mind boggling to me that they would hire someone to narrate a book about the Haitian Revolution who doesn’t know how to pronounce “Saint-Domingue”.
In a deviation from my standard practice of focusing on the content over the audiobook production, I must say it’s mind boggling to me that they would hire someone to narrate a book about the Haitian Revolution who doesn’t know how to pronounce “Saint-Domingue”.
May 27, 2019
Many of the themes covered in Julius Scott’s The Common Wind have been absorbed by the scholars of the Atlantic world who drew on his unpublished dissertation. Nevertheless, The Common Wind is a worthwhile read. Scott argues that the communication networks of people of African descent were extensive and efficient. Instead of focusing on the impact of the Haitian Revolution on North American or imperial holdings across the Caribbean and Latin America, Scott demonstrates that the Haitian revolution, much like the slave uprisings that preceded it were a product of far reaching networks of slaves and free people that--while planters were aware of them--were never able to be successfully suppressed. It is important to note that urban centers are a cornerstone of the communication network that Scott details. Scott argues that Caribbean cities with their free black populations and mobile sailors not only spread information but also contributed to an environment more fluid than rural areas. Marisa J. Fuentes, however, complicates this idea in her 2016 monograph Dispossessed Lives which argues that the architecture of these cities reinforced the subordinated position of slaves and reinforced the racial hierarchy. That being said, Scott's argument is compelling, well written and concise.
May 15, 2019
I really don't know what I expected from this book, but it was quite intriguing in its own way. I believe my first impression when I saw it was that it would be filled with short biographies and vignettes of the adventures and activities of Afro-American runaway slaves, sailors, pirates, and merchants. I was wrong on that front. It turns out that the book is filled with so much academic and statistical information that it becomes kind of daunting at times.
There is some interesting statistical information about population in the Caribbean but to me it comes off as kind of repetitive at times. I was hoping for a much livelier writing style that would keep my attention. I had a hard time getting into the book during the first chapter and it took me a couple of days to finally finish that chapter alone. It gets bogged down by dry academic writing and statistical data as previously stated, but picks up towards the end whenever it finally gets into the actual big events and stories of actual individuals during the time of the Haitian Revolution. It's the explanation of the events that draws my attention, not statistical data that I won't even remember anyway.
I appreciate quotes and articles from newspapers of the time to get an idea of how people spoke back then, and it is these parts that actually captured my attention briefly. You mainly read about the islands in the Caribbean during the time of the Haitian revolution ( late 18th century through early 19th century) and the cities and ports along with the populations of these places for most of the book though, which some people may actually enjoy reading about. But for those of you looking to read a book that covers the action and adventures of that time period in-depth, this isn't it. It explains a lot about the working class citizens and merchants, and also about the different ways that free Blacks communicated throughout the Caribbean during this time to stir up the revolution.
I would have appreciated illustrations in the book and more in-depth biographical information on certain people that played key roles in the revolution. Based on the awesome dust jacket cover art I thought it would have more illustrations, but there are none except for a map in the beginning. I don't like to just read about a time period as vital as this one, but I like to see actual images from that time period as well; whether they be line drawings, cartoons, lithographs, or wood engravings. The book went over some of the best military fighting to have ever taken place in history without illustrating it.
Julius S. Scott definitely had his work cut out for him when writing this book because it sure does have a lot of notes and bibliographical references. It is a book covering an area of the Haitian Revolution age that many people probably never even thought of writing a book about, and it goes over some obscure topics. This book is definitely for academic historical readers who may want to delve into some research of their own.
Pros:
1. Greatly researched
2. Learning more about African-American history
3. Lots of bibliographical references
Cons:
No illustrations
Dry writing at times
There is some interesting statistical information about population in the Caribbean but to me it comes off as kind of repetitive at times. I was hoping for a much livelier writing style that would keep my attention. I had a hard time getting into the book during the first chapter and it took me a couple of days to finally finish that chapter alone. It gets bogged down by dry academic writing and statistical data as previously stated, but picks up towards the end whenever it finally gets into the actual big events and stories of actual individuals during the time of the Haitian Revolution. It's the explanation of the events that draws my attention, not statistical data that I won't even remember anyway.
