Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
This book is very complex because it does not make the rebellion’s leader, Toussaint L’Ouverture, into a sort of plaster saint. This is a guy who led a revolt against an absolutely brutal, manipulative slave-owning class and in some respects he had to be just as ghastly – indeed some of his lieutenants were even worse. But Toussaint was a natural compromiser and tried again and again to make a deal with the French.
Let’s move on to The Black Jacobins, about the Haitian revolution.
This is a very important book for me, about the first and only successful slave revolt in the Americas, which happened in Haiti. C L R James’s book is very complex because it does not make the rebellion’s leader, Toussaint L’Ouverture, into the sort of plaster saint that people now might make of Martin Luther King or, dare one say, Nelson Mandela. This is the guy who led a revolt against an absolutely brutal, manipulative slave-owning class and in some respects he had to be just as ghastly. Indeed some of his lieutenants were even worse – to some extent you can see the seeds of what has become modern day Haiti in the nature of the revolt. But nonetheless, we have this incredibly heroic figure battling two things. First, the Napoleonic empire, this vast, colossal military and colonial power. And this bloke says, ‘OK we’ve had enough of this.’ Toussaint was a natural compromiser – there is an academic interest now in Barack Obama as a natural compromiser and a leader. Well, Toussaint tried again and again during this rather short revolt to make a deal with the French. But time and again either they reneged or they tried to double-cross or they couldn’t hold their side of the bargain.
But the second part of the book is really more significant for what I do, namely the problem of how you overcome a systemic discrimination. In order to make the plantations work you had to separate the slave labour from the rest of humanity, categorise it and control it to make it work. One of the most telling things in the book is that James describes the way in which the plantation owners would categorise the slaves according to how much European blood they had: there were 128 different classifications. It was an example of how the society in Haiti was so rigidly constructed to maintain slavery. And the Haitian revolutionaries had, somehow, to deal with overcoming and dismantling this incredibly rooted system. This is what people today might describe as institutionalised racism.
What interests me is the difficulty of tackling a way of thinking and doing things that is built into society. It is actually much more obvious and evident today in relation to gender. The way we do things automatically stacks the cards against anybody who doesn’t work five days a week, nine to five, for 40 years continuously, and overcoming that is probably the single biggest barrier to equality we have to tackle.
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Trevor Phillips is a politician and broadcaster, who has spent the last seven years at the head of quangos responsible for combating discrimination. After growing up in London and Guyana, he was the first black president of the National Union of Students and the first leader of London’s elected assembly, where he clashed with Mayor Ken Livingstone for arguing that multiculturalism could mean more segregation in British society. He is current chairman of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, and has also advised the French government on social cohesion.
What about your next book, C L R James’s The Black Jacobins which I believe you see as the most important one on your list?
That’s right at the top of my list because many Haiti-watchers see it as the best account of the Haitian revolution of 1791-1803.It focuses a lot on Toussaint L’Ouverture as the key leader in the revolution. His life and his leadership are as much a topic as the revolution itself. Toussaint is credited with uniting the revolutionary forces against the French presence. I think it is a must-read for anyone involved with Haiti at a political level. It is also useful to anyone else involved in the country.
The book really highlights the incredible achievement of the Haitian nation, namely to be the only ever slave revolution leading to shaking off slavery and achieving independence by armed struggle. I think that much of Haiti’s current political socio-economic problems can only be understood in the light of French slavery and the way in which it was brought to an end by the slaves of Haiti.
What kind of legacy has that left them?
Well, you had the small mulatto élite who were the result of colonialism – being in the ideal position to lead when the French were thrown out or killed by Dessalines. So, early on a split occurred where you had a southern mulatto republic led by the wealthy Alexandre Pétion and the northern kingdom led by black Henri Christophe.
And after that split was overcome the mulattos dominated, thanks to their French education, and unfortunately established a regime which wasn’t that different to the one the French had before (though slavery was, of course, formally abolished). Mulatto domination endured to the days of Papa Doc and this tragic split was the result of slavery. The mulattos’ aim in the revolution was to continue their lifestyle, because they also had slaves and were beneficiaries of the slavery system. All this is looked at in fascinating detail in the book.
You also have to remember that James wrote the book just as the Nazis were at the height of their power and there is quite a bit of understandable emotion involved, so one must read some of the passages in the book in the light of James’s strong communist leanings.
Christian Wisskirchen has worked on Haiti since 1991. In 1992 he was among the founders of Haiti Support Group, which has become the leading pressure and solidarity group on Haiti in the UK. He is now chairman. He wrote a dissertation on the Haitian boat people (refugees) in 1994 and worked as a UN Human Rights Officer in Haiti in 1995. He is also head of International Relations of the Bar Council of England and Wales. During the US occupation from 1915-1945 Haitian uprisings were brutally suppressed, he says. For example, a Haitian worker in a forced labour gang set up by the US forces was murdered in cold blood when he was considered lazy by one of the guards. During that period the US restructured the Haitian army to become an oppressive tool for its foreign policy objectives in Haiti for decades to follow, and that was only ended by the dismissal of the army by President Aristide in 1995 (who was overthrown also by officers trained by the US army, at the notorious Fort Benson ‘School of the Americas’).
