It was also in Haiti, Césaire added, that the knot of colonialism began to unravel when ‘black men stood up in order to affirm, for the first time, their determination to create a new world, a free world.’ In 1791, almost exactly three hundred years after Columbus landed there, a mass insurrection broke out among Haiti’s slaves, upon whose labour France had transformed its colony into the richest island in the world.
The poet and statesman Aimé Césaire once wrote of Haiti that it was here that the colonial knot was first tied. The review is of CLR James’ The Black Jacobins it was originally published in August 2010 on Norman Geras’ normblog, as part of his Writer’s Choice series. As I continue my life in purdah, trying to complete my book, here is the second book review drawn from the vaults.
0 kommentar(er)