I appreciate quotes and articles from newspapers of the time to get an idea of how people spoke back then, and it is these parts that actually captured my attention briefly. You mainly read about the islands in the Caribbean during the time of the Haitian revolution ( late 18th century through early 19th century) and the cities and ports along with the populations of these places for most of the book though, which some people may actually enjoy reading about. But for those of you looking to read a book that covers the action and adventures of that time period in-depth, this isn't it. It explains a lot about the working class citizens and merchants, and also about the different ways that free Blacks communicated throughout the Caribbean during this time to stir up the revolution.
I would have appreciated illustrations in the book and more in-depth biographical information on certain people that played key roles in the revolution. Based on the awesome dust jacket cover art I thought it would have more illustrations, but there are none except for a map in the beginning. I don't like to just read about a time period as vital as this one, but I like to see actual images from that time period as well; whether they be line drawings, cartoons, lithographs, or wood engravings. The book went over some of the best military fighting to have ever taken place in history without illustrating it.
Julius S. Scott definitely had his work cut out for him when writing this book because it sure does have a lot of notes and bibliographical references. It is a book covering an area of the Haitian Revolution age that many people probably never even thought of writing a book about, and it goes over some obscure topics. This book is definitely for academic historical readers who may want to delve into some research of their own.
Pros:
1. Greatly researched
2. Learning more about African-American history
3. Lots of bibliographical references
Cons:
No illustrations
Dry writing at times
April 17, 2024
A history of the Caribbean's grapevine in the 18th century. As with so many scholarly history books, the choices of primary source quotes are really what make the book. Shows that even though the rise of the Caribbean's plantation economy displaced the buccaneers and freebooters of the 17th century, there were still many opportunities for ordinary people (importantly including people of color) to escape authorities and live a masterless existence at sea, or with the Maroons in the highlands and jungles, or even just in town the next island over from one's last known whereabouts. Scott highlighted the ways in which colonial authorities and planter elites were constantly worried about but also dependent upon the flow of information that the Caribbean's sailors carried between the islands and the continents. The Common Wind also illustrates how class (or caste) identities transcended national or colonial identities across the region. And why not? While the various colonial powers jealously guarded their possessions and their trade with them, they would also from time to time swap territories along with their populations to one another. And at the time aristocratic officers and bourgeois thought nothing of pursuing careers in the service of foreign kings. An interesting factoid from this book is how few people were in all of these places during the time period. Kingston Jamaica was the largest British held city America in 1790 with a population of 23,500; all of Haiti had fewer than 600k people before the revolution. The common wind isn't exactly a history of the Haitian Revolution, but it gives a lot context to any other history of this era of the Caribbean.
February 5, 2023
This is a truly outstanding non-ideological, factual history of the methods of communication by the slave population, sailors, and other "masterless" people in the caribbean in the late 1700s. Careful and appropriate throughout. I cannot recommend it enough as an excellent history. Might be the best history book I have ever read in terms of conveying facts, reaching just conclusions, and leaving it at that. I honestly wish all books were written this way, though there is less drama in the facts. If your cause is just, you do not need the drama, and it is VERY clear from page after page of this book that factual history is often more dramatic than any effort at story telling if you read it carefully. I really appreciated this book most of all for not trying to do more than just tell the brutal story of communication among distressed caribbean populations of various kinds around the time of the French and Haitian revolutions. Also the detail of how the local and empire authorities tried to manage the French and Haitian revolution "problems" is really truly outstanding. Excellent!
September 14, 2022
The Common Wind challenges dominant historical narratives of the Haitian Revolution by centering networks of communication as the most powerful and significant factor. While Julius Scott highlights international activities at the time, he does so in a way that makes sense of the conditions that essentially gave enslaved people a window of opportunity for an effective revolt. In other words, Julius Scott makes it very clear that the will and intention of the enslaved people were set and factors such as geography, trade relations, and infrastructure aligned into a perfect storm for slave rebellion.
Pros: "un"silencing the past, introducing an anti-colonial perspective of the most unthinkable, monumentous revolution in the history of the Americas
Cons: hard to follow timeline of events, sometimes a bit more detail than necessary to form a general understanding. I recommend watching the PBS documentary and perhaps coupling The Common Wind with Trouillot's Silencing the Past.
