Making The Black Jacobins: C. L. R. James and the Drama of History

The C. L. R. James Archives

by Rachel Douglas

C. L. R. James's The Black Jacobins remains one of the great works of the twentieth century and the cornerstone of Haitian revolutionary studies. In Making The Black Jacobins, Rachel Douglas traces the genesis, transformation, and afterlives of James's landmark work across the decades from the 1930s on. Examining the 1938 and 1963 editions of The Black Jacobins , the 1967 play of the same name, and James's 1936 play,  Toussaint Louverture —as well as manuscripts, notes, interviews, and other texts—Douglas shows how James continuously rewrote and revised his history of the Haitian Revolution as his politics and engagement with Marxism evolved. She also points to the vital significance theater played in James's work and how it influenced his views of history. Douglas shows The Black Jacobins to be a palimpsest, its successive layers of rewriting renewing its call to new generations.

320 pages, Hardcover

Published September 27, 2019

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A much expanded version of Douglas's essay in The Black Jacobins Reader. I am out of my Lukacsian literary analysis phase, so there was little here for me with the chapters on drama analysis. The comparison of TBJ two versions, especially the "De-Marxification," is very interesting. The bibliography is helpful for further Caribbean studies.