Pros: "un"silencing the past, introducing an anti-colonial perspective of the most unthinkable, monumentous revolution in the history of the Americas
Cons: hard to follow timeline of events, sometimes a bit more detail than necessary to form a general understanding. I recommend watching the PBS documentary and perhaps coupling The Common Wind with Trouillot's Silencing the Past.
March 16, 2020
This one says it was published in 2018, but it had a pre-published life of its own, I’m told, going back to the eighties as a dissertation that historians working on various aspects of the Atlantic world would consult and tell each other about, a sort of underground classic. Why it didn’t get published before Verso picked it up in 2018 is beyond me, especially if there was demand for it among historians. Certainly other, less important, dissertations get published frequently (I should probably see about publishing mine, speaking of which…)
Anyway, one can call “The Common Wind” a social history of ideas, or perhaps more properly of the social life of information. The fastest information moved at the end of the eighteenth century was the speed of sail. And yet, people at the most degraded bottom rung of society — the slaves in the sugar islands and plantations of the Caribbean basin — found out about international news with surprising alacrity and consistency. This became especially true as the news got spicier with the French Revolution and the beginnings of the modern abolitionist movement in Britain, and still more urgent with the outbreak of the revolution in St-Domingue. Despite the best efforts of white authority, slaves found out about — and were inspired to action by — all of these.
According to Scott, sailors and city-dwellers made up the lifeblood of information exchange in the Caribbean basin at this time. Had the technology been more commonly available in the eighties when this was written, perhaps we could have gotten some network charts, but the picture Scott paints is vivid enough anyway. The New World colonies were largely designed at the time to be unsustainable on their own, especially the sugar islands of the Caribbean. Whether through trade with solely the “mother country” or experiments with free trade later in the eighteenth century, the islands and other colonies could not survive without outside intercourse, and were useless to the European colonizers without bringing their products to the international market.
This posed a problem for the slaveholders and authorities of the Caribbean basin, isomorphic from Virginia to Venezuela: how to control the flow of people, goods, and information in such a way as to make their colonies sustainable, but not endanger their delicate social orders resting on massive populations of slaves. They needed trade, and the things that came with it: ships, ports, sailors, cities, in a word, mobility, but mobility threatened them. It soon became a commonplace that urban slaves were unreliable and that sailors were threats to public order, carriers of threats ranging from drunk and disorderly conduct to political subversion.
Scott presents us with a kaleidoscope of efforts to suppress the threat of mobile and often master-less people to the social order of various parts of the Caribbean. Panicky governors from Spanish, French, and English colonies all passed laws restricting the doings of sailors and urban slaves, banning blacks and sometimes people and ships altogether from places seen as “infected” by subversive ideas (especially France once the Revolution broke out), trying to reign in the very active Caribbean press, and so on and on. Scott gives us a picture — limited by the sources but still fascinating — of the lives of masterless black and brown men and women largely through their interactions with the legal and fact-finding apparatuses set up by colonial governments.
None of the efforts to hem in the word of revolution worked. Information still moved, and Haiti especially lived on as an inspiration to blacks and a bogeyman to whites. In the end, the master class had to rely on blunter tools: terror for the black masses, crippling debt and control of trade (with inevitable, and inevitably dashed, hopes of economic development) for Haiti itself. Similar networks of information would form to pass on abolitionist news and sentiments throughout the slave societies that continued to develop, linking Deep South plantations to abolition movements centered in New England (and old England) through chains of correspondence. These, like the Caribbean ones Scott uncovered, eventually came down to mobile, risk-taking slaves, freedmen and other poor people of the plantation lands. Without them and their ability to distribute information in multiple directions, abolition — and revolution — are just ideas. ****’
Anyway, one can call “The Common Wind” a social history of ideas, or perhaps more properly of the social life of information. The fastest information moved at the end of the eighteenth century was the speed of sail. And yet, people at the most degraded bottom rung of society — the slaves in the sugar islands and plantations of the Caribbean basin — found out about international news with surprising alacrity and consistency. This became especially true as the news got spicier with the French Revolution and the beginnings of the modern abolitionist movement in Britain, and still more urgent with the outbreak of the revolution in St-Domingue. Despite the best efforts of white authority, slaves found out about — and were inspired to action by — all of these.
According to Scott, sailors and city-dwellers made up the lifeblood of information exchange in the Caribbean basin at this time. Had the technology been more commonly available in the eighties when this was written, perhaps we could have gotten some network charts, but the picture Scott paints is vivid enough anyway. The New World colonies were largely designed at the time to be unsustainable on their own, especially the sugar islands of the Caribbean. Whether through trade with solely the “mother country” or experiments with free trade later in the eighteenth century, the islands and other colonies could not survive without outside intercourse, and were useless to the European colonizers without bringing their products to the international market.
This posed a problem for the slaveholders and authorities of the Caribbean basin, isomorphic from Virginia to Venezuela: how to control the flow of people, goods, and information in such a way as to make their colonies sustainable, but not endanger their delicate social orders resting on massive populations of slaves. They needed trade, and the things that came with it: ships, ports, sailors, cities, in a word, mobility, but mobility threatened them. It soon became a commonplace that urban slaves were unreliable and that sailors were threats to public order, carriers of threats ranging from drunk and disorderly conduct to political subversion.
Scott presents us with a kaleidoscope of efforts to suppress the threat of mobile and often master-less people to the social order of various parts of the Caribbean. Panicky governors from Spanish, French, and English colonies all passed laws restricting the doings of sailors and urban slaves, banning blacks and sometimes people and ships altogether from places seen as “infected” by subversive ideas (especially France once the Revolution broke out), trying to reign in the very active Caribbean press, and so on and on. Scott gives us a picture — limited by the sources but still fascinating — of the lives of masterless black and brown men and women largely through their interactions with the legal and fact-finding apparatuses set up by colonial governments.
None of the efforts to hem in the word of revolution worked. Information still moved, and Haiti especially lived on as an inspiration to blacks and a bogeyman to whites. In the end, the master class had to rely on blunter tools: terror for the black masses, crippling debt and control of trade (with inevitable, and inevitably dashed, hopes of economic development) for Haiti itself. Similar networks of information would form to pass on abolitionist news and sentiments throughout the slave societies that continued to develop, linking Deep South plantations to abolition movements centered in New England (and old England) through chains of correspondence. These, like the Caribbean ones Scott uncovered, eventually came down to mobile, risk-taking slaves, freedmen and other poor people of the plantation lands. Without them and their ability to distribute information in multiple directions, abolition — and revolution — are just ideas. ****’
July 7, 2025
Despite this, I was not intrigued by what I thought would be a very engaging subject matter. I was completely uninterested, and I found myself trudging through.
I was initially thinking of leaving this review blank, but I would like to provide some context as to why I rated this book a 3. I think I have an aptitude for texts that are a bit dry, dense, verbose, and overly academic to the point of hindrance. With that being said, I found myself completely unintrigued by what I thought would be an incredibly interesting text that deepens the wider global contextual of the Haitian Revolution. I was uninterested and found myself just trudging through.
Oddly, I would still recommend this book because sometimes a book is simply not your cup of tea and it’s not the book…it’s just you.
I was initially thinking of leaving this review blank, but I would like to provide some context as to why I rated this book a 3. I think I have an aptitude for texts that are a bit dry, dense, verbose, and overly academic to the point of hindrance. With that being said, I found myself completely unintrigued by what I thought would be an incredibly interesting text that deepens the wider global contextual of the Haitian Revolution. I was uninterested and found myself just trudging through.
Oddly, I would still recommend this book because sometimes a book is simply not your cup of tea and it’s not the book…it’s just you.
read-adult-daisy-version
October 14, 2025Easy to read. Good example for me of history book that non-academics would and could enjoyably read. Hadn’t know that Kingston had underground music scene where enslaved people and military men ran away too and played together. Thought that was incredibly interesting. Found Scott’s desire to use « masterless » class in this context and to make it an expansive term, which includes military deserters and seamen with enslaved and free Black people very fascinating. In so doing, he creates a sort of universality, a solidarity among all those who were seeking to break free from the strict reigns of colonial authorities. This universality remains very quiet and implicit, but I was wondering what he wanted to get from it.
March 7, 2019
A challenging book- clearly very astute and adept at handling a huge array of sources, but one for those already familiar with the Haitian Revolution, which unfortunately I am not. I have heard it remained as a doctorate since the 80's, which is absurd- it's a good move to have it published as a book- but the stiff tone, reserved conclusions, and reliance on the developed knowledge of its reader give away its origins as a purely academic work. Nevertheless it's often very engaging, and Scott's vision of the Caribbean swirling with rumours and suspicion will stay in the memory. Recommended for a second, rather than first look at the era and area.
April 30, 2020
Scott's work provides a solid complement to Gilroy's Black Atlantic. He places the Caribbean and the People of Color who live(d) there at the center of particular histories with global designs (to borrow from Mignolo). The "common winds" carry information in the form of stories told in local tradition, in the translational spaces between and among local and imported languages and cultures, and also across Indigenous and creole lives. This connects the Atlantic by more than just bodies sacrificed and animated as capital. It animates subjects instead in terms of resistance movements and revolutions won. Americans need this book.
#americanstudies
#americanstudies
July 22, 2023
Sadly this is a did-not-finish for me.
There were some interesting elements to the book - the sheer mix of people in the Caribbean, the complexity of the politics there, the way rivalries between the foreign powers determined the liberty and fate of Afro-American peoples. The hardship, but also the resilience. The struggles, subjects and repressions.
But the author failed to draw out the salient points in a powerful narrative and got drawn into detail that mired the whole project. It became a painful litany of information at times, which though I am sure needs documenting, didn't make for a compelling read.
There were some interesting elements to the book - the sheer mix of people in the Caribbean, the complexity of the politics there, the way rivalries between the foreign powers determined the liberty and fate of Afro-American peoples. The hardship, but also the resilience. The struggles, subjects and repressions.
But the author failed to draw out the salient points in a powerful narrative and got drawn into detail that mired the whole project. It became a painful litany of information at times, which though I am sure needs documenting, didn't make for a compelling read.
June 27, 2022
One cannot help reading about the immense amount of work the French, American, British, and Spanish empires invested into policing slave revolts -- this book is largely about their efforts to keep enslaved communities from communicating with each other in the first place -- and wonder that it wouldn't have been economically advantageous to just pay free labor and bust unions.
I suppose the broken windows fallacy driving that kind of broken windows policing -- to hyperextend a contemporary metaphor -- remains an appealing tool of oppression for less monetary reasons.
I suppose the broken windows fallacy driving that kind of broken windows policing -- to hyperextend a contemporary metaphor -- remains an appealing tool of oppression for less monetary reasons.
August 1, 2025
Una historia de las redes de comunicaciones de los esclavos, de los negros y de los subproletarios de los Caraibes antes y mientras la revolución haitiana. Muy interesante y bien escrito, aun si un poco largo de leer por las muchas fuentes utilizadas y porque a veces suena un poco repetitivo
Una storia delle reti di comunicazione degli schiavi, dei neri e dei subproletari dei Caraibi prima e durante la rivoluzione haitiana. Molto interessante e ben scritto, anche se un po' lungo da leggere a causa delle numerose fonti utilizzate e perché a volte risulta un po' ripetitivo.
Una storia delle reti di comunicazione degli schiavi, dei neri e dei subproletari dei Caraibi prima e durante la rivoluzione haitiana. Molto interessante e ben scritto, anche se un po' lungo da leggere a causa delle numerose fonti utilizzate e perché a volte risulta un po' ripetitivo.
June 18, 2021
NGL this one was tough to get through, and sort of dense -- I thought it was VERY informative and I definitely learned a lot, but I was more looking for a book to cover the actual Haitian Revolution, but this instead focused on a lot of politics and communication leading up to the Haitian Revolution in the region, which is definitely important for context but just not what I was expecting.
October 10, 2024
This book is super interesting, if not a little dry at times. I read it mostly blind - it's less of a retelling of historical events and more of an analysis of how communication and current affairs storytelling contribute to the spread of revolutionary ideas. In this case specifically, the French and Haitian revolutions and the Americas/Caribbean.
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